CONDITIONING 101
Image Credit: Britannica
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Audre Lorde, (1934—1992) was an American poet, essayist, and autobiographer known for her passionate writings on lesbian feminism and racial issues. Named New York's Poet Laureate in 1991, Audre Lorde once described herself as a "black lesbian feminist warrior mother" who used her words to address sexism, classism, homophobia, and racism in America. Throughout her career as a writer, librarian, and civil rights activist, Lorde authored more than 10 books, including Sister Outsider, and was the subject of three biographical films.
To see between the shards of broken democratic dreams, to peer between cynicism and idealism—and find a path through, equips of culture with a map for action. Lorde was a woman of uncommon courage, conviction, and potency of vision.
Lorde used the power of words and used them to pivot an imperfect world closer to its highest potential. Nowhere does that potency of understanding live with more focused force than in her 1977 manifesto of an essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” which opens The Selected Works of Audre Lorde.
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.
Activist and writer Audre Lorde amplified the intersectionality of self-care and civil rights as she dealt with cancer, in her book A Burst of Light: and Other Essays, which now stands as a manifesto for the Black female identity. She shed light on how self-preservation is foundational for community building.
Lorde discussed self-care in many essays and journal entries, most strikingly when she made a resolution to direct the course of her own treatment after being diagnosed with cancer: “I must not surrender my body to others unless I completely understand and agree with what they think should be done to it. I’ve got to look at all of my options carefully, even the ones I find distasteful.” In her 1988 book, A Burst of Light, Lorde wrote the sentence that has become a manifesto for self-care among Black women: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
In a society filled with marginalizing messaging, this kind of self-care contradicts, reaffirms, heals, and fuels individuals to continue their work of overturning oppressive systems and strengthening communities.
Between the 2016 election season and the 2020 pandemic, it has officially crossed over into the mainstream, becoming the chicken soup for the progressive soul. But the best self-care might not only be focused on the “self” at all; it’s not about the newest skin-care product. Instead, true self-care might look like forging human connections, processing and validating our feelings through reciprocal relationships, making a true investment in others’ success, and creating true community with the people around us. These are low-cost, high-yield actions that, in the long run, increase our individual well-being and give us the strength to do the real work: the work of collectively making the world better—for everyone.
An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important social and political visions of the century. From Lorde's childhood roots in NYC's Harlem to her battle with breast cancer, this moving film explores a life and a body of work that embodied the connections between the Civil Rights movement, the Women's movement, and the struggle for lesbian and gay rights. At the heart of this documentary is Lorde's own challenge to "envision what has not been and work with every fiber of who we are to make the reality and pursuit of that vision irresistible."
CONDITIONING 101
To bring into a desired state by practicing moderation and self-care. Lopsidedness and over-extension must be proactively managed.
Specific goals require specific conditioning and attention. For example, if we want to invest in our career, does our spiritual side need to give up something? Many would argue that during times we have big professional or academic goals, it’s more critical than ever to invest in other areas of our life such as spirituality or health/fitness. Ultimately, we make consider tradeoffs and make choices about how to invest in ourselves.
This observation is most evident to us in sports. Training for a diver is different than it is for a tennis player. Conditioning is a form of tending. We are nurturing a skill, building tolerance to obstacles, and learning how to focus. We can apply the idea of conditioning to anything—even inanimate objects. Buildings have a lifespan. The lifespan of a high rise has different needs than a single-family home. The tenants of conditioning are true with other contexts such as businesses, social causes, and living creatures of any kind. Everything in the world needs conditioning and care.
We often take our own professional, mental, physical, moral, and spiritual needs for granted. Imagine we could pick any car we wanted—no charge. The catch is that it would be the only car we would drive for the rest of our lives. If we only had one car to tend to for the rest of our lives and our livelihoods depended on it, we'd probably take excellent care of it. Yet, we get one body and one mind for life. We might feel great today, but our bodies and minds need to last us a lifetime.
In addition to tending to the mechanics of ourselves, our cars, our businesses, our causes—success also requires moral and spiritual conditioning. We need to practice moderation. We must not over-indulge. Consider the mental attitude required to make a significant launch date for a project, product, or service—to dive to great depths or climb great heights, to save the sick, or to deliver a closing argument on a critical case. Appropriate rest, diet, and exercise help us mitigate the daily stressors in life. Increasing our professional fitness—our effectiveness in meetings, developing status reports, managing day-to-day briefings, and leading monthly reviews—can only get us so far.
When we are young, our goal is to be in better condition than anyone else. If others have a better capacity for conditioning than we do, there is little we can do it. Someone else will always be in better shape, more prepared, or able to beat us. As we age, we learn that being in the best possible condition we can is the genuine goal. We hope that will be better than others, but we don't know for sure. We try, every day, to be in the best possible condition we can and hope that we'll be better.
Conditioning requires dual responsibility—between the manager and the team. It is the manager’s responsibility to design how we go about our business—establishing a bar for professional fitness. They determined what processes are needed, how information should flow through the team and the overall strategy for where we are headed. Professional fitness is a lot like sports fitness. We determine the plays (the strategy) and run the drills (meetings, methods, processes) that enable people to win (be as effective as they can be—giving the right message to the right person at the right time so everyone can move forward together).
The team's responsibility is between those mechanisms. The team has the potential to tear more down between meetings than we can ever build up in meetings. Treating others like they are an obstacle in the way, not getting enough sleep—all impacts how they generally show up. They might absorb too much work because they didn't delegate it properly across stakeholders, driving them toward burnout and ineffectiveness. They could start hoarding information from other team members, ensuring their own success above other parts of the organization. These are examples of behaviors holding us all back (not to mention stall bottom-line results) from attaining and maintaining optimal professional fitness. We can improve our conditioning, maybe, and overlook some of these issues.
In business, a discipline toward effectiveness and efficiency is important. Effective meetings (whatever type of meeting we are talking about) is like a drill in any other sport. Effectiveness is the business version of being in good physical condition. But failure to address mental, moral, and spiritual fitness will limit even the best efforts toward disciplined effectiveness.
How do we consider our conditioning day in, and day out? What sort or practice do we need?
PRACTICE:
Take a sheet of paper and make 5 columns. Label them: professional, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual. Reflect on what actions you take in each of those areas to be at peak performance, or whatever is acceptable to you, for each category. (Think behaviors, not achievements)
What do you do on a daily basis? for the short-term (i.e., 3-6 months), and the long-term (i.e., 1-3 years, or longer)?
Recall one time when your conditioning efforts in each of the five areas paid off. How did you feel? What activities and behaviors did you do that worked?
What action(s) do you think you need to take today?
What will you do tomorrow that is different?
At work: do you struggle with managing tactics over strategy?
If you find yourself lopsided toward one over the other, what impacts is this having on you personally? professionally? (across other areas of your life)
If you are in a groove, balancing both equally, what habits do you think are contributing to that?
COMMIT
[ ] I commit myself to develop and maintain fitness across my life—professionally, physically, mentally, morally, and spiritually—and reflecting on the small habits that will get me there.
FURTHER READING/ WATCHING
A Burst of Light: and Other Essays: As relevant today as it was twenty-five years ago. This collection of essays calls us to build communities that nurture our spirit. Lorde announces the need for a radical politics of intersectionality while struggling to maintain her own faith as she wages a battle against liver cancer. From reflections on her struggle with the disease to thoughts on lesbian sexuality and African-American identity in a straight white man's world, Lorde's voice remains enduringly relevant in today's political landscape.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches: In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is….”
More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement: (books by Jennifer Nelson) In More Than Medicine, Jennifer Nelson reveals how feminists of the ‘60s and ‘70s applied the lessons of the new left and civil rights movements to generate a women’s health movement. The new movement shifted from the struggle to revolutionize health care to the focus of ending sex discrimination and gender stereotypes perpetuated in mainstream medical contexts. Moving from the campaign for legal abortion to the creation of community clinics and feminist health centers, Nelson illustrates how these activists revolutionized health care by associating it with the changing social landscape in which women had the power to control their own life choices. More Than Medicine poignantly reveals how social justice activists in the United States gradually transformed the meaning of health care, pairing traditional notions of medicine with less conventional ideas of “healthy” social and political environments.
In Her Words…
“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” —A Burst of Light" and Other Essays.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare," —A Burst of Light" and Other Essays.
“The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival," — Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
“Life is very short. What we have to do must be done in the now," —The Transformation of Silence into Language & Action.
“In our work and in our living, we must recognize that difference is a reason for celebration and growth, rather than a reason for destruction," Lorde told Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at Work.
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences," Lorde wrote in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
“When I dare to be powerful—to use my strength in the service of my vision—then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid," —The Transformation of Silence into Language & Action.
“Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat,"— Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain. The intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain," Lorde wrote in The Transformation of Silence into Language & Action.
“If I didn’t define myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive," Lorde said during a speech at Harvard University in 1982.
“Your silence will not protect you," Lorde wrote in The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.
“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed, but when we are silent we are still afraid, so it is better to speak," Lorde wrote in The Black Unicorn: Poems.
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
“Art is not living. It is the use of living.”
“I am saving my life by using my life in the service of what must be done. I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere.”
What we don’t see on the resumes we review or the job descriptions we want is the litany of emotional entanglements we bring to our roles, uninvited, to the team and organizations we work in. Alongside technical skills, people who can master a range of subjective skills are better able to influence, deal with ambiguity, bounce back from setbacks, think creatively, and manage themselves in the presence of setbacks. In short, those who learn lead.
Observing subjective qualities in others past and present gives us a mental picture for the behaviors we want to practice. Each figure illustrates a quality researched from The Look to Craftsmen Project. When practiced as part of our day-to-day, these qualities will help us develop our mastery in our lives and work.