There are times when Social Media (twitter etc.) seems too much for me. But as I was coping with all my thoughts and feelings about the election, being able to share thoughts, read and listen to others has been so reassuring, encouraging and supportive.
Anger, fear, disappointment, tiredness and more emotions are being expressed. Feelings I share. However, what was so powerful to me was that within a day or two people started to ask how can we work together to minimise the potential negative impact on the most vulnerable, including those with learning disabilities?
How can we bridge the gaps? How can we develop new ways of working together? How can we keep each other strong, healthy and well?
Then yesterday morning, as I settled into the office, I thought I would dip into a book recommended by Nan Carle (Godin,S. 2014 ˜What to do when it’s your turn. Domino Project.) The page I opened is entitled Furious is not the same as fierce. The article resonated with me big time.
Godin suggests furious is your ego talking. It is the fight to get even to reclaim the higher ground, to set things right. He goes in to use a boxer in a ring as an analogy for furious. A boxer, gasping for breath, recklessly pacing back and forth, is counterproductive, you might as well throw in the towel. Hmmm, I know that feeling!!
Someone who cares about community, who wants to work with others to make a difference, can be fierce. By fierce we mean, having a focus on what really matters. Fierce is about knowing what is that is so important to you that a way of achieving the desired result must be found.
Fierceness, a focus, enables a person to be rational ‘when everyone else winds themselves up in knots being furious.’
Fierceness takes honesty and commitment. Â It means, as Godin says, living with the simultaneous certainty that this is vitally important and things may not work but together we have to keep trying.
So Paradigm is committed to working with others across the country to keep connected, strong, healthy and fierce! Let’s be fierce together.
- For it’s part Paradigm will:
continue to connect people, ideas and action. We must all share stories to inspire and offer tips for action. We must remove the them and use and bridge gaps, form new and develop old relationships. - share the work developed by members of our ‘Creating Positive Cultures’ project, aimed at figuring out how we can free people from systems that limit to live ordinary lives.Â
- continue to offer our highly successful Inclusive Leadership Lab to ensure that Leaders develop their skills to manage emotion, dissent, curiosity, attitude and meaning in themselves and those around them to ensure good ordinary lives for people with learning disabilities
- find ways of offering opportunities to connect with support workers across the country to ensure inspiration through sharing good practice, connecting hearts and minds at a time when training, greatly reduced due to budgets cuts, is often minimal and/or online with the essence of human contact, discussion challenge and shared learning being lost
- join with others, including Learning Disability England, to name one, to ensure that we support the voices of people with learning disabilities to be heard in the political arena
- welcome people to celebrate possibilities and the fact that for all of us life is an on going journey of discovery!