BACK TO MAIN PODCAST PAGE

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep22: The SKILL of building transformative value

 

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

 

EPISODE NOTES

 

Every time you try to “do it right,” for a system, you have to abandon what you know in your body.

And the SKILL I talk about in this episode

is the skill of building SELF-DETERMINED value.

 

This is the skill of being able to 

discern in your body

what is actually right for you

and your work

and your people.

 

There are

cultural hybridities

vantage points

insights and ideas

strengths

uncommon or marginal knowledges

that are calling you to SEE them as value.

 

This skill is you: 

Transmitting belief in that value

+

building structure that backs that belief.

I don't know any more valuable skillset: This is world making.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

 

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Unmasking Unschool Podcast. These are four 'bridge' episodes from this podcast to the brand new forthcoming one, and this is episode three of those four bridge episodes. If you haven't listened ever to this podcast, I encourage you to. Track back too much earlier ones, and that will give you a lot more context that will help you.

So I'm gonna dive straight in. This bridge episode is about skill, specifically the skill to build value; to structurally build the value of your work. So the value of your work, we might think of something to do with how much you get paid, what kind of service you offer, the ways in which your work is seen, the associations people have with it, and there's a lot of different ways that you can think about the value of your work.

But the one I'm grounding into, and the one I'm going to offer to [00:01:00] you is the idea that the value in your work is what is life giving. So in the broadest sense, the value of your work is that it's something supportive of you and you existing, that it's not extractive of something someone else or indeed of you, that it's giving.

To something or someone in a way that is mutually and systemically expansive in terms of possibility, in terms of freedom, in terms of choice, in terms of how possible life is and what can emerge in that interaction, right? And so when you are considering your work in the world, the value that I'm inviting you to recognize and to build is.

Value in terms of what is life giving Now? Life giving can sound very lofty and big, but I really want to think of it in terms of what is life giving because [00:02:00] of when you recognize the ways in which your work is sustaining something of meaning, is doing something that has an impact on someone else that is also working for you, that supports you, that helps you.

That whatever form those take, that that is doing something that is life giving, that that is doing something of value and that that can be something that expands. The more that you expand your own sense of. Wellbeing in the work, the sense of ecological or social wellbeing, right? And it might not meet all of those things.

You might be working in a very specific arena, a very specific problem that your work solves, or a thing that your work does in the world. Or it doesn't solve a problem. It's a piece of artistic creation. But what about it has meaning? What is life affirming about your work? What is giving you [00:03:00] something and giving something beyond you?

Right? And so that framing means that you can start to see your work in terms that are beyond just the value systems that you might be existing and working inside of. There are things we have to do, right? There are bills to pay, there's money to earn. There are ways to survive our current systems, but those systems also have built in value systems.

There are things that the system values that are inbuilt, priorities that are rewarded, not offering them is sometimes also punished, and those are going to be. The things that sustain the system, right? And that can mean that we relate to the value of what we have to offer, the value that we might create in terms of what is valued.

What is already seen as valuable, and that can often mean that we devalue, we internalize the devaluing effect [00:04:00] on things that don't necessarily fit with that, or when we're offering something different or when who you are has been historically or systemically. Seen as inconvenient to a system, right? And so we can often start to assess and recognize the value of what we offer as something that is measured in terms of how much we are pleasing a system or getting on board with or being a productive cog in that system, and creating something that will be recognized as valuable.

And this makes it much harder to recognize. And to believe in any created value that might differ from that. And so that's the context of the premise of this skill. And not everyone experiences enough friction with the systems that you are in to need to offer something that is at [00:05:00] odds with that has a value system that is not in agreement with it, right?

This is really the reason for me shifting tracks in the focus of my coaching and also changing into a new podcast that's coming out, is really seeing that when you are someone who hasn't fit with the social systems that you've been in, when you have been enculturated into certain value systems. Then it's very easy to have learned that what you have to offer doesn't hold value, isn't going to be recognized, isn't something you can back, isn't something that you can follow through, is something that you have to manage or hide or hold back from offering.

Or there's parts of you that don't get to be along with it. You can't be your whole self while also doing your work. And so it's that, right? That is the challenge that is. The skill in meeting that [00:06:00] challenge in a new way and building something that has a different value system embedded in it that doesn't yet have social or societal or structural backing.

And so I wanna start with that because there are an overwhelming giant amount of reasons why to get with a system. But there are also enormous life-giving reasons to question a system. And not only that, but to move into building the skill, to tangibly build something that honors the values that you actually hold and that honors the value of what you bring.

There are life giving. Ideas, insights, ways of doing things, cultural hybridity, experiences that you have, that you bring, things you were taught, things you inherited that are inviting you to. [00:07:00] Recognize them as having value for someone else, right? Or something beyond you, even when and even if the system doesn't, even if you've been taught otherwise.

And so that is really the skill that I want to talk about in this episode. It's. Building value from the inside out, not starting with what is, and then engineering yourself and what you do and what you offer to fit with that. But instead starting inside you sensing and knowing and believing in the value of what you have to offer, and then building out from that.

So this skill is not easy. It's also not modeled and taught. And it's a skill that many people don't experience the level of friction that you might do to have the impetus and the motivation to do that work. And that is also part of the value. So part of the skill is [00:08:00] not just recognizing the value of something that is undervalued.

Doesn't exist yet. But it's also that you can have the agency to author that value, to be able to discern in your body what is actually true and right, and feels meaningful and good for you for the work you want to do, and for the people for whom your work will benefit. So this skill feels so vital and key to meeting our current moment.

And also to what I believe you have to offer because you already know how not to fit in. You already know that your body is saying one thing that is different from what is being offered around you. What you might not know is how valuable that is. And what you might be experiencing is the ways in which you've internalized an environment that didn't.

Welcome that out of [00:09:00] you, that you might have internalized that as a reason to hold back or as a threat of rejection or isolation. And so even if you are someone who started your own thing and did the hardest part out of your own initiative and out of your own vision begun something in the world and begun to offer it, there may be a part of you that is still holding back, that is still afraid to bring.

All of you to that there is believing that there is still some kind of contortion compromise that you have to make in order for it to work. That there is a softened, not so different blanded out version of it that you have to offer and that you can't really go all the way in and because of that you aren't getting to experience the benefits.

Of going all the way in. You aren't getting to experience having that work be valued. You aren't having your work realized in its fullest expression. You aren't getting to build the [00:10:00] unique universe of that work in its full power. You are at a stoppage point at which you meet your own limits in terms of what societal leading relationally has been available, and it feels deeply meaningful and motivating to me to help you bring that out of you.

To meet you there and say, no, let's carry on. 'cause your work matters. Your work does something. Your work is vital, important life giving for the exact reasons why you are holding it back. And so this skill requires you to build capacity to pour your resources and yourself and your belief, and build your belief in something that is a long-term vision.

Has no guarantees to give to something that's not gonna give back to you immediately, but that you are giving to because of the meaning. It holds the integrity, it gives you the potential in it, the possibility it holds for other people or for, for what our world is. And so [00:11:00] this is the skill to tangibly back with your actions, back with the way that you tructure your life back with the resources that you have.

A felt possibility until it's a fully expressed real tangible reality in the world. That is undeniable. And of course that feels intimidating, but that is the muscle of the skill that I'm inviting you to consider is available. The work that's required to begin something, to start something up. If you've already done that, you've done the hardest part.

Which is starting something that didn't exist and offering that into the world, being the instigator of that, being the sole visionary for it. Uh, but then yeah, you may be experiencing that, that initial belief is then confronted with other learned patterns in you to hold back and to hide. And so what can feel like a stoppage point?

And also what can feel like a personal failure. [00:12:00] When actually it's you confronting the level to which this is a challenge, but then it's a challenge that your work is inviting you to face and to move through. And the more you do, the more you experience the level of agency, you actually do have to influence and shape our shared world.

I don't know if there's a more valuable skill set than this. Because of how much this is world making. This is you being able to engage with a system, feel the effects of a system, and then trust that feeling enough to work to create a different way of doing things. But not only that, it's not just a different way of doing things.

It's a way of doing things that is more life, life-giving that is more generative of your own possibility, and also those for who whom your work is for. So let me get into the skillset. There are people out [00:13:00] there who want what you have to offer. You being able to connect with the idea that that is true creates a feeling of purposefulness in you to then go and make that real.

So not only is this building value from the inside out, it's also building value from connection to the reality that exists in the future of the impact that your work will have for someone else. That would mean that they want it. So it means you have to know why your work matters beyond you, right? It means you have to connect to the value of it for someone else.

You have to connect to why should this exist, and you also have to believe that those people out there also exist. There is a concept of a thousand true fans, which you might have come across by Kevin Kelly that was published in 2008 by, I came across it around 2014 or maybe [00:14:00] earlier. That really helped me.

When I was creating my own thing. So the concept is that you only need a thousand true fans. What he calls a, a true fan, as in people who like what you do enough to pay you for it. The concept was that you only need a thousand of those people. And it was really at the beginning of the created economy on the internet and this idea that you don't need millions of followers.

You don't need to convince tons of people, you just need your people to know about your work. And it really helped me to be in a niche of a niche to think. That people who not only identify as autistic, but also hold that lightly, hold it with systemic awareness, that this is also partly a story that comes with negatively weighted meaning in the systems of healthcare and education and so on.

It [00:15:00] explains a struggle with a system as much as it explains a human experience of perception and communication that is different from the majority. This is like a niche of a niche, and it helped me to not try to go bigger than that, to not try to please everybody, but just to focus on who are the people for whom this is actually for?

Who are the people for whom my work matters? Who are the people for whom this is life giving, or this could be right? And so this concept helped me to trust. That I could focus my own being on connecting to them. And this is a skill that I have over the last few years, being able to hone, because you know, here I am recording in a room by myself, imagining that you are there existing and conjuring you [00:16:00] as if you are real in front of me.

And speaking to you as if we are already in connection and then seemingly out of nowhere, you arrive into my world and are so aligned and values matched and so expansive to this being real, that it can feel like a fluke. It can feel like an accident when really it's a skill, right? Me speaking in an empty room.

Me coming up with ways of thinking and offering them into the ether, uh, to people who don't tangibly exist in my world yet. And in doing that, you are then co-creating that reality with me in listening to this podcast. That's wild. And that's not me faking it until it's real. It's not me performing. It's the [00:17:00] skill of getting myself to a place where internally I'm experiencing connection to you and where I'm focused on why does this matter for you?

So that is part of this skill. It's also the skill of then being able to take action over and over and over again until the value that I believe this might have becomes tangibly real in the world. There are levels to the skill of being able to recognize internally something that has value, and then backing that enough to then also reveal that value to the world.

To be a beacon of that value to say this has meaning and matters enough that I am tangibly, structurally, materially acting as if that is true. Not because I'm pretending, not because I'm actually acting, but because I'm deciding I'm authoring that reality as one that I'm choosing, right? I'm choosing that [00:18:00] as a belief system.

So it's the skill to develop and learn how to be a beacon for your people because you're beaming out your work and your message and a transmission of the energy of the belief so strongly that the part of your people that can resonate with that feel pulled to the front can find safety in that reality enough to rest on it, right?

To affirm and agree. So I could call this transmitting belief because of how much that is a part of it. But then you also have to back that belief with action, with structure, with what then happens, and when you have this skill means you don't get so easily hung up on trying to convince one particular person or one particular institution, starting with what does the system value and how do I need to force myself to fit with that?

Instead, it's recognizing what is the thing that I'm specifically best placed to offer here. What is the thing that I most feel [00:19:00] motivated and purposeful around creating in the world? And so you don't get so attached and hung up on one person saying, yes. You don't so much contort and force and try to convince people or manipulate you don't also get into such highly activated states trying to control something that actually isn't in your control and the panic that creates, right, or the neediness that gives off.

So this is the skill that is necessary for any work that you're doing in which the power of that work is in its ability to transform something. You have to be able to trust your assessment of what could be, of what needs transforming or what's inviting you to help something transform. You have to trust it enough to also bring people with you, your people.

Building value by building your own belief in what you do, building evidence for that, building your belief that other people want it, [00:20:00] and that you are the person to create it in the world. And then also building the skill to team up with other people to be active and discerning in who you are inviting to come along with you.

And it can feel at first like you are trying to. First of all, build a lighthouse and then be that lighthouse in the dark, beaming out into nothing. The strength of that beam comes when you are plugged into a connection to all of those boats out there, right? Your people, the value of your work and why you are the person to bring it.

When all of that's lined up, connected, plugged in, the light goes on, bam, people see you. And it's a different type of visibility that is not managing how legible you are in a system. It's visibility as in the people who can resonate with the idea that what you're doing matters and is valuable, can sense and feel that in you.

They can feel and experience [00:21:00] that beam and are drawn to you to back you in that. And this is the skillset of the final. Three skills inside flair house, value up, team up and beam up. They build on the previous three skill sets and none of them are linear. This is not like on or off. It's degrees of integrity.

It's degrees of alignment. It's degrees of belief. It's degrees of capacity. It's degrees of skill, right? Sometimes those degrees are internal tweaks. Sometimes they're external and structural. Challenging you to have a new level of courage or to express yourself in a new way to make decisions that are honoring to you, even if people don't like them.

And it's one, I think, yeah, it's not really taught and it's not really modeled explicitly by very many people. And it's also something that is incredibly [00:22:00] useful to have someone to help you calibrate yourself to your own internal integrity, right? To be able to reflect back to where you may be in your own energy, feel like you are, you are not convinced.

And having someone who can reflect that back to you. There are so many multiple systems right now that are breaking, that are not working, and you are someone who has things to contribute that are specifically yours to contribute. You aren't run of the mill and neither is your work. And so if you're contributing something that is world making.

Or if you're dreaming something up or you have an idea, a vision for your specific piece of this, you not believing in the value of what you have to offer isn't your fault, but it is the opportunity you have and that is my why. That is the ripple effect I want to have where those who've worked with me are out in the world making [00:23:00] that world.

There is a level of self world connection. That no person, no experience can take away that is yours for creating that. You have the agency to make happen, and the cost to you is letting go of being who you've always been and instead becoming a version of you that you don't know how to be yet. And when you do is when you start making more money, doing what you value and what values you.

It's when you own that work, the unique value of it, and start to realize it is something that is an undeniable reality that other people can build on. You will start to create more interpersonal power in every single relationship in your life. You will adjust your pricing or your client or your collaborator boundaries to create more energy, more discernment, more shared power.

You'll develop a sense of yourself that has other [00:24:00] people take note, copy reference you. You'll be a beacon for your people, a magnet to relationships that can affirm that belief. You'll be able to let go of warped dynamics in your relationship with your resources. You'll be able to steward them more effectively.

You'll start asking for more. You'll stop overworking. It will change the terms of your. Relationships where that sense of self-worth and the created value that you offer aren't reflected. And as someone in Flair House said, when they've started to find their voice, they've realized how much the threats around them were Paper tigers, right?

They just fell. They didn't hold the level of danger that they seemed to. And so the, the systems that you design will start to make life giving value. In the next episode, I want to speak to that sense of self and what [00:25:00] change is there, and so I can't wait to talk to you then. See you on the next [00:26:00] [00:27:00] one.

 

 

 

BACK TO MAIN PODCAST PAGE

BACK TO TOP