Go gentle and kind
I hope this email finds you well. How are you? Really, how are you doing? How is this time of the year for you? Let me know!
2020 was challenging, unusual, unveiling, overwhelming but also quiet, calm and validating too. It was a unique experience for each and every single one of us. So how was it for you, and how are you feeling about 2021 now?
As we enter 2021, I think it is vital to slow down. Many of us are rushing into new resolutions and promises to our lovely Self – which is nice but can also result in guilt when our new plans prove a bit too much. So slow down. Set one intention. Dream a little. Do something new. Play more. Have fun. Relax.
It is 2021. Give yourself permission to go gentle and kind. The healing from this will take time. Let’s move into this year with love for our own selves and our communities.
Here at Voxel Hub, my core intention for 2021 is exploring CHANGE. How do we define change? How do we manage, plan for, react, accept, adjust to change? How do we facilitate, participate in and form change? What is the change we need to heal? How can we work towards sustainable change that includes all members of our global community? And what role do digital technologies have in this process?
For more practical solutions, I will introduce the six core aspects of digital wellbeing in more detail. I will also talk about the value of operating from our character strengths. I hope you will join me and find those topics useful.
I wish you and your closest a light, slow and kind New Year!
My favourite topics this month
This month I am thinking a lot about diversity, power and safety for good wellbeing. Allow me to suggest taking some time off multiple channels and going back to longer reads: books.
You can read them on paper, online or listen to them – but the idea is to slow down, pay attention and immerse yourself in one narrative for a day, a week or so. So here are my top ten recommendations for the beginning of this year:
“White Privilege Unmasked: How to Be Part of the Solution” – history of racism and fantastic framework for work with privileged from the point of you of the empowered
“Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias” – examination of our deeply ingrained biases and why they are important and so challenging to work with
“Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril” – certainly an eye-opener
“The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life” – brilliant explanation of racism and how it emerges in our encounters with our own mortality
“Working with Difference and Diversity in Counselling and Psychotherapy” – published in 2020 this a must-read for mental health practitioners aspiring to call out and change the inequalities in their profession.
“Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t” – anthropology of power, really, but also an introduction to sustainable leadership centred around safety, empowerment and kindness with great examples of companies that got it right and wrong.
“Gender Swapped Fairy Tales” – to starting shifting our own biases.
“I Go Quiet” – a beautiful little book about embracing being different and finding out place in the world.
I hope you will enjoy those reads. I would love to hear from you, so if you have a recommendation, please email it to me.
Preparing for 2021
January tends to be the time of preparations and New Year intentions. To welcome you on this new journey, another cycle of our lives, we can slowly start planning the year ahead of us. I have reflected on my 2020 in photos and put together a few calendars for you. It’s probably practical to assume that we will need to stay home still for a bit this year, so the calendars are focusing mainly on slowing down, practising different quality of attention, mindfulness and gratitude:
- Connecting with nature
- Reflecting on local street art
- Enjoying quiet paths
- Visiting the edge of the Earth for a moment
- Noticing small details and micro-worlds around us
I hope you find those calendars inspiring.
I wish you a light and kind start to 2021!
Let me know what else you would like to see here in the upcoming months.
Stay safe. Stay well. Stay connected.
Sylwia
—
Click here to sign up for our monthly newsletter.
—
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
