Rules Of Engagement

Good morning. Good morning, cadre. I'm playing a little of my walk-up music here just for fun. It is Back in the Saddle by Luke Combs. I don't know, there's something about this song that, I don't know, helps put a little swagger in my stuff as I'm facing another day of taking big swings and another day of putting myself out there, a rule of engagement. put yourself out there. I think that was number 12. Yeah, so I'm just... Pulled up his boots, put his pistol on his head. I suppose I shouldn't be singing about guns, but it's country music.

What are you going to do? Don't worry where I've been, because I'm back in the saddle again. Computer stuff. It's nice to have a little device that will do what I tell it to do when I tell it to do it. Good morning, cadre. I'm going to adjust this. I just feel like having so much space above my head on a live stream is the equivalent of having a giant forehead, and I never quite know what to do about it, so I just am trying to adjust things here. Well, there it goes back again. We're all going to have to deal with my ceiling, I guess.

There's a little thing here that I can use. There we go. See, learning my equipment in real time. I have some rules of engagement to talk about today because last time I talked about how my anxiety was high because I kept taking these big swings. And here's what I'm finding. The big swings lead to more big swings. I'll talk to somebody and they'll say, oh, why don't we talk about some work together? Or I'll talk to somebody and say, well, you should talk to these three other very fancy people or what have you.

So I have many irons in the fire things cooking on the stove. The anxiety remains high. And I talked about that last week, but then But then something really, really dreadful happened on Friday. Two, not one, but two pieces of very good news, two very good things happened as a direct result of my hustling and putting myself out there and taking big swings. And my body does not understand that good things are good. the way my young life, the conclusions I drew from things that happened in my young life means my body thinks good things are a threat because then if I feel too good, I'm in danger of spilling all these secrets that are actually other people's secrets.

I thought they were mine. They were other people's secrets. And so I am doing a lot of work and that's part of the reason I work so hard on receiving skills is to receive good things And I've been practicing all those receiving skills since last Friday. And you might be asking yourself, Betsy, what happened last Friday? Well, one, I went for a run outside. I don't do that much anymore because my knees, I have arthritis in my knees and it, My shoe situation had been kind of painful the last time I did it, but this time I tried it again with a different shoe situation and it went fine.

Not only was it fine during the run, but then afterwards there was no later it's swelling or I can't move my left foot or whatever. So that happened. So there were three good things on Friday, all of them having to do with my hustle because it took hustle for me to, you know, get myself outside. But then a contract came through I had pitched work, I think I mentioned this, I had pitched work to an organization I have a relationship with. I'm on the board of advisors and I have a relationship with them and they have this big project coming up and ask my advice because I'm one of their advisors and I gave them my best thinking about how to proceed.

And then when we hung up the phone, I thought, honestly, if they had the room, the project would go much better if they had me helping think about it. And I sent the e-mail. I sent the e-mail. I am appalled at myself just thinking about it. You may be thinking to yourself, Betsy, didn't you used to like run a city and ask hundreds of people a day for money and votes? And the answer to that question is yes. But I did it on top of all these feelings, which means when I left office, I had a little backlog of stuff to work through.

And I don't want to do my next phase of life, which I have decided will be the most impactful phase of my life, on top of all that stuff. So I have spent years doing the work. I've been doing the work for a long time, but doing this next level of work. So yes, I'm still startled that I just sent that e-mail and they responded. And then it kicked in. I mean, Friday the contract came. We'd been talking for a few weeks. Friday the contract came. We signed it yesterday, Monday. We had a long conversation, you know, sort of an onboarding for me where the things are with the project and what my next steps are.

Great stuff. And part of what's difficult is I understand that my experience being an elected official makes it feel easy to think about this project that they're doing or not as complicated. There are a lot of things that feel very obvious to me that aren't necessarily obvious to somebody who hasn't sat in the chair. So I have to practice tolerance for ease. I have to let it be easy. That is, you know, receiving skill #2, tolerance for ease. So I just have to let that, and they seem genuinely thrilled that I'm there, which is another thing I just have to allow, receiving skill number one is just allowance, allowing it, you know?

It was great. I mean, the whole thing is great. I, you know, I just, it, there are some challenges we're facing. This does not solve all the challenges, but it does help solve some problems, right? For me, money is great for solving problems and facilitating fun beyond a certain level. You know, there's the baseline that we all need to live. And then beyond that, money can help solve problems and facilitate fun. And that's why I choose to earn it. That's why I choose to earn money. So earn money beyond a certain limit.

and learn the skills of receiving what I earn. So that happened on Friday and that would have been enough, as they say in Passover Seder Dayenu. That would have been enough. And yet that afternoon I got an e-mail from my agent. She would have called, but she had pneumonia. But there's an editor who is interested, very excited about my book proposal. And she is at some point this week going to propose it to the editorial team at her publishing house. That has not even fully sunk in. That's not the same thing as having a book deal.

But let me tell you, I started writing the proposal. It took about a year to write the first version of the proposal in 2020 during the pandemic. And then once I had that and I got some help and used an editor to refine, I wrote the proposal, then got the editor. She helped me refine the proposal and then I submitted it for two years, two years to get an agent to bite on it. And that agent, my current agent, Regina, was really great. But one of the things she said was, this needs to be rewritten.

It's not going to move forward great in this format. Like you've got really good material, but the front door is not what the front door needs to be. And referred me to a development editor, a different editor, development editor, Sam, if you ever need a development editor. Sam is fantastic. He used to be an editor at Random House. And it took months, a year almost, I think, to rewrite this proposal. And then now it's been in submission for however long. If you're keeping track, that is basically 6 1/2 years.

Six and a half years I have been at this, writing the proposal, finding an agent, and then the agent submitting it. And this is the first. time an editor has been like, you know what, I'm really excited about this and I'm actually going to put it on the table for my team at my imprint. And that felt really good. My agent seems to think she'll be able to convince the team I am willing to allow my receiving skills. I'm willing to allow that that imprint to want my book. Like I'm I'm I am practicing the skill of allowance there, but I also understand There's a lot of things that happen between her loving the book, the editor loving the book, and me and her signing our names on a contract.

So, but I'm celebrating the victory in hand, which is another rule of engagement. Celebrate the victories in hand. Great. I did celebrate. I was able to allow myself to feel very good about it on Friday, but I could tell over the course of the weekend and then during my workday yesterday that things were just feeling more difficult. That's always a sign that my anxiety is higher if I am tempted to a free state or find myself in a free state. So here are some of the rules of engagement I was thinking of.

I've already named some. Number 4, I've talked about this one A lot. Trust the decisions I made when I was thinking most clearly. And the decisions I made when I was thinking most clearly was to take 100 big swings in 100 days. Because the problem isn't necessarily, oh, the good things happen. I'm willing to allow those things and do great work for this new client and to write a great book if it comes to pass. But the challenge is, and I get to keep taking big swings. I get to keep putting myself out there, right?

Rule of engagement number 12. I get to keep putting myself out there. I have job applications that are in process. I'm talking to different firms about doing some, you know, working with them. I get to keep doing a high level of work and taking big swings there because I receive and I am so grateful for what I've received, truly, and it's okay to desire beyond what I've received already. As a matter of fact, these things are pieces of the larger picture that I have for myself. This book clearly is a passion project.

If I've been not only working on it without being paid for six years, I actually paid a fair amount of money to editors and other support people to help me write the best proposal possible. because this book is the linchpin of a lot of the work I do around race and thinking about white people and race. And I want to put it out in the world, A, for its own sake. I want that information, what I've learned and how I organize in my brain what I've learned. I want it out in the world. But also, B, then I can use it as a springboard and a platform to have fresh conversations with people, to do other parts of work, to make the practice live in institutions and organizations and in people's lives.

It's A springboard for that. And I realized that there is a rule of engagement that is mine that I don't think I've ever talked about here. It's #8 right now, and it's be the fulcrum. Be the fulcrum. Because 25 years ago, one of my mentors said, as we were talking about anything, this holds for anything in anyone's life, any big thing they're trying to do, but for me it was about this work with white people. And she said, consider this question, what if you are the fulcrum on which all of history turns?

What if you are the fulcrum on which the history of mental health turns or whatever it is? Now for some people that's too much pressure, but for me it was an invitation. She meant it as an invitation that we all think that we are less significant than we actually are. We are all deeply significant in the lives of other people, even if we don't feel like we are. The things we've done have great significance for other people, even if we can't tell it at the time. I always go out and encourage women and people of the global majority to run for office.

And everybody thinks, oh, that means I have to run for president or senate or something. No, run for city council, run for school board, etc. I've said this before. I would talk to groups of young people, groups of older people, all kinds of people I would talk to. And there was a group of city, people who had not internships, fellowships at the city, younger people, maybe beginning of career people who were doing work at the city. And there was a whole group of them and I made this plea to them, please consider yourselves invited to run for office, right?

Lots of people need to be invited, women in particular. Fast forward like 10 years. I'm doing some work at the state of Minnesota and one of the consultants on the project, a Somali-American guy, wanted to make a point of saying he was in that room and he was finishing his time as a council member in a local city. That he had run for office and held office long enough to then leave office. You never know what your significance is. This is an invitation to know that your impact is bigger than you can tell, and it's okay to choose to have even more impact.

I am choosing to have the biggest impact of my life in the next 20 years. And I say that having had a great deal of impact as an elected official. But I choose more because I have this bigger picture for myself and my life and my work. And so I choose to be the fulcrum on which the history of white racism turns. And by white racism, I mean white racial conditioning, the ways white people are conditioned to think about ourselves and the world and people of the global majority in the world is a damper on our creativity, on our capacity, on our connection, on our humanity.

It's a damper and I want to free us from that racialized social conditioning so that we can be freer. And when that happens, it creates much more capacity to never be able to predict life outcomes by somebody's race again, which is my mission in life. which is my mission in life. And the strategy I'm pursuing for that is freeing white people from what has been done to us in terms of race, which is playing out all the time in all kinds of negative ways for everybody, especially people of the global majority, but also us.

So be the fulcrum. Rule of engagement #8. And part of the reason I wanted to talk about that today was just to remind myself that that was my decision, that I can trust the decisions I made when I was thinking more clearly, and that I can continue to take action to the best of my ability today within my window of tolerance. I do not have to hijack my nervous system in order to make big gains today, but I can still keep stuff moving forward. I had a struggle bus day yesterday, but I still managed to What for me were a couple big swings was to e-mail a couple folks whose names I'd been given to ask them to have a conversation about the work.

And I'll leave you with rules of engagement 20 and 28. 20 is take yes for an answer. For me, that is highlighting that I get to learn. I mean, that's meant different things to me over time, but I get to learn receiving skills. It's highlighting for me that I get to learn receiving skills. that I get to learn to take yes for an answer. I got yes for an answer and I can just, somatic softening, you know, receiving skill number four, I can just soften into the taking yes for an answer that that is not a threat to me or anyone I love.

And finally, rule of engagement 28, you don't ask, you don't get. You don't ask, you don't get. I keep asking and it turns out I keep getting. Not everything is a yes, but some things are. So I'm gonna leave you on that note that there are some rules of engagement that I haven't talked about as much and rule of engagement #8, be the fulcrum. What would it mean for you to consider more significance?