Articles
Components of an Effective Program of Empowerment for Potential World Changers
by Sheryl Karas
According to many scientists and environmentalists the world is on the edge of ecological disaster. The hole in the ozone layer is growing; forests are disappearing; deserts are spreading; water supplies are being contaminated; and the world population keeps increasing. That alone is daunting enough, but add to that the problems of war, poverty, crime, AIDS and other infectious diseases, and throw in issues of sexism, racism, classism and homophobia and it is easy to understand why many people shy away from social or political action. It's overwhelming. How does one even begin to allow the full awareness of these issues to creep into one's consciousness without being consumed by it? Can the efforts of one person even begin to make a difference? Why bother? It's hopeless, isn't it?
Well...no, not necessarily. What if the prevailing attitude of our leaders was that one person CAN change the world if they are willing to share what they know and empower other people to become leaders, too. What if we saw ourselves as a whole nation of potential leaders, each person using their unique talents to make a difference in an area they care passionately about. Would our problems look so insurmountable then?
That's what this paper is about. It has been my observation that most people do not see themselves as powerful enough to make a difference in the problems of the world. I have also observed that those people who do identify as social change activists often feel so urgent about the problems they are tackling and so unsupported by the rest of society that they work compulsively until they burn out. How could one develop a program of individual and group empowerment that was effective enough to inspire those who don't currently see themselves as world changers and balanced enough to support active world changers to carry forth their work in an effective, enjoyable and sustainable fashion?
World Changers and Self-Actualization
Abraham Maslow believed that the most effective people were what he called self-actualizers, people who used their talents and capabilities to the fullest in a creative and joyful fashion. It would stand to reason that an effective, empowered world changer would have similar characteristics. According to Maslow (1970) these characteristics include:
•a relatively clear perception of reality, not driven by hopes, fears, and ego defenses
•ability to accept oneself and others
•a tendency towards a spontaneous and simple lifestyle
•a problem solving as opposed to ego centered approach to handling challenges
•detachment and a need for privacy
•autonomy, ability to transcend the influence of culture and environment
•zestful appreciation of life
•mystic and peak experiences
•a feeling of deep connection with others and nature
•a high moral code and sense of discrimination
•creativity and wholistic thinking
•commitment to a vocation or life-calling
Maslow does not include physical health on the list because he assumes that before a person can function at the level of self-actualization their basic physical and emotional needs must be met.
The field of applied psychology has produced numerous programs for self-actualization over the years. Most of them are found in the business section of libraries and bookstores. Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey, 1989), seems particularly applicable to this topic.
Covey emphasizes that effectiveness comes from the combination of quality and/or quantity of what one achieves AND one's capacity for production. In other words, one must both achieve things and take care of one's assets. Assets are physical (our body, our environment and our tools), financial (our capacity to earn enough money to fund our projects and maintain our physical assets), and human (relationships). It is a very business-oriented approach but also common sense: to achieve their goals without burn-out world changers cannot continually work at the expense of their health, finances, family or personal life. Neither can they be so focused on personal issues that they don't find the time for their wide-world concerns.
Covey's 7-Habit program:
1.Find your mission in life and chart your own destiny using self- awareness, creativity, conscience and will. Decide what you want to do and take responsibility for your decisions. When you run into a problem, face reality, accept what you can't control, and choose a positive response.
2.Choose activities that contribute to the vision of what you hope to accomplish in your life and say no to distractions that will take you off course. Trust your inner guidance and make decisions based on your own principles rather than on the basis of what other people or society will think.
3.Practice effective self-management. Prioritize your time by focusing on maintenance, prevention, relationship-building, recognizing new opportunities, planning, and recreation instead of running from crisis to crisis. Also do things directly related to producing your long-range goals every day.
4.Aim for mutual benefit in all human interactions, develop strong listening skills and the ability to speak with authenticity. Learn communication and consensus building skills.
5.Practice empathic listening and problem-solving with relationship- building in mind.
6.Learn to be flexible, open to outcome, and comfortable with uncertainty. Value differences, teamwork, team-building, and creating alliances across perceived divisions.
7.Renew yourself regularly. Take care of yourself physically (daily exercise focusing on endurance, flexibility and strength, good nutrition, rest, and relaxation), mentally (learning, reading, visualizing, planning, writing), emotionally or socially (service to others, empathy, synergy, intrinsic security) and spiritually (value clarification and commitment, study and meditation, prayer, inspirational literature, music, time in nature)
World changers can learn a lot from his approach. What's missing in his book is any discussion about how to work with emotional issues that get in the way of implementing the seven habits. There is also practically nothing about social, political or environmental awareness, even though he emphasizes working with diversity in a general sense.
Emotional Empowerment
Before one could get to the point of using the seven habits as a world changer one would have to be able to face world problems squarely and choose one to focus on. The issue of overwhelm comes up right at the start. How could a person dive into action using such a powerful approach if they didn't feel capable of making a difference at all?
Joanna Macey says they need to feel their pain and she leads workshops on despair and empowerment where people get to do just that. In her article "Working through Environmental Despair" in the book Ecopsychology (Roszak, Gomes and Kanner, 1995) Macey describes her five principles of empowerment:
1.It is natural and healthy to feel pain for our world.
2.Disowning our pain makes us numb, isolated, powerless and ineffective.
3.Information about world problems alone is not enough. We need to process the information emotionally in order to respond intelligently.
4.When we unblock repressed feelings we release energy and clear the mind to think more flexibly.
5.We reconnect with the forces of life when we can feel our pain for how those forces have been misused.
Joanna Macey's workshops are popular with world changers who need an emotional boost and with potential world changers who have already decided they want to become more active. But what about those people who can't even imagine being world changers yet? What about the ones who say "Feel my pain for the world?! My personal life is hard enough!" For these people deciding to go to a Despair workshop is too big a leap.
Most psychologists and therapists would agree with Macey's approach but I haven't found much written in the field about how to inspire people to become world changers who do not already think of themselves in that way. People usually don't see a therapist to help them change the world. This is where an alternative approach like Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) shines. RC takes an identical stance on the value of emotional release but it introduces the topic in a very different context.
Re-evaluation Counseling
The Re-evaluation Counseling organization (also known as co-counseling or RC) is a social change organization with one goal - to empower and support people emotionally to take action in their lives. Many people take a co-counseling class to support their social change work but most people initially do it for personal growth. They want to learn to communicate better with their partners, families and friends, or they want a supportive setting to work on life transitions or patterns that get in the way of having the lives they want. Some of these people would never go to a therapist if you paid them. Others can't afford it or can't justify the expense for the level of problem they are experiencing (a 16-week RC class costs about the same as two therapy sessions). In less than half that time they learn enough skills to trade effective listening time with another person and by the end of the class the pairs have enough information and experience to support each other with most of their daily problems and challenges. All people accepted into a co-counseling class are already functioning relatively well in their lives and are searching to improve things more.
Over the course of 16 weeks RC class members are introduced to basic empathic listening skills and some simple cathartic techniques. Over time, class members reclaim their ability to feel and release painful emotions and explore how their emotional patterns were formed in response to hurtful experiences in their childhoods. The idea that those experiences may have been the result of sexism, racism, classism, etc., as well as from family situations is thoroughly addressed. There are usually several classes focused on specific "isms" and how people can address those issues in their personal lives. By the end of the class series people have an understanding of how their personal hurts are related to societal oppressions and have been given enough tools and positive experiences to know that there is something they can do to improve at least their small corner of the world. Usually, a significant proportion of people who take these classes decide to become more socially active even though there is no pressure to do so and they may have never considered the idea before.
It's actually a pretty simple process. Personal issues are always related to greater social oppressions at least indirectly because nobody grows up in a vacuum. We've all been touched in some way by the greater problems of the world. The key is in noticing the connection and becoming committed to making one's personal life better by tackling the greater problem. As a co-counseling teacher I have found it is also important to feed the information in small enough bites that overwhelm doesn't get a foothold before the student has the tools to handle it.
As good as the organization is, RC has several drawbacks that prevent it from being as effective as it could be. While the organization does not espouse to have a political orientation, its particular slant on social change is very appealing to members of the radical left and can be intimidating to mainstream populations and alienating for conservative ones. Additionally, the size of the organization forces it to depend on a rigidly hierarchical structure and the leaders at the top are very mistrustful of theories and techniques that do not originate within the organization itself. That means effective strategies used by other organizations are slow to trickle into RC and any negative leadership patterns demonstrated by the top leaders permeate the organization and are slow to trickle out. One of these patterns is an attitude that borders on ridicule of spiritual beliefs and practices. RC is also an unbalanced approach. It is based on replacing reactive emotionality with logical thinking, which is good, but there is almost no attention paid to physical and intuitive processes. Stress-related illness and burn-out are issues the organization has only just started to address.
All of these factors lead to an organization that struggles with itself to live up to the ideals it holds most sacred. Reaching diverse populations is one of the main focusses of the organization at this point, but if diverse means everyone - not just the disadvantaged and societally discounted - RC has a monumental challenge to face. Can the organization reach out and create a safe place for people whose religious and political orientations are middle of the road or conservative (i.e. the majority of the United States population)? That remains to be seen.
© Copyright 2007 Sheryl Karas & Paul Hood
