Creating Islands of Stability
Navigating Toxicity with Clarity and Resilience
All lies and jest / Still a man hears what he wants to hear / And disregards the rest ~ Paul Simon, The Boxer
There are so many attacks on our ability to focus, to finish, or to relax. Fear, uncertainty, doubt are weapons of everyone in the attention economy.
And we all feel it.
Our stable workplace is undermined by the erosion of DEI initiatives, volatile "return to office" mandates, malevolent fake leadership, and Dogecoin-like instability in direction. We all need strategies to reclaim our agency, our autonomy, and our professionalism.
What you are going through, others are going through it, too. Me. Tonianne. Everyone. Misinformation and fear are highly-traded commodities of universal negative value and that toxicity bleeds into our work, our homes, our very physique.
What follows is how I deal with this. How I deal with disappointment and dread. How I deal with the unexpected and the overload. It is how I keep going and I hope it helps you do the same in this age of existential vandalism.
The first thing I do, generally, is to retreat to Paul Simon, so each has a quote.
1. Know Your Real: See What’s Going On
“Sometimes, even music, cannot substitute for tears.” ~ Cool Cool River
When I’m overloaded with work or just overloaded with life, I sit down, usually with a Miro board, and start laying out the elements of my current-state topography. My responsibilities, commitments, desires, expectations, and pain points. Just writing them down tends to help. What comes out of that exercise, though, is a set of objects that used to be fears. They are playing cards in a difficult game, but they are no longer unknown to me. They can be confronted, organizable and, from them, a plan can emerge. They no longer define my concern, they fuel my action. They might hurt right now, but they are as real and cathartic as tears.
2. Build Obtainable Better: Visualize and Track Success
“My traveling companion is nine years old, he’s the child of my first marriage. Maybe I’ve a reason to believe we both will be received in Graceland.” ~ Graceland
We are where we are, but we are not where we will be or where we want to be. Yes, some people have screwed us into a current-state corner. But the only way they will keep us there is if we stay there. We understand our own operational excellence. But our current-state woes can only become future-state memories if we create a system. Take the elements from #1 and set up a Personal Kanban, build a work flow, create an affinity diagram - hell, build a GANTT chart - but do something that makes the path from now to better visible and keep it visible. Put it on the wall, on your second monitor, but don’t stop looking at it. Work on the future state every day. This is the one step at a time part.
3. Reveal Reality to Belligerence
“When speech becomes a crime / Silence leads the spirit / Over the bridge of time.” ~ Hurricane Eye
As toxicity increases, our ability to speak is impaired. We retreat to safe spaces and self-limit our impact and our reach. But improvement cannot happen in a closet. Yelling begets yelling. You can’t be quiet, but brute force is their game. As Paul says, we need to be “as peaceful as a hurricane eye.” You are the peaceful center. Your visuals are the hurricane: depersonalized agents to initiate pragmatic, solutions-focused discussions. Show others the reality of the situation, be steadfastly pragmatic, don’t over-extend.
4. Cultivate a Coalition
“Reach in the darkness, a reach in the dark, to overcome and obstacle or an enemy, to dominate the impossible in your life.” ~ Rhythm of the Saints
You aren’t alone. There are others dealing with the same stuff. But we are all predisposed to complain much more than act. For your sake and others, the complaint and helpless cycle must be broken. This is initially a trust-fall, a reach in the dark. In toxicity, every other person is required to fix the situation, but they are all living by the toxic rules. We cannot fix toxicity without other people. Use your visual systems to this end. Include the other people. Find out what they need to know, what their fears are, and make shared boards to work through them together. You cultivate anything by sewing seeds, working the soil, by nurturing. You will find mutual support and the necessary energy for improvement, but you are bringing this. Reach into that dark and find your way to dominate the impossible.
5. Make Your Normal Non-Toxic
“Acts of kindness, like breadcrumbs in a fairy-tale forest, lead us past dangers as light melts the darkness.” ~ I Don’t Believe
You always have a zone of control, no matter how small it might seem. With number four, the moment you work with others, you expand. You become less of a silo. Since we don’t set the toxic rules, getting through them is an expensive, unwarranted, but necessary slog. Your normal must reflect you, your needs, your comfort. Mine includes playing music, talking to friends, cooking (lots of cooking), and reading. This is not about recharge, it’s about stability. It’s about making sure that your tomorrow is enough like today to give you continuity, clarity, and comfort. This is the blessing of standard work, of using a Personal Kanban, of having visualizations. You go to bed and wake up to things not distressingly different than yesterday. This is how you can deal with the toxicities of misdirection, misinformation, and gaslighting. It is your lighthouse in the storm.
There may come a time
When I will lose you
Lose you as I lose my light
Days falling backward into velvet night
The open palm of desire
Wants everything
It wants everything
It wants soil as soft as summer
And the strength to push like spring.
~ Further to Fly