While the internet and social media allow us to connect to more people than ever, it’s creating huge divides. Now AI is supplanting what has given us our sense of value – the work we do.
There’s no doubt that we define a person’s worth by their productivity. It’s something we learn early and spend a lifetime fulfilling.
- When we meet someone, we ask, “what do you do?” (define them by their work)
- Nationally, we measure our collective health with GDP -Gross Domestic Product, how much ‘stuff’ we make.
- In education, we cut the arts and prioritize subjects that make “productive” members of society.
- Business epitomizes the “hustle, do-more” culture as the pinnacle of achievement.
- Marketing inundates us with a non-stop stream of how we are not enough and what more we need to do to fix it.
I’m exhausted just writing about it.
Add on to that acceleration of AI and the narrative that it can do things better, faster, more accurately and cheaper than we can. OMG!
No wonder we are feeling less valuable, less meaningful and less relevant. All of which leads to, and exacerbates, you guess it – isolation and depression – a loneliness epidemic.
The catch is – we’ve been sold a lie.
It’s All a Lie
We don’t lack value, we have a belief system problem – ie we are believing what we’re being sold.
What if we didn’t define ourselves in such a narrow way – production = value? How could we go about re-defining ourselves?
Here are three powerful alternative and some questions to start us on that very journey…
Bhutan
Bhutan, a tiny country in South Asia, is considered one of the poorest countries in the world. It’s also ranked amongst the happiest in the world. Why? They understand that being human is more than the number at the bottom of a corporate balance sheet. Bhutan measures the health of their nation through GDH, Gross Domestic Happiness (yes, it’s a real thing) instead of GDP.
Gross Domestic Happiness has 4 pillars: sustainable and equitable socio-economic development, environmental conservation, preservation and promotion of culture, and good governance.
➡️ What if you applied GDH to your home, your business, or even your internal life? What could that look like for you? What’s one thing you can change this week to move in that direction?
I apply GDH in my world in one small way by buying local. Instead of having amazon deliver or buying from big box stores, as much as I can I purchase from small local stores, producers and artisans. Yes, it can cost a bit more, and it also reflects true costs and true values. The biggest reason I do it is that I want to live in a local, supported/supportive community, so I start by it building myself – one small action at a time.
Plant with Purpose
Plant with Purpose, a group that works with rural communities to reverse deforestation and poverty, noticed that what works to heal the earth, heals humans, too. (excerpt from this LI post)
The communities that thrive—where the land heals, forests grow back, and poverty decreases—don’t just focus on fixing the environment.
They focus on restoring relationships:
Relationships with the land.
Relationships within their communities.
Even relationships with hope and purpose.
🌱 When trust is rebuilt, neighbors plant trees together.
🤝 When relationships strengthen, families share resources and knowledge.
💡 When people reconnect with their purpose, change becomes unstoppable.
➡️ What is one thing you can do this week to build a genuine relationship?
I sent a connection request to a friend of Stephanie’s on LI that just said, “I’m Stephanie Allen’s podcasting partner”. He didn’t just connect with me, he took the time to respond with a short paragraph that made it obvious that he had read my LI profile and several of my posts. 🙌 I felt seen.
In one paragraph, he built trust and began a real relationship with me.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Buddhist monk, Thict Nhat Hanh, tells us in this YouTube video that each of us has ‘home’ inside ourselves. We literally have the antidote within us. That emptiness that we keep trying to fill with answers outside of ourselves (other people, money, fame, etc.), that vacuum inside where we don’t feel comfortable, the place that marketers target so that we buy more and scroll more and disengage more, that very place is the antidote. It’s the path to healing ourselves, our families, our businesses and our world.
➡️ Where is one internal place that you avoid that you could acknowledge and play with this week? An empty feeling inside of you? Can you sit with it and feel it without trying to fix it or change it?
“Loneliness is the ill-being of our time, we feel very lonely, even if we are surrounded by many people. We are lonely together.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
I have a love/hate relationship with writing. I’m feeling called to do more of it, and when I sit down to do it, invariably, I find 20 other things that need to get done first. Lol. I’ve avoided and I’ve forced, then I sat it. I sat with all the uncomfortable feelings – not trying to fix them, or force them or change them, just noticing them, accepting them.
I touched the ‘home’ that Thich Nhat Hanh mentions in his video, and it made space for me to embrace my writing.