Systems Of Transformation
"Systems Of Transformation" is a podcast dedicated to discussing the dynamics of generational healing and global transformation through a trauma informed lens and Christian perspective. If concepts like personal growth, leadership, faith and creativity light up your soul, then this podcast is for you. Anu Hernandez is an author, trauma-informed social worker and Christian, who believes that stories heal and connection transforms.
Systems Of Transformation
Episode 08 - Qualities of a System of Transformation: Part V - The Scales of Transformation
Its the Season Finale :)
In Episode 08 we are going to talk about the importance of a System Of Transformation learning to equally prioritize wellbeing and productivity.
- Quality 05 - The Scales of Transformation
- The delicate dance of balancing wellbeing and productivity
- A common fear of balancing the scales of transformation
- Displacing the equilibrium of traditional methods
Let's heal generational and transform global !!!
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My book, But Jesus is available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and WestBow Press.
Welcome to the systems of transformation podcast, a podcast that is dedicated to the dynamics of generational healing and global transformation. Through a trauma informed lens and a Christian perspective. I am your host, Anu Hernandez and welcome to episode eight. The final episode of season one. I can't believe that we're recording this final episode. I call today's episode the scales of transformation, because as I was brainstorming, I really wanted to leave something impactful to end our season with, and also a concept that's kind of been brewing in my heart for the whole season really, and I think it's really important to look at factors that influence the outcomes of transformation and things that are really important to the long-term sustainability of healthy, beautiful transformative change in this world. If you have been following along through this season, you know, that we've been doing a series called the qualities of a system of transformation. And so today we're going to look at the last quality that I think is important when a system is trying to embrace transformation and set itself up for sustainable transformative capacities. Today's quality reads, a system of transformation welcomes the humanity of its members and equally prioritizes wellbeing and productivity. While I believe that prioritizing wellbeing and productivity equally is essential for the longterm sustainability of a transformative system. I do advocate for careful consideration of looking at what real balance is and what real balance means for the equality of prioritizing wellbeing and productivity. I do understand that there are seasons in a system's evolution and transformation where a little bit of rebalancing is required. And that is totally okay. And in fact, I would say yes, with careful consideration, make those adjustments so that you can healthily match the season or the sub season of transformation that you are in. During crisis or unexpected transformation, you may have to change your focus on priorities. When we're going through these unexpected seasons of change, it is important to prioritize wellbeing over productivity. If I was injured and if I needed critical care, then that is not my time to focus on output, efficiency and productivity. At that point in time, I need to make sure that I am stabilized and supported. And if I were to consider myself a worthy investment, then I am going to look at that so-called productivity as what is being put into me to help me recover from this unexpected hit that I have taken. So productivity might temporarily seem like it's going out of the window, but really productivity is going into stabilizing who I am. We need to set aside some of these things so that we can take this time to heal, repair, make sure everyone's doing well. Even if it's just me as an individual, am I doing okay? Like, what do I need right now to recoup? So that then I can get up and do what I need to do again. Let's go back to that example of if somebody is in the ICU or they're ill and at home, they need time to rest. You are not going to ask somebody who has just injured themselves, broken something, been through surgery to get up and go run a marathon or get up and go do something that's high endurance and, achieve these great outward expressions of success when they need to be really focusing on their recovery and wellbeing. It's the same thing with any type of system. On this journey of longterm sustainable transformation, there will be times when we take these hits. When it's important to look at ourselves and our people, if we are leaders and in charge of a group of people, to prioritize their wellbeing. You may be scared. I understand it is scary to set aside some of these things and focus on the people because the heart says, well, if we do this now, then we're just going to be stagnant. We're going to lose progress. We're not going to hit these goals that we have. But it's like, if I were to take that person in the hospital and throw them out on the street and tell them, go do all this, like build a house, run a marathon, go hike this mountain. Can you imagine the disaster that would result from that? Not only will they not heal, they will cause themselves more damage. And then neither are they going to achieve those goals and those tasks that we have given them to accomplish. At the end of it, it's a double loss. So I would rather you take that time to focus on the wellbeing of your people and streamline some of these things so that we have that time to process heal, recover, go to therapy, go to support groups, something, something that helps you get through this season of crisis and unexpected change. Once you have worked your way through that crisis. Once you have stabilized. Once you have taken care of the wellbeing of people involved, I do believe that it is okay then to make sure that you are revisiting and rebalancing, because we are coming together to achieve some type of a focused outcome or goal. It is not unrealistic or unkind at that point to prioritize productivity as your first priority and let wellbeing take an equal or maybe a second place for short periods of time. This is more of when, you know, there is that goal that you need to get done when there is a deadline, when there are these little spurts of intense focus, right? That is totally okay to then say, right now for the next week, maybe for the next two weeks, we got to push real hard. We have to make these changes because everybody seems to have some type of stability and health right now and you're doing okay, so let's use our collective wellbeing and push to achieve this goal that we have in mind. We inherently as human beings love to apply ourselves to certain missions and visions and see that we can make a change, see that we can help build something or create some type of a growth surge. It's really nice when you have these seasons of intense focus. I remember when I wrote my book. I could write for up to like six hours straight. That was not something sustainable, but there were those short spurts when I was able to do that, there were those few weeks where I would have such a creative flow that I could literally sit down and write for like a whole day taking breaks in the middle, of course. That's something that I can't really do all the time, but I know that when it came to that season of saying, I have this book that I want to write, and if I just sit down and apply myself very focused, not neglecting my wellbeing but prioritizing achieving this goal and the productivity of my outcomes right now. I can then in a short period of time, set that aside and go back to looking at my wellbeing again and rebalance that scale out. In those seasons of high productivity, where you do need to focus more on producing results. If you are somebody who has taken the time to cater to the wellbeing of yourself and those involved when you needed to, you can then rest in the confidence and the assurance that people can invest themselves in these spurts of growth and productivity that is required to achieve some of your vision and mission. If I was somebody that got injured and I took the time to heal the broken bones and the wounds that I have endured through whatever has happened to me, then I get to go to maybe intense physiotherapy, intense rehabilitation. And over time, if I continue to do that, I get stronger. I get more efficient. Once this becomes common practice, it's almost like the place that I was injured has now become the place of my strength. Then we do not just achieve our goals and our missions and visions, we also take our people with us. We're not losing the human resources we have to achieve our dreams, visions and goals, but we're able to balance both of them out because we don't want to lose one for the other. Sometimes I do think we need to take away productivity to enjoy good moments. I think about an organization that may be use working towards this huge event or goal, right. And you achieve it and you do it well. Are we taking time to then create those moments of celebration and coming together and really showing people that positive focus is also a priority. And not just yay we hit this goal. Okay move on to the next thing. Let's go. Can we make that a part of our cultures where we say, we achieved this now let's go celebrate this. Let's go take time to enjoy the fruits of our labor together. If this is something individual and personal, can you sit and enjoy or go out and do something and celebrate for yourself the recognition of what you have just achieved? We're not good at that. I am not good at that. I've had to work really hard on myself to sit in the good moments and enjoy my growth and not just buzz past it and say, okay, I'm done with that. Now let me look at the next thing. What's next. I think we need more of that in our culture. Not an overindulgence, but just a good moment of recognition where we can come together and recognize what it is that we have just transformed. Now I would like to talk about a very common fear and perhaps a misunderstanding of this perspective of balancing the scales of transformation. I'm trying to work this out myself because what I don't want to do is unintentionally create more chaos that is damaging and detrimental to a system. But I also don't want to just focus on control and productivity to where we are losing the human component of compassion, celebration and a coming together for collective healing and wellbeing. You cannot in the long run have just one of them. I know it's such a delicate balance of learning to care for each one of these components, while moving forward in this process of transformation. Recently I was trying to study the components of compassion and empathy and the role of compassion and empathy in leadership and I found these beautiful definitions somewhere. Give me a minute, let me go find it. And then we'll continue. I found it. So compassion. Compassion is an emotional response to empathy or sympathy and a desire to help. Empathy is the awareness of other people's emotions in an attempt to understand how they feel. So empathy is an awareness. It is a cognitive state of relationship where you are able to be aware of other people's emotions and you attempt to understand how they feel and you're able to make this emotional connection of compassion and so you're able to connect and help the other person. The problem is when we equate compassion to permissiveness or vulnerability to weakness. Because then we have lost relational equity with the people that we are working with, living with doing life with or coming together to achieve these creative communal goals and set intentions of transformation. And this is where I encourage us as human beings, in places and spaces where we're expected to be the examples to really understand the differences between being compassionate and being permissive. Okay, so compassion again, we talked about compassion being this ability to respond in a human emotional way with the desire to connect and help. But that doesn't mean that if you do that, you have to be permissive and allow there to be a lack of accountability or a lack of productivity. That is a very difficult and delicate balance, but it is necessary for healthy transformation. If we take the time to create this culture of transformation and create this time to really study, implement and care for these scales of transformation, that when you have done this and it has become a habit and a common practice in the system that you are involved in, you can eventually hit kind of stable maintenance mode, where you have recognized and understood how to balance these two components of wellbeing and productivity and keep it relatively equal. Once you hit that rhythm and once it becomes ingrained into the culture of both being prioritized and cared for appropriately in due seasons, people begin to kind of relax into that. So then they don't mind going through seasons of intense work and productivity or intense seasons of making sure things are happening, goals are met because they know that when they hit those moments of crisis, whether they're unexpected or they're just a byproduct of these intense seasons of productivity. They know that. There are measures in place, there are safety nets in place and the people in charge of them prioritize their wellbeing. When people can drop their defenses and replace fear with that security of knowing that they're cared for, I really think any system is going to face it's highest productivity and healthiest longevity and really. see not just its people, but the entity of that system thrive. And isn't that what we want transformation to look like? A longterm thriving group of people coming together to create this wonderful, impactful change in our world. This brings me back to the foundation verse of my life. So I would like to read this passage to you. It's just a couple of verses and tie it in with what we're talking about today. Matthew 22 verses 37 to 39. Jesus answered him. Love the Lord, your God, with every passion of your heart. With all the energy of your being and with every thought that is within you. This is the great and supreme commandment. And the second is like in its importance. You must love your friend in the same way you love yourself. I read that from The Passion Translation What I'm trying to say in all of this is it comes back to my belief that if we, as human beings ought to learn the healthy transformative way to love, we have to learn it from God. God is the perfect template and blueprint of perfect love. And it is only through our interaction and relationship with him that we are going to learn what true, perfect, eternal, divine love is supposed to look like and how it interacts and applies itself and manifests in this earth. God teaches us that. There is no way we are going to generate this as a human race by ourselves. To an extent. Yes. God created us in his image and we are his children. And so of course there are components in us that are naturally wired like him and yes, we can generate love to a certain extent. But it will be imperfect and flawed and. I would rather submit myself and stay in continued connection with the divine perfect source of love so I can learn more and more from him and apply that to myself. So that then with this loving relationship that I have with God, because to me. God he's not an abstract concept. He's not a distant fairy tale. He's a living, breathing interacting force and and a being who is there continuously in my life and in the lives of all of us. And wants to have that relationship with us so that he can love us. You know, I read in the Bible that while we were yet sinners, God loved us. So he loved us even before we knew him, recognized him or acknowledged him, valued him. Wanted to have a relationship with him. So that love is always there. Once we get into that place of saying, I think I want to be a part of this relationship because I experience love when I am with you. And we build this intimate, loving relationship with him and we let him into these places and circumstances in our personal individual selves and our lives. That we start to see how he permeates and who he is in those situations and how he deals with us. And that is what opens us up to perfect love in a sense. You have to love yourself before you go out and try to love your neighbor. It's there in the Bible. The Bible says. You must love your friend in the same way you love yourself. I know that as a Christian community, we love to overthrow that little piece there. We love to throw out the as yourself part, or we just assume that that as yourself part comes automatically to us like, oh yeah. I just know how to love myself. No, we don't automatically know how to love ourselves. In fact, that is the part that it's almost like we're allergic to sometimes as human beings, because that involves us taking time to prioritize our wellbeing and our growth and our transformation, and it's really an accountability piece that God put in there for ourselves as individuals. What we see a lot of times is an imbalance because people are trying to love themselves without having this connection with the divine to show them what perfect love looks like, so they're just coming up with these things that they call self love. And I will say people are not wrong about wanting to explore and grow in understanding with this concept of self-love. It is a necessary component in the journey of transformation. However, without God there as a stabilizing factor. As a sobering factor at times. Who is able to show us what true love looks like. If we don't let that love permeate into ourselves, then all we are going to transfer to other people is a toxic, very mortal, limited perspective of love. The other part of the dysfunction that I see is people, and I will say people in faith, communities or religious communities are more susceptible to, this is the whole concept of, I just need to love God and I need to love others. They've completely taken themselves out of that equation. And so they're striving so hard to access this love of God, and then somehow just dump it on other people without passing it through themselves and filtering it through that"love yourself" piece. So then they do become those empty cymbals and those clanging gongs that the Bible talks about in Corinthians. Where you're just making all this noise because you haven't taken the time, there's no depth to this love that you're trying to give other people because you haven't taken it through you as a system. You haven't understood how it permeates into yourself. You haven't learned how to love yourself the way God loves you so that you can be this dynamic powerhouse that then turns to the outward world and pours this love from your place of overflow to other people. Once you have this consistent, loving relationship where you have this ever present, always available source of unending, eternal human surpassing kind of love, and you have really taken it and applied it to yourself, and you know, you have this, this accountability partner in God and yourself, then you can look to people and transfer and transmit that type of love to other people. If you are not a person who balances your wellbeing and your productivity and you're not doing this dance of figuring out what is appropriate in what season and really growing and developing in that as an individual, it's very hard for you to show up in these different systems and implement a healthy transformative culture. Textbook knowledge, social media trends or just kind of handpicking things that you're seeing as good ideas or transformative concepts and implementing them into various systems can create some change. But for true sustainable effective transformation, it always comes down to the people in charge of being the role models, leaders, and examples of that system. If those few people who are in charge of other people can understand it, implement it and love themselves in a healthy transformative way because then you do have empathy. You do have this ability to emotionally connect with the people that you're leading. And then when you have learned the dynamic dance of wellbeing and productivity and how to really balance those things effectively, then you can implement that with a certain level of skill and mastery with the people you are in charge of. Transformational practices displace the equilibrium of traditional methods. And what I mean is there is a certain rhythm and seemingly productive way of running things that has existed over time. There are tried and tested and true methods that I am not going to say throw away without a thought. Absolutely take them into consideration, but also understand that sometimes transformation, a lot of times, transformation involves you doing something in a new way that may not immediately yield the results that can convince those traditional practices that you're doing something better, but if you truly believe in it and you implement it and try, I just say, try. I'm not even going to guarantee you that every transformational practice that you put into place is going to be fruitful and successful, but you will never know until you try. And take that time to celebrate your wins and your losses. It is important that we are willing to displace the equilibrium of tradition to welcome in this new state of being that we would like to call transformation. Thank you so much for journeying with me through season one. Thank you for showing up every episode. Thank you for downloading episodes, listening to them, and then communicating your thoughts and giving me feedback. That is something that I have appreciated and I value very much. I have learned so much. I have grown as a person. And I'm so humbled and grateful for those of you who have had the patience, the love and the support for me as I have undertaken this podcasting journey. I am going to take a short break while I make sure some of my other creative projects are completed. And I'm also going to be learning how to invite other people. I would love to have guests in season two. And so I need to learn the setup for that. I need to invest in some additional equipment and really build this platform to where I can have people join me and have conversations because yes, that is a completely different dynamic and it's beautiful and amazing in its own sense.. I wouldn't be here without you guys. You have been my accountability piece through this journey. Every time I release an episode and I see people downloading the episodes. I see people listening to them. And then, you know, people tell me like, when's your next episode? I'm waiting for its or. This was really useful to me. It has really kept me going because I have had moments when I have just wanted to give up where I have felt so inadequate to be the voice presenting all of this. Because I do have moments when I'm like, I just blabbering these things that have, you know, been kind of swimming in my head or. Is there really a transformative message that God has put on my heart to speak up and share with other people. Not that I'm an expert or I'm better than anybody, but this is just something that burns so passionately inside me that no matter how much I try to avoid it, ignore it and tell myself that I'm not the person to do this, it keeps coming back. And you know, when you have that thing to just nags you over and over again, and doesn't let you sleep or be at rest without getting it out of you. And it, it grounds me back to what the Lord told me when I finished writing my book was,"I want you to do it for the one." The one being him, but also just the one human being that might gather one little thing from something that I have said, and that would change their lives in a little way. If there's just one thing that one person can take away from all this conversation that we are having, then I believe that I have been an instrument of transformation and success. I am on Instagram@therealanuhernandez. I am on TikTok@therealanuhernandez. I am on Facebook at Anu Hernandez. And you can also email me at therealanuhernandez@gmail.com. Until next time everyone heal generational and transform global. Bye.
