On Creating Personal Systems for Sustainble Change

Hi friends,

As always I gotta ask, how are you? Like actually?

Personally, I’m doing pretty well all things considered. Finishing the semester last week has definitely freed up a lot of cognitive space to think about things outside of school.

Particularly with it being Taurus season, I’ve been thinking a lot about structure and systems. Taurus is an earth sign and Taurus energy really captures the joy and pleasure that comes from structure and being grounded and embodied. So of course, I’ve been contemplating my relationship with structure throughout the past few weeks.

I can’t say that I’ve always been a big fan of structure, especially as a Pisces rising, but I’ve always been a fan of what structure can produce. When I was a senior in college, I was juggling classes and an internship on top of having senior positions in two clubs and joining a very competitive dance team and working part-time. People told me more than once that I couldn’t do it but I managed to balance it all because I had a really good routine and structure to enable it. And it wasn’t because I liked waking up at 6 am to go to the gym before work and a full day of classes. It was because I loved dancing enough to restructure my life around making being on the dance team for the first time a possibility.

Similarly with my last job in advertising, I was the queen of Notion. I was so organized my to do lists had to do lists and it wasn’t because I liked the extra effort of constantly updating my Notion dashboard. It was because I loved the ability to manage my time at work well enough that I could clock out on time and not add to the chaos my teammates were experiencing.

So now in the context of being in the early stages of my self-employment journey and centering my business on collective liberation, I found myself asking the same question that helped me navigate previous seasons of my life: Is the current structure of my life enabling me to do what I love and what I care about? And unfortunately, the answer was no lol. And that’s okay. It’s easy to feel like we’re failing when there’s a lack of alignment between how we’re spending our time and what truly matters to us. However, I think oftentimes this lack of alignment is an indicator that our personal systems are failing, not us.

I actually think that’s a very liberating truth because it makes it easier to shift from guilt around what we’re not doing to intentionality thinking about how we can structure our life around what we want to be doing. So this week, I did what I did best. I bought a new Notion template and got to work. I still have a long way to go but I can feel the impact of getting reorganized already and it’s not because the template is cute (even though it is). It’s because I got clear on what was important to me and I can already see how the structures I’m putting in place are enabling me to do that.

For example, one of the main things I’ve been wanting to do is create content more consistently so I can share my perspective and expand the reach of my work. Prior to this week, I would just make a video whenever I could squeeze it in. Now I’ve already posted two videos this week and I’m working on another one for tomorrow.

As another example, another thing that has been important to me is increasing my understanding of the war and humanitarian crisis in Sudan and spending more of my time working on concrete actions to support the people in Sudan. A few weeks ago I was just saving what I could on Instagram and not getting back to it. However, this week I was able to attend a teach-in, make a folder to save content about Sudan, and block out an hour to body double with someone while we sent email to our reps.

So as Taurus season comes to a close in a few days, I invite you to consider what systems do you have in place currently and are they enabling you to spend your time and energy on the things you love? If not, what are some small ways you can start to change that?

The path to collective liberation is long and it will take all of us being really intentional about how we’re spending our time and energy in order for the movement to be sustainable and impactful. How will you spends yours?

With love,

Paula

P.S. I’m hosting an event on May 26th and I would love to see you there. Learn more about it below!

Upcoming Gatherings

Current Offerings

Support My Work

If you’d like to support my work feel free to forward this email to a friend or buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/paula__ami