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Collaborative experimentation and living systems 🌵🐝🌋
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Dear community There's a song at the end of this prompt that felt deeply true for me this weekend. We are nature.🌵🐝🌋 It reminded me that if we're going to change our world, for ourselves and future generations, perhaps we need to move more like nature itself. Nature doesn't seem to require central control. Nature relies on relationships, communication, feedback and adaptation. Nature also holds love and rage, and expresses both when it is under threat. I'm becoming less convinced that the answer to our social justice challenges lies in superstructures, big hierarchies, large organisations or our current political system. Instead, I wonder if the future belongs to many small, interconnected communities. Groups of people experimenting, learning, sharing, communicating, acting, giving back and showing up for justice. Like butterflies moving from flower to flower, discovering what each has to offer. Like bees pollinating from one plant to another. Like a dying tree returning its nutrients to the forest so new life can emerge. Maybe I spent too much time in nature this weekend. 😊😊😊 It made me realise something. Everything I care about is really about cultivating living systems. Families. Parenting. Community organising. Holding space for leaders. Even tending to my own inner world. The same pattern appears at every scale. The forms of change that last are sustained through relationships. They make room for experimentation. They accept mistakes as part of learning. They adapt. And I notice that when I focus on the more toxic parts of human nature, I can forget the quiet communities that are already modelling another way. Some of my family, friendship and work relationships haven't lasted because we didn't experiment, communicate and learn together. This morning, Eli didn't want to go back to school after chickenpox. Rather than pushing harder, we experimented together. The solution? A game of darts, with Maltesers for the winner of each round. The goal stayed the same: helping us both move into alignment. The path changed. Experiment. Communicate. Adapt. And play... Over the past year I've been developing three simple frameworks with clients around grief, impact and self. The question that gave birth to these frameworks was: How do we cultivate living systems that can keep changing themselves? I'd love to share these three simple frameworks with you sometime. https://calendly.com/mo-belonging-people/connect And the song
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Mohammed Ali (The Innovation)
If you are working on social impact and social justice this is a newsletter to energise your journey - sign up by adding your email below
Dear community I'm looking to meet more men working in social impact and justice. Not for dating. 😄 I'm looking for men who are: • Step into their tender masculinity• Become better role models for their families, communities and workplaces• Apologise and repair when they get it wrong• Unlearn behaviours that no longer serve them• Keep learning, laughing and growing I believe changing our living systems starts with changing ourselves. That's why I'm bringing together another cohort of Men in...
Dear amazing community After an impromptu night wild camping with Eli and some friends, I realised a few things. South Asians don't traditionally camp. 🤣 Or perhaps more accurately, many of us don't.! And there is a deeper story behind that. A few years ago, I invited some South Asian parents to go camping with me. One replied: "We spent generations moving out of tents." That stayed with me. My parents and grandparents would have lived through the upheaval of Partition and would have started...
Dear amazing community, I'm relaunching Men in Social Impact. After 10 months of learning, experimenting and growing alongside a group of incredible men, I'm excited to launch the next six-month cohort! Men have spoken about feeling less alone, making difficult decisions with greater confidence, improving important relationships at home and work, reconnecting with a deeper sense of purpose, and showing up for everyone with more compassion. We support each other to be better role models, tell...