How to Take the First Step in Activism

During a recent gathering in the ​Gentle Change Collective​, one of our members said this in relation to the incoming presidency of Donald Trump:

I fear I will not be enough these next four years.

After the call, I wrote it down and stared at it for about ten minutes before standing up. This was exactly my own fear as well.

Now, if you’ve read my book Unmasking the Inner Critic (which feels like something I wrote in a totally different lifetime), you’ll know I struggle with the inner narrative of “not being good enough” – it’s an ongoing inner critique I tend to lob at myself day-in and day-out.

In the book, I write:

When we believe, as I have throughout my life, that we are simply not good enough, it almost always comes from some experience of failing to live up to expectations, placing a hero on an unreachable pedestal, or stacking our “goodness” against an unachievable goal.

When I think about the next four years, one of the reasons I fear not being enough – let alone good enough – is that justice and healing in our current context feels so difficult as to be unachievable.

Sure, I can repeat to myself “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but when I look at everything all it once, it feels a bit more like it bends toward ​chaos​. The sheer number and vastness of issues we’re facing feels overwhelming and all-consuming.

Where do we even start?

For those feeling a similarly textured fear, here’s a practical first-step exercise you can do right now, adapted from Omkari Williams’ book Micro Activism.

(I took about ten minutes for this recently and found it really clarifying.)

Write a “What I Stand For” List

1. Ask yourself, “What do I stand for?”

What springs to mind? Maybe you think of animal rights, homes for the unhoused, racial justice, immigrant rights, reproductive rights, clean oceans, clean water, affordable healthcare for all, education that encourages children to think critically, or LGBTQIA+ rights.

2. Take some time to make a list.

List everything you can think of that answers that question. Also list everything you care about enough to have considered donating time, energy, or money to.

3. Pick Two.

Look at your list. Take the first two causes listed and decide which is most important right now. Cross off the one that doesn’t make the cut. Then look at the next cause on your list; decide which of these two are most important. Keep going until you are down to two. And then once you’ve got your last two, decide if you want to focus on both or if you feel your time would be better spent on one issue.

Williams writes,

If we want to be effective in our activist work, we have to decide where to put our time and energy. We have to trust that others out there are working on the things we care about but don’t have the capacity to address…

“Go big or go home” is bad advice. One of the keys to being able to sustain our activist work is to be radically realistic about our capacity.