Change Yourself Into Something You Love

I believe in hope. I believe that we are malleable. I know so much of our time is spent thinking somehow our bodies are changeable, but our thoughts, opinions and beliefs are not. I know that if we believe the future can be different and better than the present, we can take the steps now that allow for improvement.

Changing yourself is not just about you as one person. Changing yourself also means changing your organization, your interpersonal relationships, your peers.

Learning to love myself has been over two decades in the making. I spent long periods of my life trying to be what people wanted me to be rather than being who I wanted to be. I spent endless hours critiquing just about everything about myself…my intellect, my career choices, my image, my friendships and relationships with my family, my morality, my view on social norms – and so on. Extreme self-loathing coupled with depression brought me close to the edge more than once.

My journey to wellness is anchored in the idea of changing myself into something I love. Love does not mean absence of flaws. Love does not mean perfection. Love does not mean permanent happiness. Love is authentic acceptance.

Lessons I have learned that I want to share:

• If you want to love yourself, surround yourself with people that love your faults, not love you in spite of them. Loving yourself does not mean being imperfect.

• Grieve the loss of the old you when you start to change. That is who you were, not who you are or are going to become.

• Forgive yourself for being imperfect.

• Name the changes you want to see in yourself, to yourself. Hold yourself accountable to a timeline to make movements on those choices.

• You can change yourself into something you love. It does not happen overnight. And coming to love yourself often means stretches of being unhappy. Paradoxical, but true.

• Only you can change yourself into something you love. No one else will do that for you. No one else knows how to make you the person you love.

• Avoid arrogance and conceit. Loving yourself requires being vulnerable and open. It does not mean you are the best at anything or everything.

• Be sensitive to the critiques of others. I have learned that much of what frustrates me in others are things that I know or once knew to be true in who I am – even if they way they were manifest was different.

• We are all afraid of rejection. Don’t be surprised if you reject yourself too. Then deliberately – even when painful – accept yourself.

• Regardless of life circumstance, traumatic events, history, we all have the ability to recover – if we allow ourselves to regain control and find meaning to what has happened. This is not always a journey completed alone. But one of the ways in which changing yourself into something you love is helpful, is the ability to find new meaning in who you are, your resiliencies, and your remarkable ability to adapt.

• Changing yourself into something you love means confronting some of the harm you have done to others in the past and learning when and how to ask for forgiveness. Loving myself, I have quipped, means accepting that I am a recovering asshole.

• Don’t apologize for your world view. Don’t apologize for your values and beliefs. Don’t apologize for your morals. Loving yourself is an unapologetic exercise in being who you are and need to be, not subscribing to what others try to tell you to be.

Offence is Taken, Not Given

Push envelopes. Blur the edges. Provoke. Grab people’s attention through irreverent comedy. At the most recent National Alliance to End Homelessness conference I got called “gonzo”, “brilliant but irreverent”, and “troubadour of disruption”. All in a day of work for me.

On the days when I have my A game, two things will happen: a large volume of people will go out of their way to tell me they are inspired, feel challenged, energized and ready to improve what they do; and, a small volume of people will go out of their way to tell others how much I offended them. Sometimes it was my approach. Sometimes my language. Sometimes my use of comedy to help people stay engaged. Here are examples of things over the past few months people have gone out of their way to tell me were offensive:

• taking off my shoes when presenting

• not wearing a suit and tie when meeting with an elected official

• saying “fuck”

• suggesting prisons for profit are manufacturing prisoners

• outlining how ineffective AA usually is (while also making clear that if someone is in recovery using AA they should continue to do what works for them)

• sharing that people involved in sex work use phrases and acronyms that is a code (and then deciphering some of those in a session on harm reduction)

• checking my phone while presenting (even after indicating that people can text me questions while presenting if they didn’t want to ask aloud)

• making a remark that the “heroin epidemic” is getting attention as a health crisis because white people are disproportionately impacted now

• challenging the suggestion that people need income before they can be accepted into a housing first program

• making a joke about cats being a poor pet choice

• suggesting that if change was so easy we would all do it – including being a healthy body weight

• commenting that a two dad family with a child constitutes a “family” not only when doing the Family SPDAT, but in life generally

• making jokes about my own parents and upbringing

• distinguishing between opinions and facts, and that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts

• outlining how not everyone that lives with mental illness needs to take medication

• having to ask a group continually disrupting a presentation to leave the training (and to be clear, they were the ones that were offended)

• outlining how moral views of sex and sexuality can differ from legal views of the same, and how that can impact service delivery

• suggesting that if you are lurching from one crisis to another rather than proactive, planned service it is impossible to achieve the bigger picture outcomes

But the thing is this – I never go out to offend anyone. Why? Because offence is never given. When my values and beliefs are different than yours; when my moral compass is different than yours; when my approach to seeing an issue may be different than yours it is entirely possible someone will be offended. But that is because they took offence. I gave them nothing.

Gone Fishing

Those of you who have followed the blog for a couple years know that each year I take a week to get completely off the grid, take my kids up to Northern Ontario and do my best to latch on to a large smallmouth bass, lake trout, and/or, northern pike. 

This is self-care for me. Once a year, I get to a place where I cannot look at my phone. My computer will not be with me. I will be dad. I will be brother. I will be son. I will not be President & CEO of OrgCode. I may hatch blog ideas, but not intentionally, and I sure as heck will not be writing them. I may figure out answers to complex social challenges because the struggles of bringing in a big fish took a long time, but again, it will be by accident. It is true that I live and breathe really complex social challenges on a daily basis. And I find it impossible to turn that off. But I can put myself into situations where I think about it less.

I am never going to be the guy to best teach you or your organization how to practice self-care. Of my many flaws, workaholism is one for sure. But I am trying.

See you all next week. And should you want a fish story, hit me up – there is bound to be at least one that gets away.

When Amazing Minds Come Together

Last week the core staff of OrgCode (Jeff and Tracy) along with the bench players (Mike, Erin, Zach, Kris, Amanda) all spent a couple days in the great city of Toronto figuring out what OrgCode needs to be working on next and how we need to get there. I am not going to get into specifics that will be answered in the coming weeks/moments too much, but allow me to hit some highlights to hopefully intrigue you.

Going Deep

There are many topics communities keep wanting more and more information on how to effectively accomplish, from coordinated entry to actually running reports and maximizing HMIS; improving housing stabilization to how to be an amazing CoC; what it takes to be successful at ending homelessness in rural settings to what it means to be fantastic at outreach or a shelter with a housing focus. These are things where you can expect improved curriculum, a deeper dive into the content, advanced opportunities to learn, and perhaps most importantly, tools you can use to implement.

Flexing the Bench Brain Muscle

With smarter minds involved in more projects we can offer better service to communities. While my brain is probably the largest encyclopedia of knowledge regarding all things homelessness and housing on the team, there is considerable expertise that needs to be made available from the bench to enhance what Jeff, Tracy and I do on a regular basis. Expect better training, better research, better reports, and better presence – all with what you have come to expect from OrgCode.

Improving as a Company

This one is a bit boring, but let me tell you that it is a huge thing for me. I am not a details guy, nor am I financial guy. I suck at managing communications on a regular basis. And I find myself going down the rabbit holes too often. There is brain power on the team that is going to make it harder for me to do that, while improving being a company.

Oh Canada

We have been taking it on the chin for a while in Canada. Even though SPDAT is still the most widely tool used across the country and our training is in demand, Canada remains a small place (about a tenth the size of our neighbours to the south). A VERY small group of people seem to be owning policy development and messaging – and none of these people have done direct service or the broader context to put these things meaningfully into practice. No more of just watching the pain be inflicted upon OrgCode in our home and native land.

More Video Content

I have not made a video in a long time. I kept getting critiqued for quality. Whatever. I am going to make more of them. Lots of them. And the quality is likely to be me in a hotel room ranting. Also, get prepared for a character named “Uncle Pete” to make some occasional appearances. The rest on that is top secret.

Swag

Turns out a lot of people want stuff that has an OrgCode logo on it. Imagine that. If you have ever wanted your very own “Will SPDAT on the First Date” T-shirt, OrgCode shot glass, “Down with the Fuckery” beer coozie, red pom pom OrgCode winter head gear (“toque” as we say up here), or Trucker Cap, get ready for options.

Renewed Optimism and Love

What I do for a living is a gift. That is not lost on me. Expect more love. There will still be provocation. There will still be times when pushing the envelope is necessary. I will still have haters. But after a couple days with genius minds and passionate hearts I am ready to push forward from a place of optimism and love. I needed that.

OrgCode – What’s Next?

If you have been paying attention in social media, you know that I have added onto the OrgCode team as of late. Jeff, Tracy and yours truly remain the core employees. We will still have one or more interns pretty much all the time. But on top of that, I am super grateful we have been able to get some top tier talent to devote some time to OrgCode. Let me tell you why.

I am the face of OrgCode. I get that. But I am not OrgCode. If we really want to penetrate the organizational DNA to make change happen (which is where the name “OrgCode” came from originally), we need a range of talents beyond just what I offer.

Zach Brown, Amanda Sisson, Mike Shore, Kris Freed, and Erin Wixsten are exceptional people. They all know OrgCode. All have cool, established day jobs. And they give OrgCode things it does not have, as well as make some of the things we do have better. In this arrangement we gain expertise in landlords, housing authorities, families, data systems, youth, rural, housing operations, LGBTQ, rapid rehousing, strategic planning, and training.

For two days later this week we are holed up together in Toronto to plan our next steps together. I can promise you this:

• we will be creating new products and updating some existing OrgCode products

• the website is going through an overhaul

• we will be determining how best to provide training, where and for what purpose

• the Leadership work will continue

• we will better articulate the projects we want to be involved with, and why

I am excited for the next chapter of what this all means. This work has always been about making change, not making money. This newest incarnation of who we are pushes us further into the realm of making meaningful impact.

Stay tuned.

Designing an Amazing Emergency Shelter

Howdy!

If you are at the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference this week in DC you may have been in or heard about the session that Cynthia Nagendra and yours truly delivered on Designing an Amazing Emergency Shelter. Whether at the conference or not, I wanted you to get access to some generic policies and procedures that you can use in crafting your trauma-informed, housing-focused shelter. Note that these policies and procedures were first developed for a men’s shelter. You may have to adjust things like population group(s) to be served, access hours, meals, etc. But this should give you something to work off of to get you started in updating, revising or creating your shelter policies.

Follow the link here to download.