Hi, my name is Brooking, and I’m a personal growth junkie.
Unlike the average bear who sees emotional discomfort and runs for the hills, the personal growth junkie seeks her fix with edges.
We junkies have learned to take the familiar signals of being at an edge - heat rising, belly churning, body shaking, mind screaming in resistance – as cues to lean in and discover new levels of self-awareness in the process. And we have gathered enough data that this risk is usually worth it: we are junkies because we have experienced the pleasure on the other side of the growing pain enough to crave it. The unknown is our drug of choice, and so it’s not uncommon to hear us exclaim such thing as “ooh, this is really uncomfortable, how interesting!” For the growth junkie, fear is fun.
Like many fellow addicts, I’ve done all sorts of workshops, retreats, rituals, and burning man escapades. I’ve come to believe that being truly alive and awake is inherently vulnerable and edgy, and so I’ve learned to trust that shaky-kneed feeling as an access point to awakening.
And like any addict, many of the old thrills have gotten old. Being radically honest or processing lifetimes of trauma in front of a crowd of strangers has begun to feel comfortable. Being naked in front of a crowd is not a nightmare - it’s just no big deal. And after 7 years, many firsts and leading hundreds of others through edge-inducing workshops and rituals, I’m kind of over burning man. At this point, doing anything emotionally risky in a space that has fully permissioned the risk (a standard practice in personal growth workshops) is kind of vanilla.
But, with that somewhat twisted twinkle in my eye, I am happy to report I have a new edge, and it is this: bringing the workshop to work.
See there are two kinds of growth junkies: First, there are those who’ve sort of dropped out of the mainstream work world and just do spirituality for a living (or not… many seem to explore intentional poverty as an edge of choice). This crew - and trust me I've been part of it at times - work trades their way through workshops and strive to one day lead retreats themselves, and all ambition is aimed at the holy grail of enlightenment.
And then there are those of us who live dual lives. The weekend workshop warriors who on Monday go back to work as consultants, scientists, programmers, teachers, managers. We have the growth junkie habit and desire to suffer less and know ourselves more deeply. And we also have professional ambition, a desire to have impact beyond “just” our own expanded consciousness, and/or material world bills to pay and families to feed. Prada by day, Prana by night.
Rarely do these worlds collide.
We may quietly practice mindfulness in our cubicles, but no matter how much we cried in front of our sangha last weekend, we certainly don’t tend to practice emotional vulnerability or acknowledge our scars of childhood wounding in the workplace. We’re not doing WEpractice at work. We are still seeing the workplace as intractably soul-sucking, hopelessly conservative, and most certainly not a place we have the power to change. And even if we do have hope, many of us are still struggling with our fear of losing professional face, and so choose not to take the risks on the clock that we pay thousands of dollars to take with a group of strangers in our free time.
And that very fear may well be one of our most important personal and collective growth edges.
Because workplace culture in American needs our help to awaken. When people awaken at work, when we reconnect with our heart, care, integrity, and interconnectedness in our 9-5 lives, good things can’t help but come. Just as with personal growth work, the dissonance between that true heart and our economic , social, political, and cultural systems will become painfully clear. This tension has the power to fuel positive transformation in the way we transact with one another, and begin the much needed journey toward integration, alignment, healing and wholeness in our very wounded, very fractured economic system.
I for one am ready to dedicate my life to this challenge. It’s time to take the training out of the desert, off the meditation cushion, and into the real edges of my day to day. I happen to be an organizational development, leadership, and culture consultant, so I’m well positioned to start bringing the workshop into my work world. I have no excuse to continue living a dual life, so I’ve been coming out of the closet, so to speak, bringing my multidimensional being to the office. And it’s definitely edgy.
And today, I leaned in. I invited my colleagues to become a community of practice. And not just in the traditional organizational learning sense, but in the sangha sense as well. Leading a core team meeting about, of all things, meeting effectiveness, I took my chance. I got real, vulnerable, expressed my heart passion, and called on us to lean into our personal and professional growing edges, with the support of one another. It was a small step in a way – we set intentions and ground rules for how we want to treat and regard ourselves and each other, and went around and shared our personal growing edges and one behavior change we’d like our colleagues to support us with and hold us accountable to. But it was also a huge step for me as a professional acknowledging & integrating this part of my life into my work, and for the group in showing up with each other with real vulnerability, tenderness, and care. It was palpable, it was touching, and it was not something I’m used to experiencing at work.
So today, I’m feeling kind of high. I’m celebrating this small step into a big personal growth edge, and it’s only the beginning.
I want to dedicate my activist, evangelist, and growth junkie energy to making space for the soul in the workplace. I want to be part of cultural and organizational experiments in how we can work together differently – more soulfully, more mindfully, more embodied - and I want to make a difference within the belly of the beautiful beast.
I want to ignite the spark of love for the unknown in business strategy meetings. I want to share Adyashanti, Rumi, David Whyte, and my own poetry with executives. I want to jump on the “innovation” bandwagon sweeping across corporate values lists and I want to help businesses see how getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is now a business imperative. I want to support millennials in continuing to be obstinately demanding and changing business with their call for meaningful work as part of a meaningful life.
And I want to gather all my fellow hybrid growth junkie professional friends, and build an army of work-place light workers, secret and not-so-secret agents, corporate priestesses, strategy shamans, vision keepers, space holders, and all around warriors for positive change.
Who’s with me?
It’s edgy - you know you want it.
Unlike the average bear who sees emotional discomfort and runs for the hills, the personal growth junkie seeks her fix with edges.
We junkies have learned to take the familiar signals of being at an edge - heat rising, belly churning, body shaking, mind screaming in resistance – as cues to lean in and discover new levels of self-awareness in the process. And we have gathered enough data that this risk is usually worth it: we are junkies because we have experienced the pleasure on the other side of the growing pain enough to crave it. The unknown is our drug of choice, and so it’s not uncommon to hear us exclaim such thing as “ooh, this is really uncomfortable, how interesting!” For the growth junkie, fear is fun.
Like many fellow addicts, I’ve done all sorts of workshops, retreats, rituals, and burning man escapades. I’ve come to believe that being truly alive and awake is inherently vulnerable and edgy, and so I’ve learned to trust that shaky-kneed feeling as an access point to awakening.
And like any addict, many of the old thrills have gotten old. Being radically honest or processing lifetimes of trauma in front of a crowd of strangers has begun to feel comfortable. Being naked in front of a crowd is not a nightmare - it’s just no big deal. And after 7 years, many firsts and leading hundreds of others through edge-inducing workshops and rituals, I’m kind of over burning man. At this point, doing anything emotionally risky in a space that has fully permissioned the risk (a standard practice in personal growth workshops) is kind of vanilla.
But, with that somewhat twisted twinkle in my eye, I am happy to report I have a new edge, and it is this: bringing the workshop to work.
See there are two kinds of growth junkies: First, there are those who’ve sort of dropped out of the mainstream work world and just do spirituality for a living (or not… many seem to explore intentional poverty as an edge of choice). This crew - and trust me I've been part of it at times - work trades their way through workshops and strive to one day lead retreats themselves, and all ambition is aimed at the holy grail of enlightenment.
And then there are those of us who live dual lives. The weekend workshop warriors who on Monday go back to work as consultants, scientists, programmers, teachers, managers. We have the growth junkie habit and desire to suffer less and know ourselves more deeply. And we also have professional ambition, a desire to have impact beyond “just” our own expanded consciousness, and/or material world bills to pay and families to feed. Prada by day, Prana by night.
Rarely do these worlds collide.
We may quietly practice mindfulness in our cubicles, but no matter how much we cried in front of our sangha last weekend, we certainly don’t tend to practice emotional vulnerability or acknowledge our scars of childhood wounding in the workplace. We’re not doing WEpractice at work. We are still seeing the workplace as intractably soul-sucking, hopelessly conservative, and most certainly not a place we have the power to change. And even if we do have hope, many of us are still struggling with our fear of losing professional face, and so choose not to take the risks on the clock that we pay thousands of dollars to take with a group of strangers in our free time.
And that very fear may well be one of our most important personal and collective growth edges.
Because workplace culture in American needs our help to awaken. When people awaken at work, when we reconnect with our heart, care, integrity, and interconnectedness in our 9-5 lives, good things can’t help but come. Just as with personal growth work, the dissonance between that true heart and our economic , social, political, and cultural systems will become painfully clear. This tension has the power to fuel positive transformation in the way we transact with one another, and begin the much needed journey toward integration, alignment, healing and wholeness in our very wounded, very fractured economic system.
I for one am ready to dedicate my life to this challenge. It’s time to take the training out of the desert, off the meditation cushion, and into the real edges of my day to day. I happen to be an organizational development, leadership, and culture consultant, so I’m well positioned to start bringing the workshop into my work world. I have no excuse to continue living a dual life, so I’ve been coming out of the closet, so to speak, bringing my multidimensional being to the office. And it’s definitely edgy.
And today, I leaned in. I invited my colleagues to become a community of practice. And not just in the traditional organizational learning sense, but in the sangha sense as well. Leading a core team meeting about, of all things, meeting effectiveness, I took my chance. I got real, vulnerable, expressed my heart passion, and called on us to lean into our personal and professional growing edges, with the support of one another. It was a small step in a way – we set intentions and ground rules for how we want to treat and regard ourselves and each other, and went around and shared our personal growing edges and one behavior change we’d like our colleagues to support us with and hold us accountable to. But it was also a huge step for me as a professional acknowledging & integrating this part of my life into my work, and for the group in showing up with each other with real vulnerability, tenderness, and care. It was palpable, it was touching, and it was not something I’m used to experiencing at work.
So today, I’m feeling kind of high. I’m celebrating this small step into a big personal growth edge, and it’s only the beginning.
I want to dedicate my activist, evangelist, and growth junkie energy to making space for the soul in the workplace. I want to be part of cultural and organizational experiments in how we can work together differently – more soulfully, more mindfully, more embodied - and I want to make a difference within the belly of the beautiful beast.
I want to ignite the spark of love for the unknown in business strategy meetings. I want to share Adyashanti, Rumi, David Whyte, and my own poetry with executives. I want to jump on the “innovation” bandwagon sweeping across corporate values lists and I want to help businesses see how getting comfortable with the uncomfortable is now a business imperative. I want to support millennials in continuing to be obstinately demanding and changing business with their call for meaningful work as part of a meaningful life.
And I want to gather all my fellow hybrid growth junkie professional friends, and build an army of work-place light workers, secret and not-so-secret agents, corporate priestesses, strategy shamans, vision keepers, space holders, and all around warriors for positive change.
Who’s with me?
It’s edgy - you know you want it.