Living My Life Like It's...Effective

----YOLANDA WEBB----

"AND SO IT GOES"

The "Be Attitudes of Inclusion” ©

I have two loves outside of my family and serving my fellow man. My love of being a makeup artist and my love of photography. The first allows me to see the beauty of color, the beauty behind the mask we all wear, and the beauty we all possess, but which we don’t always know we do.

My photography allows me to see life behind my lens. It allows me to capture the moments in time in our lives. If we could all see the negatives from which we develop, we could create the world we all want.

Combining those two passions has allowed me to indulge both talents and open a business whose narrative was the inclusion and equitable treatment of women of color in the marketplace.

Most of us do strive to develop from the negatives we see in the world today. To see life in all its beauty and create a society that is just and equitable for all.

Part of the issue is that we don’t all use the exact words or create the same labels to get to this just and equitable society.

And words create the life we see around us. Words – the Mystery of Life.

But how do we change the labels or the different narratives we use?

There will always be someone who will have more money, more land, more food, more, more, more. And someone who will always have less money, less land, less food, less.

Knowing this, what word or words can get us to equity, inclusion, and a fair and just society?

Don’t we have enough land, food, and water for everyone? The answer to that is yes. We have enough land, food, and water for every human and every animal on this planet.

So, what’s the problem? Humanity is the problem.

The words we use are filled with scarcity and lack. Our words point to things like “better than, privileged, superior. Words like disenfranchised, marginalized, equity, and inclusion – mean someone is left out. What if we changed our narrative, our words?

I had my recent aha as I studied words and this idea that words form the world we see.

During that time, I said, "I've got it. I know how to make this work!" I believed I’d finally found the key, that absolute answer that I’d been searching for.

I love Jill Scott's song, “Living My Life Like It’s Golden.” During my aha moment, the music was playing loudly in the background. I begin to substitute the word golden for effective.

Living my life like it's effective means I am aware of God's presence within and the peace of mind this truth gives me to live an inclusive, equitable, and fair life.

We talk about equity, diversity, and inclusion of systems, but we need to remember that people make systems. Unfortunately, often when the world calls us to show up as equitable and inclusive people designing equitable and inclusive systems, we abandon the crucial principles that nourish us, that keep us whole, looking through the lens that develops us from the negative to the beauty of the positive. We abandon the language we should be using.

Suppose we use words like disenfranchised, marginalized, minority, majority, equity, diversity, and inclusion to do the work of our humanity. In that case, we have, by default, said that someone or some system is better than others. We have created the world we see!

We are all deserving. In other words, our humanity is no different from someone else's.

When Christ taught the Beatitudes, he literally could have summed it up in two words. “Be Effective.”

Most of us, however, live our entire lives not being effective but affective. And this happens when we allow what happens outside of us to determine our response and what others see in us.

What’s the difference between effective and affective?

In psychology, an affect is described as your emotional response to stimuli. It is an external expression brought about by something outside of you. While effective is something brought about by something internal that will result in a successful conclusion.

The words equity, diversity, and inclusion have created a chasm of taking sides. What if we used the word effective to describe what we are all trying to “be” in the world?

To be effective and the guardians of our inner lives and the outer world we create and see must be our top priority if we want a just, equitable, and inclusive society. To develop inclusive organizations effectively, we must refrain from allowing people, institutions, or historical traditions to speak to the future. We must change the words we use to see the change we want.

Getting to a more equitable and just society first starts as an inner experience. Our internal expression of love, peace, strength, wisdom, and beauty are the primary attributes of effective living. Of an effective narrative.

Love, wisdom, strength, and beauty are the very core of who we are. If we sincerely want a just society, we can have it, but we must be willing to do the work. We must be effective in all we do.

The life and the world we see reflect the life we have already established inside. When we are consciously aware of how effective we are, we will see change in our own lives and the world around us.

Football great Franco Harris once said, “It's not a thing of how many carries (of the football) you have, but were you effective when you did carry the ball?” It doesn’t matter what your title is or how much money you have or don’t have; it matters if you were effective in your role in the world.

Today, as we move closer to the light, we know that we can live our lives like it’s golden or effective; it doesn’t matter how many times we must carry the ball. It matters if we get to the end zone.

Do we have the wisdom, courage, and stamina to endure, overcome and succeed to make the world a better, more effective place for all?

And So It Goes…

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