it isn't too late

you just have to do something

Like many people, I have been struggling with the geopolitical atmosphere we’ve found ourselves in this year. I’ve gone through a few weeks of grief, feeling a sense of inevitability arriving here.

I studied World Development in college (I was going to be a political journalist in another life), and during the course, I saw a pattern in the data that I was being taught. At 19 years old, I realised that the golden years my parents had lived through were coming to an end. The pendulum swings back and forth throughout history, and the markers that the pendulum was at a moment of weightlessness were abundantly clear to me. When I spoke to my lecturers and peers about this, they disagreed with my analysis.

The year was 2002; my future university attendance wasn’t going to be free for me as it had been for my lecturers, I had watched live when aeroplanes flew into the tall buildings that housed the heart of modern capitalism the year before, and we were invading the Middle East yet again. The adults around me couldn’t see the writing on the wall, because life was still treating them well and was likely to continue to do so.

I left university in the year of the financial crash. I had watched it coming, listening to the likes of Ray Dalio before he was a main character in a film. I was sat in a small office at my first professional job. My bosses were in shock, and I told them that this had been brewing for years and that I had predicted the month when the bubble would burst and the system would come crashing down. I was being a heartless 25-year-old, basking in the glory of having successfully understood a complex system. One of my bosses humbled me by highlighting that one of our colleagues was due to retire shortly and had just watched his pension disappear.

Around this time, I read Confessions of an Economic Hitman and The Spirit Level. I continued to look for data that would prove me wrong, that didn’t fit into the patterns that had been so obvious to me for the last decade. Instead, it all fitted together, creating a more and more terrifying picture of the future. I joined a political party and became as active as possible. I was interviewed for radio and television. I was the youngest local political party chair for two years running. I ran a referendum campaign across two constituencies.

I became incredibly disillusioned with democracy.

I am the only person I know who wasn’t surprised by the EU referendum vote, and that’s because I was a victim of the exact same strategies in 2011’s forgotten referendum.

I had been shouted at on the street and told that I was trying to undermine democracy and that I was making life worse for everyone.

At 27, I resigned from every political institution I had been part of and vowed never to work with ideological institutions or be on a committee again.

At 41, I’ve taken a seat on a committee again. I sit on the women’s DEI committee at my current employer. We help raise awareness of women's experiences in the workplace, support women who need it, and support men in supporting us.

DEI may be under attack by the elites, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to support each other under the radar by being Good People. As coaches and leaders, we value curiosity and the understanding that leads to. When the experience of one is valued above the experience of others, it harms us all.

There is still time to prevent the pendulum from swinging any further. We have the power to make this the next moment of weightlessness. It will take all of us in a collective will of action to ensure that we don’t all become the most vulnerable in society.

I am you. You are me.

Our actions ripple out and affect everyone else.

As leaders and coaches, we can impact the systems we are part of more than most. It’s never been more important to consider how we can change those systems. Small changes can have huge impacts, so let’s all work to find the small changes we can make that will lead to big resistance.