SYP initiates
Seed Up
+
Top Down
Personal, Social, and Systemic Change
by applying practices from neuroscience, psychology, experiential, systems thinking, and intersectional disciplines.
SYP initiates
Seed Up
+
Top Down
Personal, Social, and Systemic Change
by applying practices from neuroscience, psychology, experiential, systems thinking, and intersectional disciplines.
SYP envisions a re-connected world where:
Cycles and economies of violence, extraction, and exploitation cease.
The systems and rules work for everyone in the same manner.
The Collective and the Means = the Individuals and the Ends.
Legacy boxes of success, purpose + value are newly defined from multi-faceted views.
Everyone has secure, equal + sacred space to experience being human.
And the divides between
Shame, Blame, Guilt, Fear, Silence, Differences, Their Problems, Those People, Them, You
Healing, Forgiveness, Acceptance, Love, Acknowledgment, Commonalities, My Problems, Our People, Us, Me
narrow on the path to we…
To guide and measure our mindset, actions, and results,
we apply these core values as the foundation we serve from.
Rooted in the paradigm that humans are simply part of the natural world — no more and no less than all other parts of our planet — our methods build on and expand from the following beliefs and logic:
We are all equal and connected. We all should have fair, equal access, justice, and equity to live out our existence.
Systems, globally and locally, have been (designed to be) exclusive and are inherently unsustainable for life on earth.
Systems can evolve and be newly designed as inclusive and sustainable.
Each system is the “whole” sum of its human “parts,” all of whom operate with human brains.
Human brains generate very predictable “errors” as they try to keep us alive and safe.
Awareness of — and practice managing — our brains helps create individual, societal, and systemic change.
Radical love, acceptance, honesty, and communication — with ourselves and each other — is imperative to thrive.
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
SYP Coaching + Consulting was born from the ongoing necessity our society has for
strategies to help humanity evolve and move forward.
Our work helps support individuals, groups, and organizations to grow into their unique fullness, more confident in their ability to face the challenges and joys this world offers.
Shift Your Perspective
Although time-tested and well-loved, after the program’s post-9/11 funding loss, it shut down for eight years until our founder teamed with other past participants to revive the life-changing program. With hopes it would still resonate with newer generations, committees of alumni, advisors and curriculum developers resurrected Camp Odyssey and immediately identified some changes.
First to go was the exercise aptly named “The Gauntlet.”
😳
😬
If this sounds like a sensitivity-workshop edition of the Hunger Games (or your nightmares), that’s not not accurate…
Memorable for not great reasons, the exercise was unanimously converted from an aggro, literally-in-your-face, shouting-line of gender-reversed “catcalling” into an intimate, powerfully-quiet circle where folx identifying as males were able to hear femme-identified folx whispering their experiences of being womxn.
Even in the early 90’s, Odyssey developed as an intersectional program and didn’t play the “oppression olympics.” Within the constraints of a week all topics were given time, letting participants explore and understand the connections between and amongst all the systems that perpetuate the “isms.”
Going home with the emotional ties helping to integrate their new knowledge and skills, participants of Camp Odyssey were never the same, never again.
Three decades after first attending Odyssey, our founder’s sharp focus on systemic oppression and intersectionality underpins all of our work as we further evolve that methodology.
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
On top of the Experiential Learning and Non-Violent Communication methods it was founded on, SYP uses a Systems Thinking framework layered in with current and emerging best practices from the Neuroscience, Psychology, Intersectional, Learning, and Change disciplines.
What was once perhaps fringe, experimental, or intuitive
is now known to be strongly evidence-based.
The “magic” of our groups’ quick bonding can be attributed to the myriad of cognitive biases influencing how we experience “Us” and “Them.”
The duration of impact these exercises have can be understood through how our brains imprint learning when emotions are elevated juuust enough.
The shifts in attitude are achievable by leveraging neuroplasticity and biases to engage habit-change mechanisms.
This is great news*, right!? Knowing what we know about brains and human behavior, social change should be easy-peasy, yeah?!!?
Welllll…while we are eternal optimists, we are also realists.
The majority of humans on this earth are living in industrialized communities, but we’ve only been doing so for what is a miniscule, eensy teensy weensy, whiff of a fraction of our history.
↗️ That little yellow dot right there represents about 250 years (ONLY 250 YEARRRRRSSSS people!!!!!) that humans have been luxuriating in our modern world! Whether contrasted to our ancestors’ brain development about 6 million years ago, or when humans took modern form about 200,000 years ago, or any other amounts that various theological beliefs hold, 250 years is anywhere from only .004% to 2.5% of our collective existence!
Out of a 90 year old’s life, that’s only 1.3 days up to about 2yrs & 3mos!
Out of a 30 year old’s life, that’s not even 12 houuursssss……9 months max!!!
Short enough of a time that your parents’ great grandparents would have known their great grandparents!!!!!
Let that sink in…………………………………………………… .
Our individual and collective brains have simply not caught up with the stresses of our modern world.
Our “outdated operating systems” are kiiinda glitching out right now.
The state of the world seeming like a 🆘 🔥 dumpster fire 🔥 🆘 might be exaggerated or real, partisan, pessimism or propaganda: it’s all beside the point.
What’s real to each of our human brains is what we Think and Feel each day.
So even if most of us aren’t #lit-er-ally in immediate danger like our brains are screaming–most of us are feeeeeling the stress.
*Great news does exist though: Our brains are capable of change!
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
Ok, so we can all change our brains, but how does that create systemic change???
While it is true that most systems were made by deceased folx many moons ago, and algorithms are contributing their fair share of fodder for those systems to keep on oppressin’ on…
Systems are simply comprised of people.
And each person has a human brain.
(oppression does not make us laugh of course–
but *The Al Gore Rhythm does EVERY time–thank you Titus Andromedon!!!)
- Are you wondering how you could possibly create change if you’re not the boss?
- Or think there’s really no way the systems can be fixed?
- Maybe this seems like politicized crap and everything’s fine the way it is?
You’re not wrong to wonder those things!
Whether CEOs, Shareholders, Board Members or Management, Operations, Faculty, Employees, Students, Leaders, or Customers, each of our Human Brains are spectacular processing machines but they’re heavily vulnerable to a myriad of “shortcuts” that are literally “doing the most,” hyper-vigilantly scanning for familiar fears even when we aren’t really in danger. They’re so good in fact that we don’t even know what’s happening up there. They filter our views — our windows — and we get to go about our day.
It’s how we’ve survived for centuries and is totally normal, but our collective Negative and Confirmation Biases have created deep pits of embedded group-thinking. On top of that, the Attention Extraction economy exploits and compounds our biases, guaranteeing that we literally (and helplessly!) think that we can’t change things.
“I’m just following the rules.”
“I’m doing what my boss told me.”
“No-one will listen.”
“My vote doesn’t really count.”
“The Board has the final say.”
“Scrolling calms me down.”
“I’ll lose my job so I can’t do anything.”
“My teachers won’t take it to the administration.”
“This. is. just. how. it’s. done.”
Get this though: Our Thoughts Become Reality. No really…it’s not just woo-woo mumbo jumbo, there is serious, extensive scientific evidence (not to mention centuries of practice-based wisdom across myriad philosophies, faiths and cultures) that we do create our own reality stemming from how we think–and therefore feel—about a situation.
Let’s get back to the Systems.
Learning that our individual thoughts and perceptions, and therefore all the systems we interact with, actually can and do — and have been😳🤯😵💫🤦🏽😐— creating our collective realities all along is liberating; there’s possibility in how we can create different outcomes!
Exercising our neuroplasticity causes a ripple effect that strengthens ourselves, our communities, and our systems and may be
the onlya direct, controllable solution in our completely uncontrollable world.
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
However there are no singular solutions.
There is no linchpin.
These systems have been evolving over centuries.
Just as our brains evolved over centuries with only a
radically minuscule fraction of the data we face today.
Exploring the premise that “Thoughts shape Outcomes” exercises cognitive flexibility.
We acknowledge much of the research has been done within narrow Western and gender contexts, and you may or may not subscribe to the idea overall, but using what we do know about our shared neuroscience, simply stretching your organization’s “brain” over these questions will result in new perspectives that light your path into the future:
- In what ways will ROI compound as your teams future-proof with tools and practices that amplify strengths and promote retention (vs merely putting out fires or memorizing what not to say or do)?
- When policies and procedures are written from a position of abundance (instead of deficit), how does that enforce organizational values and support the mission?
- What if the people invested in any given cause had more brain space to create solutions (rather than competing for funding in the current non-profit industrial complex)?
- How does your bottom line evolve when customers see their strength, value, and uniqueness celebrated and reflected authentically? Year-round? In respectful, inclusive ways?
- What does your organization look like as it leads your industry into the future as a flexible, resilient, adaptive force that is successful AND enriches the communities that you, your staff, clients, and stakeholders are a part of?
It’s like Dorothy and her companions seeing the Wizard behind the curtain, and THEN learning they’d had the power alllll along to fulfill their dreams.
It’s clear to us that people–you, me, us, weeeee—WE ARE the Wizards behind the curtains and WE have the power to make change happen! We’re part of the systems whether we’re at the “top” or the “bottom.”
So……………………we can soak our brains in dopamine and
calmly hang out in the poppy fields of blissful distraction…
calmly hang out in the poppy fields of blissful distraction…
— OR —
We can choose to update our operating systems!
When you work with SYP one-on-one for executive coaching, within a group setting to move the mark on your organization’s inclusion goals, or consulting with us to modernize your processes, you can shift systemic thinking as you prepare for the future | now!
These proven, effective practices from Neuroscience, Psychology, and Experiential Learning provide an anchor as you and your organization implement fairly simple tools and techniques to solidify robust, resilient, anti-fragile, and adaptive skills. As your organization Shifts Your Perspective, we’ll be by your side to pull back the curtain on that gray matter and see what your wizard lizard
brains have been up to all these years!
For topics within Diversity, Equity, Justice, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEJAI) work, we strongly believe that in order to create lasting change, it’s imperative to have input and participation from folx who have a stake in any given topic.
We also firmly believe that they–and the invaluable experiential and intellectual property they contribute–should be compensated at market rates.
As such, to employ people representing the gamut of intersectional diversity, our personnel budget would be substantially larger than our current capacity. SYP is a small consulting firm so depending on your group’s needs we contract with people who are personally connected to the topics relevant to your program.
Each customized Group-Work program is developed and/or carried out with teams of topic-stakeholders. Your costs cover market-rate compensation to the folx who contribute to your learning through our programs.
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
Nicole Potter
FounderNeuroscience is my religion.
Systems Thinking is my love language.
Spawned by hippies of Siletz, Tarheel + Country roots, those beginnings formed a clear path that to this day influences how I see myself and my life’s work as a Coach + Consultant.
My inner social justice nerd rose up at fifteen at Camp Odyssey: it’s an experiential program focused on Systemic Oppression and I fiercely believe it holds some magical* keys to helping people shift their perspectives! Odyssey heavily informed the SYP Methodology core, and continues to impact how my work evolves with and for each client.
Systems Thinking became the lens through which I see the world and guides how I “clean my own windows.” No matter how long we’ve been “doing our work,” we’re all subject to concepts, values, and processes that cause internalized and unconscious biases and patterns.
Mine pop up often as colorism-tainted “imposter” thoughts that I shouldn’t be vocal because–even though I’m a registered Tribal member—I also benefit from white privilege.
During an antithetical detour in the Fashion, Beauty + Media Industries, my time in NY working as a makeup artist jetted me off to countries and continents that my younger rural self only dreamed of. I got to test out my systemic views “in the wild” so to speak and, although that brought some harsh wake-up calls, it also allowed me to experience first-hand what my earlier exposure had begun teaching me: that all over the world, people are just people.
We all want and need the SAME. BASIC. HUMAN. things:
Well-Being. Connection. Self-Expression.
Returning full time to the systemic work, I find it nearly impossible now to see our “divisions” as anything other than just grease to keep the systems running: that.jig.is.UP! Aside from hopefully helping to save humanity🤣😬😳🤞🏽🙏🏽, the upside is that this work is *NOT magic, it’s science! For instance, when humans interact personally with those different from Us, we increase positive views of Them, which engages our brains’ in-group biases. I believe that leveraging the commonalities our human brains share is the (mysterious but not magical) key in both internal and external change!
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
When the pandemic sat us down for a global time-out, the permanent closure of my spa became imminent. Facing no income, severe debt, and a rapidly deteriorating domestic relationship, I enlisted a dear friend to help me narrow my career path. I showed her a 22-point chart📊🙄 of options I could see myself pivoting to. Long story short, she very sweetly and firmly got me to see that my main area of interest was the one I’d actually written the smallest, almost as an afterthought…🤦🏽♀️
This tiny example perfectly illustrates how our brains are really in the drivers’ seat, even when it’s not in our desired interest. My brain had dismissed my dream option because brains are designed to maintain homeostasis and survive, they haven’t had much practice helping us thrive. Me doing what I deeply love and am passionate about presents a lot of risk to my brain so instead, it goes to work keeping me “safe:”
Through my decades of trying to “fix myself” from childhood and intergenerational traumas, I’d already been practicing tools from the “Thought Work” world, which includes Cognitive Behavioral and Acceptance and Commitment Therapies (respectively “CBT” and “ACT”), as well as Somatics, meditation and Embodied Cognition practices. These all helped me understand how Thoughts, Feelings, Behaviors and Outcomes interrelate and function within me. Building on that self-fixit journey, I was naturally drawn to the work of Stefanie Faye, Simone Seol, David Bedrick, and Kara Loewentheil, all of whom widely share clear, easy-to-use tools that can be used by anyone working on self-healing. Pushed to what I thought were my limits during the pandemic–as many others felt–I dove in, practicing and applying all of these complimentary methods at an urgent pace 😳⏳. Faster than I ever thought possible, I started to see tangible, compounding, daily improvements in my life!
Since these tools stacked on top of my prior psychology and neuroscience practices, my brain quickly wrapped around the concepts in my personal life and then I immediately integrated them into my work and existing methodology.
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
Perhaps like Neo entering the Matrix, or Alice in Wonderland, what I continue to learn about human behavior and neuroscience are realities I can’t unknow.
Knowing how brains operate on the back end beyond our (conscious) scope of control, yet in contrast to experiencing my own neuroplasticity, I keep landing in the same place:
Learning to work with our brains to optimize and moderate our experience of life is
the onlya direct, controllable solution in a completely uncontrollable world.
I welcome you to pay me millions of dollars to change my mind about this😉, but I firmly believe that we won’t see meaningful change in the world unless we can–individually and as a species–start to utilize and optimize our human brains more than we are currently.
(For those already in the know about Thought Work, yes, ⇧ those ⇧ are all optional thoughts…I’m totally fine with them.)
To be clear. I am not a neuroscientist or psychologist, or any other -ist really except for a humanist(ic) psychology disciple!
This is my lay-person, trauma-survivor, autodidact perspective that I’ve adapted over decades of applying these disciplines in the search for healing.
I just thought one day I’d “fix” myself and everything’d be hunky-dory! What I didn’t expect to learn was that humans can’t be “fixed.”
Because there is no “perfect.”
Every person on this planet has flaws and foibles and there is no final destination (well, except the final final one😳) where we aren’t subjected to the pains of being a human. I don’t think I’m alone in having thought or hoped “once I’m at (xyz point), I’ll just be happy and life’ll be great!!!”
Opposite of what we are to believe from the “Good Vibes Only” corner of the internet🤮, most philosophies, faiths, myths, teachings and tales have also concluded that being human will always involve comfortable and uncomfortable experiences. Being conscious and stepping into the drivers’ seat, choosing what we think about life, how we want to show up in this world, what meaning we find, what we decide to do in the face of the 💩 life offers us……thaaat is where we can find power and shine our lights from!
#GoodVibesOnly
#Real _Vibes _ Always
Jump to: Seeds of Systems Thinking | Thought Work | Systemic Change | SYP
Will the world change because I learned (am still learning) how to manage my mind? I don’t know, really...
I do know that I AM a living example of how neuroplasticity helps me create day-to-day, internal,
on-demand relief and agency over how I experience what the world puts in front of me.That relief and empowerment allows me to choose exactly how I spend my time, vs getting caught up in whatever happened that day.
Would you like more brain space to experience that same relief?
I passionately believe that these tools can help more and more people just like you and me to create that same shift and free up brain space. I’m using mine to spend the rest of my days helping people liberate themselves from their default patterns!
When our brains open up space to create | change, and we carry those shifts into our schools, workplaces, institutions, and beyond, I have faith, love and hope that when you Shift Your Perspective, the whole world is a bit more aligned……
Our brains change constantly whether we want them to or not.
I’m living proof those changes don’t have to just “happen.“
YOU have your own superpower to CHOOSE HOW you change.
Humans can glean as much wisdom in how the past is viewed, as we can find comfort in sitting with the present, as we can find hope in the future by practicing change. (Spoiler alert: it’s all in our brains!!!).
Reflecting on the past from a new perspective simply means we get to choose what we bring with us and what we leave behind.
As we honor some of our teachers and supporters that helped shape us, we hope you find ways to embrace Shifting Your Perspective as much as we do!
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To accept and explore dissonance
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To think critically when faced with additional views
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To welcome shifting ideas
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To be kind when changing minds
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NOTE: we’re having a bit of technical challenge getting our acknowledgments formatted properly.
Stay tuned for the love fest when we get it sorted!
