- Discovering our purpose with joy at the center
- Maintaining an asset-based perspective, and
- How cultivating joy is an act of resistance and a source of resilience.
In stressful and uncertain times, we don’t often emphasize joy. But this week, Thaddeus Miles joined us to talk about joy as an act of resistance, a way of claiming our agency, and a source of resilience.
Thaddeus Miles, the founder of HoodFit, and organization that is dedicated to building physical, spiritual, financial, and mental fitness in the predominantly minority communities in Boston; the founder of the only 5k that runs through the streets of Roxbury; and he is the host of an upcoming podcast on Black Joy.
We talked about
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Transcript
Pieta Blakely:
In a stressful year full of uncertainty and change, one thing we haven't spent a lot of time thinking about might be joy. So today we are going to be talking about joy as a source of personal and community resilience, wellbeing, strength, and agency. Welcome to Coffee Time with Masterminds. This is a 30 minute conversation with the leaders of mission-based organizations about leading through challenging times. I'm joined today by my cohosts Cynthia and Rebecca. Good morning.
Cynthia Rojas:
Hi, how are you?
Pieta Blakely:
Good.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Good morning. How are you today?
Pieta Blakely:
Excellent.
Cynthia Rojas:
Hi Rebecca. I'm Cynthia Rojas and I am the founder and principal of To Your Growth.
Rebecca Tuttle:
I'm Rebecca Tuttle and I'm the founder and creator of Grant Write Now in Grant Writing for Good.
Cynthia Rojas:
Hey, [inaudible 00:00:56].
Pieta Blakely:
And I'm Pieta Blakely, I am the founder and principal of Blakely consulting.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yay.
Pieta Blakely:
It's been a stressful, uncertain, unsettling year. And in stressful and uncertain times, we don't always think about joy. So Thaddeus Miles is joining us today to talk about joy as an act of resistance, a way of claiming our agency, and a source of resilience. Thaddeus committed to ensuring that the most underserved communities and members of our cities have genuine opportunities for success and achievement. Thaddeus is the founder of HoodFit, a program that focuses on physical, spiritual, financial, and mental fitness in the communities of color in Boston. He's the founder of the only 5K run through the streets of Roxbury. He's the host of an upcoming podcast on black joy. He sits on multiple nonprofit boards. He directs the community services program at MassHousing. He's a recipient of the Embracing the Legacy award from the John F. Kennedy Action Corps, and he's a veteran, a father and a grandfather and an artist, and we are so happy, Thaddeus, that you made time to join us today.
Thaddeus Miles:
Thank you. I am so happy to be here. It is a pleasure. I watch your show every Friday and it's a pleasure to actually be part of it.
Pieta Blakely:
Well it's great to have you. So Thaddeus, tell us briefly, what does joy mean to you?
Rebecca Tuttle:
So joy for me is a seed that was implanted in us before we actually arrived on this Earth. It is a seed that needs to be nourished to give us hope, opportunity, and optimism. Joy is also our power. It is how we get our voice. And it's usually the first thing that people want to take from us is your joy. And without joy it's too easy to dive into your identity of the negative aspect of your challenges. It's sort of like, "Look at me, I've been hurt," versus "Look at me, I've been healed." And through joy, it's starting to look at how you've been healed, how you've come through the challenges of life, and how do you move forward.
Cynthia Rojas:
So what you're saying, Thaddeus, and this is important, is that it's inside of us. It's not something... I watched Oprah for many years and she used to distinguish between happiness and joy. Happiness is an external factor influencing how you feel, joy comes from within. Is that what-
Thaddeus Miles:
Exactly. Joy to me is a God-given gift that allows us to fulfill our purpose in life. Each one of us are born with something unique to do that only we can do, and if we don't do it, then it won't be done. And I believe in order for us to be able to do that, it needs to be driven through joy, not through other aspects of life. And joy is deep within the soul. It nourishes every cell, every micro cell, however you want to define it, that's in our body.
Pieta Blakely:
So tell us a little bit about what that means in an organization, in a community. How does it mean to work from joy?
Thaddeus Miles:
So I think the first thing that I always do, and especially when it comes to working in communities that are under-resourced, underserved, and viewed in certain ways, and how do we think about what that looks like? So I come at it from a leader's perspective, and at the same time a follower. So I like to look at... Am I looking at this through an eye of pity, where I'm acknowledging the pain? Am I looking at it through sympathy, where I care about your suffering? Am I looking at it through empathy, where I feel you're suffering? In order to get to compassion, I want to relieve your suffering. So for me, it's important to be able to address your own issues, to be able to focus on working with the community, what the issues are, and to be able to come to solutions and be able to impact those solutions and have sustainable impact.
Rebecca Tuttle:
We have some comments. Can we [crosstalk 00:05:27]. We have a lot of people watching today. Turahn says, "Good to see this whole crew." Yes it is.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yay, Turahn.
Thaddeus Miles:
Hey brother. Good to see you, king.
Rebecca Tuttle:
There are so many comments. Mayra says, "Joy's deep within the soul". Renee says, "Yes, joy is the place to be." So Mayra and Renee, welcome to the show this morning. If you're joining us from another place around the world, let us know where you're from, pop in the chat. We'd love to talk joy with you today.
Cynthia Rojas:
So Thaddeus, I tend to be an optimist... I tend to be really... I try to get in tune with my sense of joy, distinguish happiness. And sometimes that's not appreciated because it looks like... It can feel disrespectful to other people. We also tend to, as humans, wallow in... I think you mentioned it, self pity or what's happening. People call it bad luck and they think, "If there was no such thing as bad luck, I would have no luck." So what do you say to people who are in that space, or organizations that are in that space who can't see the light?
Thaddeus Miles:
That to me is about your mindset. When you start to look at your mindset. The mindset has a big impact on how we perceive ourselves and ultimately how successful we can become. It's sort of like in life, what's the saying, that 10% of what happens to you... You can control 10% of what happens to you, but 90% is how you react. And life is 10% is what happens, and 90% is how you react. And if we can learn to view obstacles as learning opportunities instead of unbearable problems, then we can more adapt to find the solutions. But I also think that we have to start to figure out what does resilience look like? And to understand that resilience is a lifelong project. Resilience is the ability to grapple with life and emerge stronger and better for it. And it's learning something, not just bouncing back.
So it's really being able to have people really think about their mindset. It is also to be able to tap into their resilience, but at the same time, meet them where they're at. And to be able to explain the difference of happiness. Happiness to me is I play the lottery for a dollar and I win $50. I'm happy about it, but that's not really joy. But there's also meeting people where they're at and how you're responding to them. So the same thing that I talked about earlier of how I view other folks of pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion. I also have to look at myself, where am I coming from? Am I dealing with it because I have pity for myself? Am I looking at it from a perspective of pity withinside of me because it's triggered something and I'm thinking I'm in compassion, but I'm really dealing with my own issue of trauma?
So being able to walk through your own shadows. We all have our shadows and our darkness that we have to deal with everyday, but it's really getting help and moving forward with that and being self acceptance. And I think the other thing is really for me, is naming... A lot of people haven't named their truth, and accepting and forgiving yourself and having compassion for yourself, which leads to self love. So naming your truth, understanding your North star and how to get there is extremely important when we start to think about joy and how to move through it. But the last thing I was saying is asking for help, and being able to talk to people and have real conversations. That network. So like for me, when I'm challenged around something, I can call Ron. I can call pastor Odom. I can call other brothers to really acknowledge and affirm me, even though I may be going through something as a father and feel like I failed, which is a real scenario for me that I failed in certain parts.
But having people that come in to affirm that I am a good father, that I have done everything that I could do, that I have taken those steps from other men or from other women is a way of addressing some of those challenges that we're facing. And I think as people of color, we're facing the micro aggressions, the micro invalidations, and the micro assaults on a daily basis, those small cuts would build up to start for us to invalidate our own internal selves. But it goes back to what I was saying earlier. That without joy and putting joy in your space, that it's very easy to live in your pain and to live as a victim instead of a person that's been healed. And when you do that, that's the way that you project your pain onto others and you're not really helping the community heal and to move forward. Doesn't mean that you don't have winning moments, but at that point it's not sustainable. And what we need in this time an on is sustainable power, voice, vision, creativity, and innovation.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Coming to truth with that, as you're saying, name your truth, that's really difficult, but I think that once you get to the truth, they say the truth will set you free. That could be a pivotal moment. And I'm not talking about everyone's pivoting in the pandemic. I mean, that could be a pivotal moment for an organization who's struggling with their team dynamics. If you're bringing baggage to the job every day or to the organization every day, and it's in crisis, you have to have people on the team that help you through that, just as you're saying, so that it can crack that in people.
Cynthia Rojas:
I think that now that... It feels... God I hope I don't jinx us. But it feels like we're coming to an end. There's a vaccine at the end of the tunnel, we can almost touch it. It's almost there. So I'm still talking to leaders of nonprofit organizations, and we all are, who are very stressed out, who are still [inaudible 00:12:14], who are still dealing with the negative impact. But I wonder if once we get the vaccine and there's this new normal and this is behind us, would we have missed the opportunity to feel joy even in these moments? So Rebecca talks about this all the time. Well, off-camera, about what this time has meant to her and [inaudible 00:12:42] able to share time with her family. Even in the craziest of pandemics and she's been in her home for eight months, she still experiences an enormous amount of joy through all of this pain, and it feels like, Thaddeus, that's what you're talking about. Letting that come out from inside of you.
Thaddeus Miles:
Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at... You find that everybody's got a commercial about joy now. [inaudible 00:13:08]. It's that season. But I think the other thing that we fail to do sometimes is to align our work to passion. And finding out how all the big picture stuff integrates into your daily life isn't easy. But there's also nothing like the feeling of unmet potential and regret that we were too scared to go after it. So there's something about that, you know what I mean, and joy will allow us to... To me, or for me, let me speak for me, has allowed me to be able to have my foresense cents and not let fear be the determining factor of how I move forward. And to be able to be able to accept failure as a lesson learned that I needed to learn in order to move forward to be successful in that next step.
I find that's really the challenge, but I agree with you. I was on a group speaking to a group of young people and another panelist, I had to ask her a question, and I'm like, "How have you found your joy through the three pandemics that we're dealing with? We're dealing with three different levels of issues. And she's like, "You know what, that's a good question, and I'm starting to sing songs with my daughter. We're actually eating together. We're having different conversations. We're going outside." And she's like, "I've been thinking about all of the challenges that I've been facing through this and not really that the amount of time I've had with my family has just been amazing. That has lifted me and helped me move through it." So it's very easy to have those short moments that we forget and we walk by, because we have that good moment... We're having a great conversation here, then at 11:05 all hell breaks loose. [crosstalk 00:15:17]. And we forget about it.
Pieta Blakely:
One of the things that we've discovered over and over through... Both in our personal lives and through talking to different non-profit leaders over the last nine months now, I think, is people have less bandwidth. There's a certain amount of stress. There's a certain amount of energy that living through multiple pandemics is taking. So people don't have time for extra stuff. And this is true on the personal level and the organizational level. And in a way it's a gift because people and organizations are coming to their one most fundamental thing, and asking what are our values and how do we serve and focusing on that. It's a real opportunity for strength.
Thaddeus Miles:
So I would challenge you on that. I would say that people have more driving grit than they know. So for me, the very act of having goals to work towards builds resilience. And if you've ever had the pleasure of achieving for our goals, you know a lot of the pleasure that that brings. But there's also this thing that achievers who are successful versus those who aren't, it's not based on creativity, innovation, talent, but rather on their persistence. So I think when we started to think about time and we think about other components, I really started to think about joy allowing us to tap deeper into our drive and to tap deeper into our grit, which helps build our resilience to be able to move forward and accomplish some of those goals and to be able to modify some of those time concerns that we have and some of those things that sometimes seem overwhelming that we actually achieve.
Cynthia Rojas:
I had a question and it just left my mind, sorry. Oh, you mentioned early on that joy is where our power lies. I've never heard of joy being associated to power. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Thaddeus Miles:
Yeah, I think Ayanna Pressley always talks about how joy is the true resilience and how we build upon that to be able to move forward. So for me, when you are struggling in a pity mode or a sympathy mode around other things, around yourself, it weakens your voice. It doesn't allow you to speak truth to power. But when you're... How do I say it? When you're filled with the spirit of joy, those things that are outside noise have a tendency to fade away differently. And it allows you to really be able to drive into... I go back to understanding your purpose, aligning your work and your passion, to be able to dive into your grit a little bit differently, and to be able to name your truth. But when you're always searching and you're always back in that aspect of pain, then it's really hard to move from pain to truth to power.
So it's sort of convoluted to talk about in a certain way, but it's really around joy is what gives you voice, gives you opportunity, gives you hope, give you drives, that gives you optimism, and that leads to the building upon your faith. And having faith that what it is that you believe, what your North star is, and what you believe your purpose is will be accomplished. I'm a believer, I'm a big believer in... If I'm already thinking about things that I can accomplish in my lifetime, then I'm thinking too small. I need to be thinking about things that my son and my grandson can accomplish. And to be able to drive what it is I want to do so that I'm living through them, because I believe as a photographer, I need to speak through the lens of the camera, but also give voice to my ancestors. Because my ancestors drove through and survived in order for me to speak for them. Those that aren't here and can't speak for themselves.
And also I would say that when we think about slavery, as a black man, I don't know how they got through it without joy. And how they used to be punished because of joy. So them singing, them rejoicing, them being able to move forward with joy. And when I think about... When you listen to any of the great speeches by the great civil rights activists, all of them have a compassion and talk about joy. And I think for us to be able to think about life, we can't move through life without having compassion for others and compassion for ourself.
Cynthia Rojas:
And that's key, yeah. Compassion for yourself.
Thaddeus Miles:
And there's no way to get that if you don't have joy and if you can't experience joy. So that's what I mean by joy being our power.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Yeah, but that's an example of it being within, because you can't take away from me or us what's deeply rooted in here, your belief. You can try to inflict negativity upon me, but what's in here, it's what you express out. It reminds me of the saying, when you hear people say, "Well, you brought it upon yourself," and you don't bring the incident or the hurt or the pain upon yourself. You have the power within to respond, just as you're saying. You could either respond from the negative or you could respond from what's deep within. I'm a firm believer in how you portray yourself as something that's inside of you. So everything you're saying is just resonating within my soul.
Cynthia Rojas:
[crosstalk 00:21:37] Rebecca, you know how to experience joy. From the very moment that I met you, I can feel it... I mean, if you sit next to Rebecca, you feel her joy. Every angle perspective that she takes is really about compassion for the other and compassion for herself, and her finding the love and everything she does. I mean, she's an example. Thaddeus you could take her around the country [crosstalk 00:22:07] this is what joy looks like. [crosstalk 00:22:11].
Pieta Blakely:
Bring back some of the comments.
Rebecca Tuttle:
I was going to do that next. Thank you, Cynthia. That's so kind of you.
Thaddeus Miles:
Yeah, but that's real though because we feel that energy. For me, you can feel that negative energy when you walk in the room for somebody that's just struggling and wants to bring conflict. But you can also feel that other energy from that person that's just there full of love and joy, and is looking forward towards that opportunity. And that kind of work mate that you come in that's mad every day. Joy is not this thing where... I'm super happy and dancing all the time. But joy is also a stillness and a calmness that simmers and allows you to rise above and to be able to take that moment before you respond. Happiness is all of that. What's happening. You know what I mean.
Pieta Blakely:
One of the things that we talked about early on was managing in a time of crisis, but not from a place of crisis. So maybe the opposite is from a place of joy.
Thaddeus Miles:
That's important, and I think that's why I always try to look at... Going back to am I looking at something from a place of pity, sympathy, empathy, or compassion? And that pity and compassion can always look the same sometimes if you're not looking at is this triggering me? Because I've been in meetings where I've been triggered and I act out, and I say something that I shouldn't have said about whatever's happening, or I have made the decision because I haven't really looked at myself. Because some of the stuff is triggering me. I grew up in a single mom, three kids, moved several times, but all of us went off to college. All of us are doing well. So I could either take this point of growing up and getting free lunch being my identity, or that I lived through that, I learned through that, I built my resilience through those particular issues, and now I'm able to tap into that and to be able to do something for somebody else and give my mom her flowers while she's still alive. That's the challenge.
Cynthia Rojas:
I love that. Rebecca, do we want to go to comments?
Rebecca Tuttle:
Yeah, but can I ask a question Thaddeus, because you brought up a great point, and Cynthia's been talking about this a lot with a change is hard. There's a lot of emotion behind it. So if you go into that meeting with that energy that maybe isn't the most favorable, what do you do after that? Because it affects the whole meeting. So what do you do? Because right now there's a lot of people going into meetings like that because there's so much crises all around us.
Thaddeus Miles:
Yeah, yeah. It's hard. But I think it's one of those things where when I go into a meeting and I'm feeling some type of way, I decide to just sit and listen and that I'm not going to speak until I'm prepared, until I've actually worked through what it is that's challenging me. Sometimes it has nothing to do with that meeting. It could just be my son got on my nerves that day because he called me and asked me for something that he should have been able to do his damn self. [crosstalk 00:25:46]. But you know what I mean? But I also think it's the people in the meeting recognizing that there may be something and taking some time to really dig into what's going on because we don't know what's happening in other people's lives. So what I like about my team at MassHousing is we're honest and we call each other out. So I always try to have one of them in the meeting with me, or at least all of us connected, because when I've had...
I've had some issues where I've really had to struggle because I've had some crises... I'll say my great nephew died at three years old from a gunshot wound. So after that I was going through meetings and I was struggling. But being those positions, we still got to go through it, and we try to put this mask on that we're not hurting. So even though I wasn't as close to him, I still have a grandson that's three years old. So every time I look at my grandson, I was working through that. But my team would call me out and say, "Thaddeus, we just need you to turn your camera off and breathe a little bit." I get that chat and then come back on. I think that's the hard part. Having somebody with you that can hold you accountable, but taking the time to listen and knowing yourself enough to sometimes just be quiet.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Turahn, we have a lot of comments, I think it would be great to honor them if you don't mind. My apologies for covering you, Thaddeus. Turahn says, "Surprisingly less bandwidth. At the beginning of the pandemic time was shifted in dramatic. Was that... Sifted the essential for non-essential matters. But the essential hit us at a scale that dominates a lot of time and certainly overwhelmed our psyches in dramatic ways." That it's so true.
Thaddeus Miles:
That's definitely a wise statement.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Mayra says, "Yes, she's filled with joy is the key to allowing us to define our purpose and that will 99% allow us to align our journey in this world." Absolutely.
Cynthia Rojas:
So true. So true.
Rebecca Tuttle:
Ron says, "Moving forward in joy. Count it all joy." The trying of your faith, absolutely. Working with patients. Renee has a comment. Renee says, "Unspeakable joy is beyond the vision of one, but the destiny of many. Thank you for use to view joy through so many lenses." Oh thank you for us, she says, to view joy through so many lenses. Absolutely. This is really a refreshing conversation we're having, and Pieta talks a lot about failing forward, and I think a lot of your responses today, Thaddeus, are showing us that it's okay to fail forward. And I wonder, often, whenever I'm faced with a challenge, I wonder who am I really afraid of? The people that I would present this new thing that I'm working on to, or this next step that I would take? Am I afraid of their response, or am I afraid for myself, my own internal fears? And I suspect from what you're saying today, it's probably more internal than external.
Thaddeus Miles:
When I look at it for myself as our internal. I've been through a lot in my life and those challenges have only made me stronger. But even when it comes to my... If I just speak towards my photography, I'm like... Talking to this person. I tried to talk myself out of doing certain things. Whether it's taking the job, whether it's doing a solo exhibit, I'm like, "Well, who am I?" So all of those aspects of the challenges of my own self-determination and being able to... We wear masks in many different roles consistently within our positions. But in my age, being able to pull a lot of those masks off and just be authentically me, be authentically black as who I am, and be comfortable in my skin and be comfortable with who I am, be comfortable with past that's led me to where I am now, and to be able to speak on my challenges.
I have one tattoo, and my one tattoo says "undefeated," because I believe that I've never lost, I've only learned. And learning has really put me into the position that I'm in now to be able to help others and to be able to help them move through these three pandemics, which also have another three pandemics within them, to be able to move forward. So I'm just grateful that I've been able to have that sea of joy nourish at the same time as I've gone through challenges, whether that be trauma, drama, or however we want to define those and to be able to do some shadow work to remove those things from my system, but to set them in their proper place in my life.
Cynthia Rojas:
So I do have one pressing question. We're a little bit over time. But for those people who want to begin to exercise, or to try to bring or feel more joy, what might be an exercise that they can do to help them exercise that joy muscle that we have inside of us?
Thaddeus Miles:
I believe in mindfulness. So I believe in meditation. I'm a big Walker, not a big runner. I believe getting outside... I'm also a big component of music, listening to certain music. Music brings emotion, just like smell. So you got to be careful what music it is. One of the first questions I asked about my podcasts as I'm building the podcast is give me three songs that bring you joy and tell me why. So it's those things that are connected to us that we can do in isolation, because I think sometimes we get uncomfortable in isolation and figuring out we can only get joy from something else. But the reality is we can get joy for ourself. It's setting small goals and achieving those goals are also a thing, for me, that brings you joy, because that helps you build your resilience and get to the [crosstalk 00:32:38] of who you are.
Cynthia Rojas:
You thank you, Thaddeus. Thank you.
Pieta Blakely:
So Cynthia, what's your big takeaway?
Cynthia Rojas:
Oh my God, I have so much. [inaudible 00:32:49], for me, in the very beginning when Thaddeus said joy is where your power lies. I've never looked at it that way, and that I'm taking away. So thank you. Thank you, Thaddeus. Rebecca?
Pieta Blakely:
[crosstalk 00:33:02] Rebecca.
Rebecca Tuttle:
I really like what you said about who am I? Putting yourself out there on display. I think that's a scary thing to do, but once you do that, you could look around the room and say, "Wow, who am I?" It's almost an epiphany for yourself. So I love that. I love that. Figuring out who you are by putting yourself out there.
Cynthia Rojas:
Pieta, how about you? What's your takeaway?
Pieta Blakely:
The connection between joy and purpose.
Cynthia Rojas:
Oh yeah.
Pieta Blakely:
That maintaining joy is maintaining centeredness and keeping my eye on long term goals. So folks who are joining us online, please put your takeaways in the comments.
Cynthia Rojas:
And Thaddeus, is there anything you want everyone to take away?
Thaddeus Miles:
I'm going to go back to something I said before is naming your truth, accepting and forgiving yourself and having compassion for yourself is self-love.
Cynthia Rojas:
Nice. That's where joy comes from. Thaddeus [crosstalk 00:34:11]-
Rebecca Tuttle:
I know we're ending. Can I read these ending comments? They're so [crosstalk 00:34:16]. Really, really quick. Ron says, "Undefeated! I've never lost, I've only learned." And Renee says, "Thank you Thaddeus Miles for allowing yourself to be used in such a positive manner for so many." That's a great comment, Renee. Thank you.
Thaddeus Miles:
Thank you, Renee.
Cynthia Rojas:
All right, well thank you everyone.
Pieta Blakely:
Thank you so much, Thaddeus.
Thaddeus Miles:
Thank you. Everybody have a great weekend.
Cynthia Rojas:
Yes, bye.
Thaddeus Miles:
Happy holidays.
Cynthia Rojas:
Happy holidays.