Sport science for social change
How activists can feel better, change better and live better, especially under stress.
Rewiring our activist minds
We have been testing some new hope-based tools to use when things feel dark. You can use them as motivation to act or just mentally to get through the day.
We tested these tools for the first time last week at our Rewire your Mind Incubator with Unhack Democracy. We hope changemakers can use them to feel more resilient but also more creative and effective.
What we can learn from sport science: composure makes for better strategy
There is something very interesting happening in the world of sport. What used to be a space for being tough and macho is becoming incredibly scientific and sophisticated. Instead of trying to trigger “primitive” feelings like anger and aggression, sports people seek calm and composure to maximise performance.
The new captain of the Irish rugby team has an MA in advanced neuroscience. The team are trained to do breathwork during rugby matches to ensure split-second, effective decision-making under pressure. They also use it to make sure people work together, and that they do not let individual mistakes affect the rest of their game - just like activists need to be able to do in their work.
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Sports people see the benefit of staying calm under pressure: for example, when they need to perform at their best, they focus not on their weaknesses and past failures, but on what they are good at.
While sportspeople use these tools to “perform” better, in social change we can use them to ensure we act in line with values like empathy, compassion, listening to others, care and self-care etc. The greater the political danger, the greater the need for calm and composed, long-term political strategy.
Three new exercises to train the hope muscle
1. How we feel: Self-awareness
We often try to get through trauma and stress by “being tough”, but that risks making us more rigid and overwhelmed by fear of failure. There is another way: and if people in the military and sports are redefining toughness as openness and vulnerability, so can we. The first step is just to note what we are feeling right now, and see if we can take greater control over how we feel.
Just thinking about and being mindful about how we feel starts to activate our “upstairs” reflective brain. As Steve Magness writes: ”When we name something we take back control”. A sense of control - that we have a choice - helps us persevere and think clearly so that we better respond to the situation.
Try this:
Step one. Right down the emotions you feel right now on the left hand side of the page. You can also be more specific: what emotions do you feel when you think of politics and the political situation in your country.
Step two. Write down opposite or alternative feelings on the right-hand side of the page.
Step three. Circle the feelings that you most want to feel. Now we can start to build strategies around those, and identify the kinds of thoughts and actions that nurture those feelings.
2. How we think: Self-talk, the story we tell ourselves about the world
Our values can help us get through challenges.
Whatever we are doing in life, we usually have an internal narrative about what we are doing, why we are doing it and how it’s going. There’s the positive kind of self-talk, where we encourage ourselves: “You can do it!” or “don’t give up!” Then there’s the doubt, the imposter syndrome: “This is not working” or “people hate this.””
I myself have to constantly wary of my own negative mindset. When I first started running, my brain told me to just curl up in a ball mid-race. I would always make excuses for slowing down, and would even start composing a social media post in my head mid-race explaining why I didn’t perform well. I spent years trying to find the right self-talk to keep me running to the best of my potential.
The same thing happens to us as activists. Have you ever heard a voice in your head telling yourself that your work is meaningless, that making change is too hard?
But we can prepare for these negative thoughts that threaten to derail us. We can train ourselves to stay on track with prepared positive thoughts that keep us focused on what motivates us to work for social change in the first place.
Sports science provides strong evidence that self-talk is an effective way to boost performance. Indeed, sports writer Alex Hutchinson wrote a book about all the various (legal) tools and tricks endurance athletes use to improve their performance, from special drinks to training high up in the mountains. The one with the most proven impact: self-talk! (links to all the research here)
Aerodynamics engineer (and very fast cyclist) Dan Bigham advises that self-talk should be positive and actionable: it has to be something we can actually do!
Try this:
Step one. Reframe your own story: What is the story you are telling yourself about your social change work? Write down the thoughts that come to your mind.
Step two. Put the negative or demotivating thoughts on the left of the page.
Step three. Now write down opposite or counter thoughts on the right. So, if you wrote: “I messed up on this campaign”, also write down what you did right.
Step four. Now turn what you have on the right into a statement that defines your work. “I am an activist who…”. e.g. “I show up for my colleagues”, “I listen to the people I work with.”
Step five. Try using this statement to stay motivated and focused. If it works, train yourself to use it when negative thoughts creep in. Self-talk takes practice - day-in, day-out.
We just tested this exercise at our Rewire Your Mind workshop last week. Participants developed self-talk like “you’ve done this already: you can do it again” and “Just show up”.
We can turn this into “movement self-talk”: ways of thinking to spread throughout our movements to keep us all motivated and focused on our goals.
If you try these out, please let us know how they went and share your own self-talk.
3. How we act: Goal-setting, visualization and episodic simulation
Imagine yourself making the change happen. When you visualize something, it is more likely to happen.
Footballers may not sound like intellectuals when they give interviews, but the best ones use sophisticated visualization techniques to help them score wonder goals.
If we want social change to happen, we need to imagine what that change looks like. Imagining the change makes us more likely to change our actual behaviour. It motivates us to work harder to achieve the goal, and creates connections between people who share the goal - which is essential for movement-building.
Good goal-setting makes us more likely to carry out action aimed at achieving our goal. It also protects us against burnout. If we’re working towards vague change goals, nothing we achieve ever feels like it's “enough”. Yes, we passed a new law, but it was watered down and the government has yet to implement it. This constant “yes, but”, or “good step, but so much more to do” demotivates both our supporters - and ourselves.
Using episodic simulation, we can imagine ourselves carrying out an action in order to make us more likely to actually do it. What if we practiced this as movements, visualizing how we hope to see our supporters making change happen?
Set small steps to big goals
To do this, we can trace our way back from big visions of change by setting small goals and identifying loads of small steps towards bigger goals (a recurring theme of our Rewire workshop was “change happens with lots of small steps”.
This is how we help people working in really tough situations envision success (hope-based shift 2).
We ask them to think of the smallest, most likely small step forwards they could achieve in the next six months. Like, you are not going to stop police killings in six months, but you could get the police to be more transparent about those killings. Then imagine how society would look different if you achieved that.
It’s important to have clear goals - whether big or small.
Try this:
Step one. Take a piece of paper and write a line down the middle.
Step two. On the left, write down a problem you are worried about, and what it could lead to.
Step three. Then write down the exact opposite scenario - a solution that would take us in the opposite direction. Write down a big, crazy utopian dream. You could even ask AI to generate it for you.
Step four. Now think about what small steps could lead in the direction of that goal. Imagine what it looks like for you and your supporters to actually carry out that goal.
Step five. Start looking out for stories in real life that offer a glimpse of that future: a seed that could one day grow into a forest.
Build hope habits: learned hopefulness
Hope is a habit you can train. Practice looking at things through a hope-based perspective. In his book “Do Hard Things”, Steve Magness writes:
“Too often we get stuck in the rut of apathy because we haven’t flexed our hopeful muscle. Small actions that remind you that you have a choice go a long way to training the ability to put your brain back online.”
And for people who need space to process and grieve, he also says this:
“You don't need to be back to normal the day after a major loss, but you can take small steps toward normalcy to flex your control muscle: Going for a walk instead of a full long workout, meeting friends for coffee, spending an hour a day diving back into your work project.”
The first step is to be mindful and recognize when we are fearful. If you can spot yourself being “against” something, stop and ask yourself what you are “for”. Look out for small cues, like using words like “not” or “anti”. Instead, ask what you are “for” or “pro”.
When we repeat things, our bodies adapt. Our brains develop new neural pathways.
All human beings are capable of change. First we have to articulate the change we want. Then we have to practice it, repeatedly.
Brand new hope-based workshops integrating this sport science will be available from 2025. Get in touch if you want to know more!
To follow how the Rewire your Mind incubator puts these insights into practical action, subscribe to its new newsletter here.
Three articles to read about sports science
This article provides a really nice introduction with useful tips from scientists. Can you see the applications to activism here?
This is a heartening article about training our brain to take on hard tasks showing just how much possibility exists for changing how we think. It suggests that we can learn to enjoy the process / journey, even if we do not reach the destination. And for activists in dark times, nothing could be more important.
finally, read this about predictive processing, which for me means that activists have to help people imagine the future we are trying to build if they are to support our calls to action: “The key point is that our brains aren’t just predicting the present; they’re also simulating the future, to minimize unexpected surprises.”
Other hopey-changey stuff
We need strategies (and organizations) working to promote the emotions we need in society that underpin social change. One of those emotions is “kama muta” something I had never heard of, even though it drives everything I do.
The best take on the US elections I’ve read so far comes from Shanelle Matthews from RadComms, courtesy of ReFrame: “Radical hope thrives in the face of violence and repression. Our strength lies in our recognition of the interconnectedness of our struggles.”
The pictures in this substack come from a new illustration collection from Fine Acts on climate justice and migration. It’s so important that we push out more pro-welcome content. The migration space feels really dark right now (if you don’t follow hope-based rights org PICUM, you should) but we have to build up a new narrative, even if we need a new media ecosystem in which to do it.
The latest Narrative Initiative newsletter shared a study that imagining a shared future together brings people together and helps them see what they have in common. Which is nice to hear because that is what we do in hope-based workshops!
There is a new podcast series about hope from Happiness Lab and Jamil Zaki (who has also written a must-read book about the importance of shifting from cynicism to hope).
An old piece from Anat Shenker-Osorio that might bring hope this week on painting the beautiful tomorrow (H/T Kristin Dannevig).
AI made a podcast about hope-based communication. What do you think?
Quote of the week
“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.” - George Carlin
I often say that one of the reasons activists have such a strong negativity bias is that we have such high expectations for how society and other humans should be, that we are often disappointed. Maybe we need to be kinder to ourselves, and to others.
It’s been a while since the last substack issue. I have been reflecting on what is the most useful stuff to share here. If you have any feedback, please let me know. I’d love to know what you enjoy reading here so that I can provide more of it!