In prison, we’re not allowed to hug. Just like during this current confinement.

And yet, in prison, we have lived, with our teams, profound moments of celebration, grieving, connection, honoring, acknowledgement, tough transitions, joy of seeing each other, as well as of wishing well when we leave. Outside of prison, these would naturally be accompanied by a hug. But not in prison.

So, I’ve learned to hug without hugging.

I allow my heart to emit all the same care, support and love that I give when I hug someone. I allow my eyes to provide the same. All without the arms.

Having perfected this in prison, I realized that I’ve been hugging without hugging during this confinement and physical distancing season.

Our prison team also coined the term of “wug,” which stands for a word-hug. A wug is an extremely special experience we share to celebrate a person or all of us. It’s yet another way to hug without hugging.

We adapted to “hug” even within the constraints of not being able to hug. We found ways to share all of our care, support and love without the arms.

Now, find yours.

(Yes, physical touch is important - and I can go on for a while about this - but…) Don’t allow the current constraints to limit the power of your hugs.

Have fun hugging without hugging.

Invitation: Find your way of hugging without hugging. Use your heart, your eyes or other means to express the same care, support and love you do when you place your arms around that same person.

This is part of a series. I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. In April, I provided a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Since then, these lessons have been weekly. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

Our most creative, innovative and productive ideas come from rest.

Prison residents often use their times of extreme confinement towards this end. As lockdowns prevent them from engaging with most things outside of themselves, they use this time to assess: check in with what’s going on with them, what they need right now so that they may come back, when the door open up again, in full productivity.

Rest does not mean sipping a pina colada on the beach.

We can look at nature for an example of the value of rest. During the summer, nature is in full production mode, providing fruits and vegetables to a bunch of animals and ourselves. During the winter, nature goes into quiet, dormancy, hibernation. While it may look that not much happens on the outside, a lot can be happening on the inside to gather the forces that allow it to produce another year of supply of produce again.

Most of us don’t give ourselves enough space and time to rest.

There’s sleep that provides daily rest and a ton of research shows the value of rest.

And just like winter, there are also seasons of rest. And this season may be just this for some of you. If so, take the time to rest, to assess, to rejuvenate, to question, to adapt, to even transform.

What are you doing? What could you be doing? How are you meant to show up in the world? Is there something you’re meant to work through to prepare yourself to show up even more strongly when the opportunity arises?

It will set you up for possible explosive productivity and return.

Invitation: Embrace the rest this season may be calling you into and trust that productivity will ensue.

This is part of a series. I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. In April, I provided a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Since then, these lessons have been weekly. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

Are you sick and tired of the same four walls? Sick and tired of the arguments and struggles with your family members? Sick and tired of others telling us what to do? Sick and tired of not being able to eat what we want? Sick and tired of not being able to go outside?

You know who understands this well? Prison residents!! And you know what they do? They break out of prison!!!

Now, let’s be clear. I am NOT speaking about breaking out of physical prison, of being defiant of laws and constraints imposed on us. Prison residents teach us that doing so has severe consequences. So, take action in this direction only when you are fully ready to accept responsibility for those consequences.

But this is not what I’m talking about.

I’m not talking about breaking free from the constraints imposed on us.

I’m talking about breaking free from the constraints we’ve imposed on ourselves!

Many prison residents have told me, in exact words: “Mariette, don’t worry about me. I’m a free man.” And yet they have life-long sentences of staying confined behind those prison walls…

A magical moment I adore is when prison residents - or any of us on the outside - uncover their brilliance, meaning their essence, their spirit, their God-given gifts. It liberates their spirit! Something in them breaks open, finally allowed to express itself and show up.

Why does this show up? Because they finally made the choice to live a different, more wholesome lifestyle.

Why this different lifestyle? Because they finally realize that they indeed have a choice. They have the choice between living confined or living free. This is a choice we all have, regardless of our circumstances.

Why are they able to make this choice? Because they finally recognize that they deserve to be free.

Each and every single one of us deserves to be free. It’s time we realize this!

When you give yourself permission to deserve, you are more joyous, generous, loving, collaborative, easeful, peaceful and other qualities I’ve wished for. On top of this, your kids finally get the parent that is more whole, more present, more capable of providing what they most need. Your relationship with your spouse becomes more peaceful and balanced. At work, your colleagues finally see your brighter work outputs.

This is why you deserve to be free!

Invitation: You deserve to be free. So take the time to claim this for yourself. You deserve it. And allow this to motivate you to break free from the prison of your own making.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

When we come together with a new team of prison residents, we set agreements defining the space we wish to hold as well as our behaviors for ourselves, individually and collectively. Within the first few weeks of meeting as a team (three hours a week), the prison residents test our - the outside volunteers’ - own commitment to these agreements. (Just like we’re tested by our kids, our spouses, our colleagues…)

They want to see if we’re walking our talk. Because each of us in the Circle made an individual commitment to live by the collectively-defined agreements.

Within three or so short weeks, they realize that we are committed to these agreements and are doing our best to live into our agreements. This gives them permission to start shifting their behaviors. With an additional two to three weeks, we have completely different team dynamics.

As we walk our talk, we receive two gifts.

First, it creates a safer space. As we walk our talk, it reinforces the boundaries we’ve articulated and agreed up. This lack of misalignment between our thoughts, words and actions removes any ambiguity in the boundaries. And this creates safety.

This matters because safety is fundamental if you wish for your household, your team or any other group to be creative and innovative (which this time definitely needs). Safety is also fundamental to creating a space in which people can change and adapt (which we need in this time). Therefore, walking our talk is so important in this season of confinement.

Second, when I walk my talk and talk my walk, it invites me to continuously bring my thoughts, words and actions into greater alignment. Since we’re human beings, our thoughts, words and actions are constantly aligned. And that’s OK. Now that we have a safe space, our household or team can come together and support each other in realigning everyone’s respective thoughts, words and actions.

This mutual support and mirroring of our words and actions only works when done within a safe space, with dignity, respect and love instead of any blame or condemnation.

As I get mirrored back the places and times I’m not in full alignment, it enhances my integrity. And the huge power of that is when I live more deeply in integrity, relationships become more peaceful and productive. Because I and others are really clear about where I stand and how I wish to move through the world. When I know this about myself and everyone else around me, it makes dynamics, interactions, conversations and relationships easy.

Invitation: Walk your talk to enable a deeper alignment between your thoughts, words and actions. After experimenting with yourself, invite groups in which you’re involved into this experimentation. You will love what you experience when you have that deeper alignment between your thoughts, words and actions!

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

For many of us, this season seems to be toughest on our relationships. Not being able to escape is requiring that we shift how we engage and interact with each other. “I’m done with this.” “When will all of this stop changing?” “I’m done with needing to constantly change and adapt!”

Oh, how we are creatures of instant gratification…

To help us here, I remember a moment in Criminals & Gangmembers Anonymous (CGA), a 12-step to transform the criminal mindset and gang member mentality. In one session I had the privilege of attending, the facilitator spoke of the work needed to change that criminal mindset. This big dude locked up for 35 years to life - who had, earlier in his life, vowed to never step away from his destructive behavior - added in his burly voice, “There is no magic pill here, folks!”

They then asked me to close that session. While fully recognizing the truth of this incredible facilitator’s words, I also challenged him and them: “There IS a magic pill!”

“This magic pill carries a secret. It’s secret is that this magic pill has to be taken every single moment of every single day for the rest of our lives.”

At the beginning, this may be daunting. It feels like medicine. It’s hard. We fail. And we have to start up again. This phase is only for this small amount of time - because relatively speaking it is a small amount of time. And then, there come a point at which it becomes easier, and even unconscious.

There is a magic pill. We just have to learn its secret.

Invitation: Enjoy taking this magic pill, knowing that there will be a time when taking it will be effortless. And enjoy taking those steps every moment of every day of the rest of your life.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

There’s one constant in this time of confinement and it’s change! This season has required us to change, shift and adapt.

In our prison spaces, prisons residents shift away from their destructive lifestyles and into the human beings they always wished to be. We’ve learned that one quality makes this possible and more easeful than anything else. By a landslide. Change is only possible if this one quality is maintained. This quality is…

Safety

When we feel safe, it is possible to explore our beliefs and thoughts; to try new ways of doing things; to experiment with our behaviors, our thoughts, our word, our actions, the way we show up; to create a different possible direction for a work project, for way we engage with our kids, for ourselves.

And safety means that we feel seen, we feel heard, that we matter. We can ask tough questions. We can try new things. We won’t be belittled. Things we say and do are received, even if they rub people the wrong way.

And Google came to the same conclusion when it researched the perfect team. For two years, they looked at 180 Google teams, conducted over 200 interviews and examined 250 team characteristics. In their own words, “We were pretty confident that we'd find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary for a stellar team -- take one Rhodes Scholar, two extroverts, one engineer who rocks at AngularJS, and a PhD. Voila. Dream team assembled, right?” Dead wrong, as they said. All their analysis revealed no correlation between the characteristics studied and the high-performance teams. It wasn’t until they studied the intangibles that a correlation appeared.

Google identified five characteristics of a perfect high-performance team, again quoting Julia Rozovsky:

5. Impact of work: Do we fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing matters?

4. Meaning of work: Are we working on something that is personally important for each of us

3. Structure & clarity: Are goals, roles, and execution plans on our team clear?

2. Dependability: Can we count on each other to do high quality work on time?

And above all else,

1. Psychological safety: Can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

“Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found -- it’s the underpinning of the other four.”

As we are in this season of adaptability, of change, of needing to shift how we do things, recognize the criticality of safety. You and your loved ones will not be able to create the positive change you wish to see if you do not feel safe. Therefore, the number one thing to focus on is creating safety. This is what all these daily video lessons are truly about.

For those of you who have had the privilege of attending our events or Circles, you will know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the incredible transformation that’s possible for individuals - and also for an entire team - and the incredible work output that comes out of this team (some success statistics on our TEDx events).

Our Core Team of prison residents became the highest performance team I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. All because we focused on building safety.

Invitation: What makes you feel safe? What doesn’t make you feel safe? What is one step you can take today to shift one of those elements that keep you unsafe. Because again, constructive change cannot happen until you feel safe.

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.

A heated conversation - in which tensions are high and voices raise - is not the same as a hurtful conversation - in which I or others say and do things that come from or create hurt.

As we come together with our Core Team of prison residents to organize TEDx and other events inside prison (in which prison residents are the decision makers), we have our fair share of heated conversations, debates and decisions. While there can be significant heat in our Circle, these conversations also exhibit dignity and respect in each interaction.

One specific example came about two months after our first TEDx event; we had been working together as a team for about seven months. Because our prison resident team members make the decisions pertaining to our events, we put them in front of a decision impacting future events and their involvement in these with many possible options. Team members started getting very entrenched in their version of the right answer. The conversation increased in heat and tension to the point of boiling point. I had never been in a conversation with such differing opinions, such high tension, such raised voices; it felt explosive. And even though they were defending their point of view over the others, the residents never move to tactics of blaming, criticizing, belittling, dehumanization! Everything they said came from a place of dignity and respect, of themselves, of others and of all the ideas.

By doing so, the residents felt heard and understood, even with intense tone and volume. From here, they crafted a more powerful decision that reflected a common ground of everyone’s suggestions instead of having one idea overpower the others.

This mesmerized me for two reasons

1. Mildly stated, these folks are used to things going their way. And when things don’t go their way, their answer has been violence

2. I had never experienced this type of conversation - in which there’s heat but no hurt - either inside prison or outside prison

This is why these prison residents became examples for me, inspiring me to bring this quality into my decision making, my conversations, my debates.

Invitation: Next time you’re in a disagreement or argument, can you hold space for the heat and tension of this conversation and not fall into the default behavior of reacting from hurt? Instead, can you continue to treat yourself, others and all your ideas with dignity and respect?

This is part of a series. You see, on April 1st, I realized that I have a unique perspective into confinement thanks to my past 4.5 years engaging several times a week with the world's leading experts on confinement: prison residents. For the month of April, I will provide a daily lesson learned in prison that will hopefully help us to survive and even thrive while confined to our homes. Go forward and back to enjoy each daily lesson.