I left Facebook and Instagram earlier this month. I had made the decision to do this back in November—and had planned on migrating to an audio-verbal and long-form ecosystem, including my own podcast, over the Winter and early Spring.

I no longer enjoyed being there—and I no longer wanted to be subject to Meta’s invasive features and extractive policies.

I am an auditory learner, a talker and a listener. I like long-form content and meaningful connection—and that was not the optimal way for me to engage in either.

Add to that that my feed was full of ads and “recommended content” that I didn’t care about (and that may not have been created by a human at all).

And that Meta foisted its invasive, extractive AI features on us that functionally stick themselves between us—and rob us of interaction and connection.

I felt increasingly bombarded by a bunch of empty nonsense that I didn’t want—for the pleasure of having what I have to say and share used (by some flimsy, forced consent) to train Meta AI to create more empty nonsense (in the hope that it will surpass my creative and intellectual capacity and that I will allow and welcome that, you know, for efficiency’s sake).

Then Meta eliminated fact-checking and content moderation. (Yes, let’s all fight out what is fact in a virtual gladiator pit. You know Rome fell, right?) It fired its DEI staff. Zuckerberg showed us his lack of backbone and need for empty “masculinity” posturing—ripe with buzz words he picked up from the far right and retorts he misappropriated from anti-racism work.

I’m not giving my eyeballs, energy, efforts or money to that—despite not having all the other pieces of the new ecosystem for sharing my work in place.

And that is power. 

While we watch billionnaires—who are the best-positioned among us to resist coercion from other forms of power—choose to cede and capitulate, we can exert our power.

Without users, they have no platform. Without customers, they have no business.

This is our power. 

But beyond that—and more fundamental than that:

We have the power to unhook ourselves from the systems and structures—from the narratives and ideologies themselves—that allow and perpetuate this cancer of capitalism. 

And from the lie that we need them—for our safety, security, identity and worth.

We can divest.

If we cease to rely upon our socio-economic systems and structures for our security, our identity, and our decision-making, they will cease to exist.

And we will be free (whether they continue to exist or not).

But it takes all of us.

It takes getting uncomfortable—and being inconvenienced. (The very things consumer capitalism promises to inoculate us from.)

It takes navigating the inertia and the awkwardness of finding a new way.

It takes metabolizing our rage, our fear, and our shame—about all the ways we get hooked in and all the ways we’ve been told we need to fit in.

And it takes rooting into the truth at the ground of our being—and our relationship with the Sacred—as the source of our safety, security and identity and the guide for our actions.

So that we can actually find a new way.

Where can you divest your attention, your energy and your resources, including your money?

Where can you reinvest it—in ways that are in full integrity with yourself and your work?

How does this require you to unhook your identity, your decision-making—and your sense of safety and security—from our socio-economic system?

What distracts and derails you from that?

This is, in essence, the focus of The One Thing Workshop.

Because the one thing at the root of what distracts & derails you from your life’s work is also the one thing that keeps you hooked into our socio-economic systems.

They are not separate.

The root of what distracts and derails you from your life’s work is woven of the same threads—and knotted in the same places—as our collective karmic knot of capitalism.

When you untangle it, you confront not only your own pattern, but our collective pattern.

You are inevitably asked to see the braids of our collective karmic knot for what they are, tell the truth about how they ensnare you, and choose to release rather than perpetuate them.

And you will find that same one thing at the root of it.

Join me in a 90-minute One Thing Workshop to name that one thing—and begin to unhook your identity, your security and your decision-making from our socio-economic system and root them into the truth at the ground of your being.