Positivity at Huiput Festival
I was lucky to be invited to speak at The Huiput Festival in Finland. I was UPFRONT and invited Anatasia, Pia and Maarit to share my stage and my power. Here a snapshot of why they wanted to be UPFRONT…
“UPFRONT sounds very exciting and interesting. Is it really so, that I just sit there? Do I need to be some sort of expert or professional? I feel this could be the first step to learn public speaking.”
“Every year I make a list of ‘things I want to learn’ and public speaking is on my 2020 list. Actually, ‘learn public speaking’ has been on the list since 2014 and still the thought of speaking to a crowd makes me uncomfortable. I think I need help and I think UPFRONT could be the first step.”
“I am terrified every time I need to present anything whether in school or at work. My fear is currently stopping to tell my opinions and ideas. I would like to learn public speaking because I want to speak about women’s’ rights”
When I was first asked to talk about positivity, I realised that I see positivity as part of my job, my service to others and my responsibility. If you are a designer or anyone who is creating new things in the world, it is your job to make change easy for ordinary yet extraordinary people. Our job is to connect with people in a way that leaves them better than we found them.
After a lot of thought and conversation, I landed on this definition. This is what positivity means for me; it’s the bridge between my frustration, anger and hopelessness. It’s the thing that makes me take action. I have a very strong bias towards action and I think this is where it comes from.
I became a bit obsessed with the relationship between these three things and this is what I explored with the audience at The Huiput Festival.
Let’s break it down
This is how I get from hopelessness to positivity.
Recognise your privilege
I try to recognise my privilege. This is a steep and at times very uncomfortable learning curve. We understand privilege to be “a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group.” Most of the people in the room in Helsinki were privileged because we’d had an element of education - we have the privilege to time to spend learning and meeting new people, we have the privilege of insight which makes us curious about creativity, and we have access to technology.
Use your power
I try to use my power. This means that on days when you are feeling strong you can use your privilege for good. You can try to persuade and win people over for the women in the world who have no voice, no twitter account or no iPhone.
Cite diversely
I try to cite diversely. Don’t talk about diversity, be diverse in what you read, write, publish and acknowledge. You are not well-read if you only read books written by white people.
Be visible
I try to work and learn in the open. I’ve created a series on professional visibility to help you find a way of being visible that feels good for you.
Let’s break it down
This is how I get from anger to positivity
Only allowed to complain three times
I try and follow Swiss Miss’s rule of only complaining three times before I have to try and fix it or make it better
“The best way to complain is to make things.”
Recognise the fraud police are stopping you from acting
I try to acknowledge that feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome come from living in a world that was never designed for women to be successful
Amanda Palmer describes it as; “The Fraud Police are the imaginary, terrifying force of 'real' grown-ups who you believe - at some subconscious level - are going to come knocking on your door in the middle of the night, saying: We've been watching you, and we have evidence that you have NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You stand accused of the crime of completely winging it, you are guilty of making shit up as you go along, you do not actually deserve your job, we are taking everything away and we are TELLING EVERYBODY.”
“I have been at every powerful table that you can think of, I have worked at nonprofits, I have been at foundations,
I have worked in corporations, served on corporate boards, I have sat in at the U.N. They are not that smart.”
If you’re not sure what to do in times of crisis (which is all the time these days) in times of anger and hopeless then ACT - create the event you want to go to and then write the speech you want to hear. Write the blog you wish someone else would write. Compose the tweet that would get you to wake up and do something, rather than keep scrolling. If you really want things to get better, to feel more positive for more people - then you have to DO something.
Huge thanks to the team at the Hiuput Festival for having me and for Anatasia, Pia and Maarit for being UPFRONT with me.
Photographs : Huiput Creative Festival and photographer Kerttu Penttilä.