Episode 3: Vision Boarding a 100% Future

Transcript edited for clarity.

Intro [00:00:01] There’s no reason for people in a society as wealthy, resourced and technologically advanced as this one to not be thriving. Every crisis we are exposed to hourly is completely predictable and preventable. If we connect to a shared vision of everyone thriving. Surviving the day is just not acceptable anymore when we know that thriving is actually possible. Welcome to the 100% Future podcast, where Dr. Katherine Ortega, Courtney, Dominic Cappello and me, Rubina Cohen as your host, share insights, action plans and inspire you weekly to take bold action in designing thriving communities for all.

Rubina Cohen [00:00:52] Welcome back, everybody, to the 100% Future podcast. And today we want to get into why we call the podcast 100% Future. When Dom and Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney and I got together to really talk about how are we going to give added voice and how are we going to get this message out about the pathway to creating, surviving and thriving communities, we came up with a bunch of ideas and one of them was creating a podcast because, I find this channel, this medium, to be really magical in so many ways. To be able to just come sit and share and then just broadcast all over the world, your ideas and vision, I think that’s just magic and it’s available to so many of us. I’m so glad that it’s available to us and it’s accessible to a lot of people, too. We can jump into the technology and what’s available as we start getting into some of the ten vital services (for surviving and thriving that are at the heart of the 100% New Mexico initiative). But, what we’d really like to do today is to involve all of you in a way that allows us to vision board the future. And, vision boarding, for those of you that may not know what this is, is really visualizing, physically on an actual board what future you want to create for yourself. So if you’re doing it for yourself personally, you would think of what future you want to create and then cut out pictures or draw pictures and cut out words, and then paste them on a board and have it in a place where you could see it and get motivated, inspired by a future that you’re manifesting into reality. And I want to do that. I want to do that today with both of you. So welcome back. Dominic Cappello, Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney. Let’s vision board 100% future.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:03:03] Love it.

Dominic Cappello [00:03:04] Love it.

Rubina Cohen [00:03:06] Excellent. So who wants to go first? Let’s talk a little bit… okay, here’s what we could do. Let’s talk a little bit about the 100% New Mexico Initiative, maybe share a little bit about some of what we’re seeing in terms of successes in a community or several communities and then start really visualizing that envision forming that for the rest of New Mexico and the United States even.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:03:35] Yeah, I love the idea of vision and I think the message of setting a vision and moving towards that is so important. Fun story. A few years ago we would do an exercise in some of our (100% New Mexico) summits where we would ask people, close your eyes and imagine what would it look like if 100% of your community members had access to services and a lot of them couldn’t do it. They would open their eyes back up and say, “I don’t know what that would look like”. Here we are three years later, and I think a lot of people share that vision now. And it’s just this idea of, imagine, take it (one) kid at a time, what if every single kid had access to a safe house that they could live in, and food on their table, and a school where they have the opportunity to thrive? What does that look like? If you can’t vision it, it’s not going to happen. So starting with the idea of what if every single person who needed “X” service was able to access it, what would that look like and how would that look different? And starting with the idea of an individual kid, you know, we talked about Anna, who’s the character in our first story (in the book Anna, Age Eight). There’s another character in our other book, David, Age 14, and in that book we talk a lot about, you know, this is David’s reality. He can’t access mentorship programs or he doesn’t have access to health care. But, what if he did? What’s the alternative reality where he had the opportunity to thrive? What would that look like? So, yeah, this topic, I think, is really actually key to this whole initiative.

Dominic Cappello [00:05:31] Yeah, I, I really want to kind of build on what Katherine said. I remember vividly the exercises where people said, “I can’t see a future where everyone thrives”. I think they wanted to, but, they said, “I can’t. I can’t get there”. And I’d like to say what’s powerful about this podcast theme is that we live in a society where, 24/7 we are bombarded by messages, other people’s visions, and those visions are very, very negative. What we’re hearing are the disasters of the hour, followed by the next disaster of the hour. I mean, if we’re not careful, I think the phrase is called doom-scrolling. You can just go through YouTube or any site and there’s nothing but violence, trauma, a lot of it packaged as entertainment, some of it packaged as news. But I think if you live in a society that is bombarding you with those messages, it would explain why you have a hard time envisioning a positive future where everyone can thrive. So I think we really need to acknowledge and I would say especially… I shouldn’t say especially the United States, but I think I’m going to, I mean, obviously (it’s) worldwide. But there’s something unique about our American culture and our obsession with media and Hollywood, an image that blends into a toxic mix that I think really diminishes our imagination and our capacity to see a better future for everyone.

Rubina Cohen [00:07:17] Absolutely. I agree with you. Being in the social media marketing space, being a professional in that it’s absolutely an issue, a huge issue. And it’s now moving into not just about social media, but really about health and how healthy it is, how not healthy it really is, so that this is where we’re getting our information. And access to a positive vision is just so lacking in those spaces. And so let’s help our audience start that process of visioning and then we can have everybody start adding to it and that will be the goal. So let’s share a vision that we have of what a 100% future could look like. Do we want to break it off with one of the vital services?

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:08:21] Yes, I think a good one is community schools. So imagine a future where a kid who is struggling, maybe in academics, but if you dig in, the reason they’re struggling is because their house is also struggling. So, mom is working two jobs, is worried about putting food on the table, doesn’t have a working car, is doing her best, but doesn’t necessarily have access to all of the things that would help her family thrive. And let’s just call this kid, David, for the sake of ease. And David goes to school and in the current reality would get labeled as a bad kid and written off like. “oh, he’s never going to do good”. In the magical 100% future, Instead of that, David would have his teacher ask him what’s going on and he would feel comfortable sharing what’s happening. The teacher would have access to a social worker who she could connect to the family in a non-threatening way, who would be able to navigate mom to maybe some food services that would help, maybe even some job services so she can stop working two jobs and work one job and have the car that she needs to get David to the services he needs. And really, imagine what a different future David would have with just that.

Dominic Cappello [00:09:58] Yeah. If you want to go a little further with that school, David’s school not only has a social worker and behavioral health care, but it has a family center. And that family center is beautiful. You know, David’s mom feels very comfortable there. There are navigators who are helping her identify services, and get to services. They (navigators at the family center) understand her barriers. And not only that, but like Big Brothers, Big Sisters, they can send caseworkers there. This hub within the school is really this amazing place that can connect David and all of his family members to whatever they need. And so not only does this help in the realm of what we call social emotional learning, really building a sense of trust and connection with the school community. But the academics go up. David does better. He does better feeling connected. And so in this future… and what’s kind of cool is the future we’re describing does exist. It exists in community schools across the nation. They’re just not the norm. But this future is within our grasp. We can make this future. You can see that school. You can see David doing well and you could see his mom doing well. And so this is a little vision boarding here that I think a lot of people can relate to. Maybe I’m cheating here with vision boarding. I’m going back to an experience I had a few years ago. It was an unusual day when I was invited to speak at a public school and then at a private school. So at the public school, I was in fifth grade with a lovely teacher, one teacher, 25 students, four walls, no teacher’s aide. And this teacher was earnestly doing her best. But there are kids who were very needy and acting out, other kids who are really smart but kind of bored because they couldn’t move ahead and she’s just trying to keep the kids in the middle moving. She was doing an amazing job. But when I talked to her afterwards, she said, “I’m doing crowd control. I have no support here because this is just your basic school”. I left that school and I went up the hill to a private schoo to a classroom with a teacher, 15 students, a teacher’s aide, and three parent volunteers. The ratio of student to adult was pretty darn good and the vibe was incredible… calm, the people focused. And in many ways, that is more of the vision, right? So, I think that we know what it looks like. These kinds of schools exist, whether they’re private schools or community schools. But I think, Rubina, what I love about this exercise, if you just go back sector by sector, you really can with a group, kind of have some fun and especially if there’s a whiteboard and start drawing and writing and seeing, “Oh my gosh, it could look like this”. And then of course, the question is how do we get there? But we’re not there yet. We’re just at the visioning stage, right? And if you don’t have that stage, nothing happens.

Rubina Cohen [00:13:38] Agreed. I think if we don’t… as Kathrine opened with, the idea of vision and then together setting an intention of the how, the accountability, then it is so much more palpable and people will show up to do the work when they’re all connected to that piece. So what I see in terms of a vision, what I also see is we as human beings, we’re all here to… (engage). We have an innate potential, right? And that’s what we’re all trying to get access to and bring into the world. And ultimately, I feel like let’s talk, go back to David, because he can now go to this one stop hub and his mom can. He’s less stressed and now is starting to be able to see what his true potential is. And people around him are starting to see what his real potential is. And then you start to feel good because you are able to create impact and contribute in the way that you’re really meant to on this planet. And so imagine then, every child being able to wake up every day and work towards their innate potential and being able to create impact and contribute on the planet. What direction a community and humanity in general could be headed towards. And you know and you can see glimpses of that within kids who all of a sudden do have access. Or parents and families who do have access. And so, what I really am envisioning is… I really see a future with these hubs everywhere and people being able to go in and feel so supported that there’s this weight that’s lifted off their shoulders. They don’t feel alone. They don’t feel helpless and desperate. And so, you know, that’s the vision I’m holding and the future that I’m seeing in a community. Because especially having come out of the pandemic, you know, a lot of that became, you know, very real for communities and people in my circles holding that weight, trying to support, trying to do things and just kids being stressed out and acting out because we’re not contributing. We’re not doing the things that we were put on this planet to do. So, yeah, I just see this as an absolute future that we can create. And the more we talk about this and the more people read the books and the more people take the free courses online that the 100% New Mexico initiative has, the more we get closer to this future.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:16:42] You said something so important, and I think it’s really core to why we do this work is when you’re walking around with that weight, that anxiety, that fear, you cannot be effective whether you’re a student, whether you’re a parent, whether you’re doing your job. So what can we do to alleviate those pressures? So often it’s related to basic needs or, you know, behavioral health and things like that. So really, when it comes down to it, what we’re trying to do is reduce the level of stress and anxiety that people are carrying throughout the day and like you said, envision a future where we don’t have that. We don’t have to carry that and we can live up to our potential, everyone, kids, parents, teachers, medical professionals, everyone. Because I can tell you, and after the pandemic, it’s gotten so much worse. You can see it. You can see the stress that people are carrying around and it results in all kinds of negative things that we’re seeing play out. The levels of violence, the levels of crime, and, people acting out at stores and things like that, it all boils down to people walking around in the state of fight or flight that is just not healthy.

Rubina Cohen [00:17:56] Absolutely. What else do we want to add to our vision board?

Dominic Cappello [00:18:03] Rubina I like that when you started this, you really were (first) talking about people… in their own lives… (we) start with a vision of your own life and then when people talk to us about the initiative and what it means and the 3000 moving parts (of the initiative)… we often say, “The most important thing is you. How are you? How is your life? How centered, how supported are you? Let’s make sure that you’re okay”. We talk a lot about self-care, and I think we might want to add something on to that, which is self-care plus visioning. I think those two would go together. So I’m really glad we started with the personal because it starts with the individual.

Rubina Cohen [00:18:53] I love that.

Dominic Cappello [00:18:53] You know, you move out from the individual to the household to the community to the society, right? There are four areas we work in. But if we’re not centered and at the end of the day, if you don’t have a vision of your own life going well, that’s going to be a problem. And we’re doing this podcast because we want people to join this initiative. We also want people to feel empowered and to feel that there is the space to begin to explore what it is they want out of their life, and the life for their community.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:19:33] Yes, and back to the name 100% Future, right? That’s really our goal is to set this new vision. Things don’t have to be the way they’ve always worked. We don’t always have to be in these systems that are struggling and stressful. There is a possible different future where we’re all able to thrive and be happy and live lives that support us as individuals as well. Dom and I are constantly reminding each other, remember self-care, when you have to remind ourselves too, and I think as a society, it’s important to remind each other that we have to take care of ourselves first. No one’s going to do it for you.

Rubina Cohen [00:20:13] Right. I know. I think having gone through some adversity, as we all have in the last two years, 2 to 3 years, that was a really big theme for our household and amongst the community that I was in, in that we had to take a step back, take that deep breath. And as you were mentioning, like, “you” Dom like “what about you?” I took a deep breath in that moment because we often forget that, right? We are each individually coming to this work and we have to have the energy and maintain that energy. I think one other important thing to mention is that we’re not saying that, “This is going to wipe out all adversity, right?” This is humanity…we have our adversity. It’s about how we are able to, as a community support the other community members in handling that adversity so that it doesn’t impact their family and their family’s future in a way that then is negative and leads to an ending like (eight-year-) Anna had. That’s what we’re really talking about. We’re not talking about a rainbow and unicorns world where we all just don’t experience any adversity anymore. It’s that we need these spaces, these containers and these formats and that’s the vision. That’s the future where people can then feel supported in being able to handle that adversity in a way that doesn’t make them feel alone and helpless and desperate at times.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:21:59] Beautifully said.

Dominic Cappello [00:22:00] Great. I love it.

Rubina Cohen [00:22:03] Yes. Okay. Well, I loved this vision boarding session. Let’s have other episodes where we do some more vision boarding. Right? I think this is super fun. Thank you, for all of you that have joined and listening in on this podcast. We drop new episodes every week, and next week we have another special topic in store so come back and join us and listen. Thank you for being in the studio today again, Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney, Dominic Cappello, we’ll see you all next time.

Dominic Cappello [00:22:35] Thank you.

Dr. Katherine Ortega Courtney [00:22:36] Thank you

Rubina Cohen [00:22:40] Join us on the road to 100% New Mexico Initiative at 100NM.org to learn more and get access to the podcast show notes. Want to stay more actively engaged with the movement, then follow us on Facebook at 100PercentNewMexico and on Instagram at 100percentnm. Until next time, let’s take bold action to create a 100% future for all.