#458. You Don’t Have to be Miserable While Doing Important Work | adrienne maree brown

Our culture has oddly conflicting views about pleasure. 

In this episode author adrienne maree brown explores the importance of pleasure and how it changes your experience of the world. 

adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the cohost of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.

In this conversation we talked about:

• What is pleasure activism
• The role of sex and drugs
• Why we should say yes more
• How to be in touch with our sense of “enough”
• The role of gratitude 
• The line between commitment and detachment
• How she defines authentic happiness
• And her self-description as “a recovering self-righteous organizer,” and why self-righteousness actually leads to powerlessness

Content Warning: Discussions of sex and drugs. 

Photo Credit: Anjali Pinto

Where to find adrienne maree brown online: 

Website: adriennemareebrown.net

Social Media:

• Twitter: @adriennemaree 
• Instagram: @adriennemareebrown

Book Mentioned:

• Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

Other Resources Mentioned:

• Movement Generation
• Thich Nhat Hanh
• Octavia Butler
• Margaret Wheatley
• Grace Lee Boggs
• Staci K. Haines (Somatics)
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. 
• Blink by Malcom Gladwell
• Prentis Hemphill
• Bitch Media columns
• National Harm Reduction Coalition
• How to Survive the End of the World
• Octavia’s Parables
• Emergent Strategy
• Grievers
• Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation

Additional Resources:

• Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/install