Developing Consent and Joy-based Capacity

We all have the capacity to involve ourselves in creating the changes we wish to see in our personal lives, community, and the world. We all have our own conscious and subconscious ways of thinking which influence the things that we say "yes" and "no" to. How can we align our decision-making around capacity with values such as joy and practices such as consent?

1. Saying "yes" =/= being nice or morally good:
   We may need to unlearn the idea that saying "yes" is nicer than saying "no." Check your calendar - is it packed to the brim? Do you have a high tolerance for feeling overworked, tired, resentful, bitter? If you typically avoid saying no and feel pressured to say yes, how can you invite in more balance?

2. Develop a more nuanced scale of consent:
   Is there room in your decision-making process between an immediate yes or no? If there's hesitancy, can you identify any underlying needs to address? There are a couple tools that I've used both in self-reflection around decision-making and when others are involved:
   - The yes to no scale by Consent Wizardry -
   
   This scale is included in a very useful mini-book full of questions, prompts, and scales to help with self-reflection and discernment.
   - The Fist to 5 consent check-in presented from WildSeed Society's Care Pod course -
   
   This check-in protocol is taught and practiced as part of the process in co-creating a care pod with other folks (more about pod mapping as developed in the context of Transformative Justice, here). It is also a protocol that can be brought to any proposal development process in a group or organization that is striving to deconstruct top-down hierarchical decision-making and turn to more co-created, lateral processes.

3. Return to joy and true capacity:

   Analysis of our own and others' capacity can be rooted in our being rather than our doing. Can we center the way that we are with ourselves and one another, not just results? Joy isn't something that we can manufacture or force, so checking on our joy levels will reveal our honest feelings about our work. Building up our collective experiences of joy also results in a positive feedback loop with building our true capacity. If we are running on artificial capacity, something always gives. True capacity is sustainable and allows us to be whole people to ourselves and one another.