Even Encouragers Need Encouragement
So you wrote a Manifesto, huh?
It didn’t start out as a ‘Manifesto’. I mean, who do you think you are, Mr Fables, striding confidently in here with your manifesto? Perhaps I should explain myself … it’s more of a list if the truth is known … a collection of values all bundled up together … manifestos sound a bit, well, official (a bit full of themselves probably, maybe, definitely … yes, that’s it, full of themselves).
Yet here we all are, talking about The Encouragement Manifesto. Okay, so I am. But you are very kindly peeking in and wondering what it’s all about.
Well, let’s get to it. We used to own a delicatessen (see, full of himself; delicatessen, he says … maybe we’ll go with ‘coffee shop’ that served the best cheese toasties. Yes, that’s it). We used to own a coffee shop (ahem, I think we established that). Anyway, folk seemed to like it and when we closed the deli to make room for some new adventures, we had a think about why people liked it, and us. The more we thought about it, the more it came down to values. We realised, and we asked around to check, that there were certain things about the way we approached things that struck a chord without hitting a nerve.
We decided to bottle them up, those values. A little collection, if you will. A ‘list’, by any other name. Ten values that seemed to sum up what we were about. It felt like they might be a guide rail for whatever came next and so we wrote them down, numbered them 1 to 10, and called it The Encouragement Manifesto.
So far, so ‘where’s all this going’, Mr Fables?
The more we thought about the list, the more it felt like a list of values being lived by the folk we hung out with in real life and in the social media communities we felt most connected to. We wondered if these folk would have something interesting to say about the principles. When we asked, people generously put pen to paper and offered us the most astonishing words about what it meant to them.
People like
who wrote about the duality of kindness. He spoke of the need to offer it, but also a willingness to receive it. Author demonstrated everything we imagined into the heart of 'Be Generous' by writing jointly with Izzy Dignum, a young writer she was mentoring. Ideas flowed; values-led ideas like those by about the benefits of being small, rather than remorselessly pursuing scale and growth.A rich archive has grown up around the values we scribbled down two years ago.
We gave a little something too
As our little community of ‘encouragers’ wrote for us, an encouragement in itself that the Manifesto (see, getting a bit bold with it now) might have legs, we mused about what else it might offer. Our collective re-emergence from the pandemic lockdowns provided the answer. It turned out there were loads of folk needing a little boost to get themselves back up to full pace; people who needed someone else to tell them that it is okay to do the things that bring them joy. The Encouragement Sessions, as they became, cost us nothing but our time and energy so we don’t charge for them … we tell people they are “like a handful of tangfastics for the souls” and those same people tell us that they’ve helped:
Find out more about the Encouragement Sessions - it is probably time we did some more as people close out the year and get themselves ready for 2023.
What Next Then?
This newsletter feels like the next step. Well, maybe it is less about the newsletter, as such. We’re hoping that if you are peeking in you might get caught in the ripples if we drop a pebble in the pond. We’re really hoping that we might gently gather a community of encouragers. The world needs encouragement aplenty and we might just be the folk to provide it.
Pebbles in the Pond
… ripples of encouragement
Simon Heath is a super-talented illustrator and communicator who works with leading brands to help them solve complex organisational challenges. Out of the blue, with remarkable generosity, he gifted us a beautiful collection of illustrations that brought the Encouragement Manifesto to life
Hannah Henderson ‘empowers small business owners to hone their online presence’ (whilst leaving just enough time for people-watching and sipping wine). We were blown away by her reworking of the Manifesto into the beautiful graphic embedded in this post.
Matt Inwood is a gifted photographer and art director who also runs regular Phone Photography Masterclasses (10% of the fees for which he donates to The Trussell Trust). His new offering on Substack ‘A Thousand Fragments’ is every bit as gorgeous as we imagined it would be.
For reasons I can't explain I don't think I'd ever read Matt Inwood's 'open your heart'. What a lovely piece of thinking.
Good to see you here and very glad to see a new series of Encourage Meant's coming our way. Hurrah!