Handbook for an Integrated Life

The following is an excerpt from Handbook for an Integrated Life, by Sharon Schneider, available on July 19, 2022 from Greenleaf Book Group.

Introduction

I’m not doing this to save the world. I’m doing it to save myself.

I come from a family that was stable, loving, and hardworking and valued my education. We volunteered regularly, preparing meals and delivering them to homeless shelters and building houses with Habitat for Humanity. I was a Girl Scout and played every possible sport. My dad coached a bunch of my teams, sometimes assisted by my mom, and they were all terrible, but that was normal and no big deal.

Life in those early years was quite siloed: I was raised in the Catholic faith, but religion was kept separate from work. Volunteering was about showing compassion, not filling in the gaps of government policy. What we had for dinner came in boxes and cans from the grocery store, sort of like money comes from ATMs. How did it get to the grocery store? No idea. I also have no idea who my parents voted for; it didn’t seem important.

I just knew that my Grandma Sturtevant yelled at the TV when Reagan was on. Sometimes she chucked her slipper at him to make a point.

When I got to college, however, I discovered that everyone else had not necessarily grown up in such a supportive atmosphere, rich with opportunity and encouragement to follow their dreams. I had not only financial assets like a scholarship and a car but the self-confidence to talk to adults like a peer, even argue with the professors in my small honors seminars. I had (and still have) the open heart and easy laugh of a well-loved kid who had been told she was smart and special — and believed it.

But I met many people who didn’t fit that description, people of different sizes, shapes, races and ethnicities, nationalities, different levels of financial security and physical ability. The observation of these differences attached itself to my Catholic instinct to fight for social justice — and the more I realized that others didn’t start with all my advantages, the more I felt compelled to try to level the playing field.

There’s a saying I love: “Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple.” It’s the worst insult I can throw at someone. Which is why I say I was born on third base and know I didn’t hit a triple. I know I started out with a lot of advantages, and I think a lot about how I can use my advantages to help others.

I’m now a middle-aged white American woman with a college degree and a solid career, happily married for twenty-one years, with three healthy kids, two rotten dogs, and a very nice house in Denver. I’m considered an expert in using strategic philanthropy and impact investing to make a difference in the lives of others.

I’ve been a staff member and a consultant for some of the largest foundations in the world, and dozens of much smaller ones. I help companies integrate social impact into every facet of their operations, from how they treat employees to how they source materials and select vendors, to their environmental efforts and charitable giving. My professional life is about making an impact at scale.

At the level of the individual, though, how do we make an impact? It feels like there is a raging debate between the people saying, “Don’t use plastic straws; they’re bad for the environment” and those saying, “Plastic straws aren’t the problem here; only governments can address the real environmental issues.” So who’s right, and how should we respond in the face of problems that are bigger than any individual’s ability to fix them? I decided that I might not be able to solve the problems myself, but that doesn’t mean I should make them any worse if I can help it.

Striving for Shared Prosperity

My whole life, I’ve tried to be a good person. I don’t cut people off in traffic, I return my shopping cart to the designated spot, I forgo the aforementioned plastic straws when given the opportunity.

But what does being a “good person” even mean? For me, at the most fundamental level it means embracing shared prosperity instead of lopsided benefits for me and my inner circle of family, friends, and those who share my political ideology.

Yet many unseen and unquestioned forces in American culture work against shared prosperity. What was once touted as the American Dream was reinterpreted as “rugged individualism” and somehow mutated into “every man for himself.” As an American, you are encouraged to “get yours” first and then think about others. Friends and experts alike urge us to make our money, secure our future, find our fame. Follow these clever #lifehacks to get ahead of your contemporaries, get over on the system, get access to exclusive events and opportunities. And then, in your encore career or second act, you can give back some portion of your riches. And don’t worry about the individuals who haven’t managed to find success; it’s their own fault for not working hard enough, not having gotten enough education, not creating a vision board in order to manifest their destiny.

On second thought, the forces that shove these “me first” messages down our throats aren’t really unseen; those messages are plastered all over social media, movies, songs, TV shows, and ads. People who successfully work the system and achieve great personal wealth are celebrated as geniuses and visionaries. They represent the ideal of “American success” that we should all strive to achieve, or so we are told.

Working against those norms, trying to make life choices that give others a chance at winning alongside us, isn’t easy. It requires more creativity, more humility, and more willingness to leave something on the table. Could you save a few bucks by tipping 15 percent on your tab before taxes, instead of 25 percent on the after-tax amount, as the CNBC article “This Simple Tipping Trick Could Save You over $400 a Year” suggests? Sure, I guess. I just can’t get excited about that kind of advice on how to be smart. Maximizing every transaction and every relationship to benefit me personally feels like a short-term win but a long-term loss.

The Pandemic Changed Perspectives

In my life, I want my family to be happy and healthy — doesn’t everyone? But I also want the people who make our clothes, grow our food, improve our homes, deliver our packages, teach our kids, protect our communities, and otherwise serve society to be happy and healthy too — that support should be a two-way street. In 2020, we came to call these people “essential workers.” And as a nation, we realized how interdependent we are. Each one of us needs the person next to us, or across from us, or before us, or behind us to be mentally and physically healthy for society to function in any meaningful way.

The pandemic has prompted Americans of all ages to turn inward, rejecting the quest for material belongings in favor of the search for meaning. We’re quitting our soul-killing jobs. We’re moving to the places we truly want to live. We’re prioritizing our well-being over climbing someone else’s stupid ladder. Instead of treating philanthropy as a holiday check-writing exercise divorced from the rest of our lives, many of us are striving to integrate our personal passions, professional expertise, consumer habits, vacation time, and even our household buying decisions into a single identity that expresses a consistent set of values.

I’m no longer content to compartmentalize my life, working to fund good causes during the week and then spending my weekends buying fast fashion from the manufacturers who create the very conditions of despair that I’m fighting against. Globalization, with all its complications, has made us aware of the impact of our actions, buying habits, and lifestyle on people half the world away. And awareness brings a new urgency for action.

Creating a Compass, Not a Road Map

I truly believe we want to do the right thing, but most of us aren’t sure what the right thing is. To tell you the truth, I’m not always sure either. Sometimes I find out that something I thought was beneficial is actually causing problems. Like renting clothes by mail, which I’ve done on and off for years as a way to avoid buying new work clothes every few months (and which I mention later in the chapter about clothing). Now I find that a recent study by a Finnish team found that, because of the frequent dry cleaning and shipping, remote rental services have a higher environmental impact than simply throwing clothes away. Ouch. Okay, so no more clothing rental services for me.

The changing landscape of options, of new knowledge or newly available services means that there is no perfect set of rules, and there never will be. Sort of how nutrition advice has changed over the years as we learn more. Fat went from being the supervillain to the helpful sidekick, and coffee and red wine are back in the “healthy” category, which is good because I was going to drink them either way. Our mental models must change as we learn and grow.

This book, then, is not intended to be a road map with turn-by-turn directions telling you all the things you should and shouldn’t do. What we believe is helpful today may turn out to be harmful when we learn more tomorrow. And there are so many challenges in front of us, so many issues we might be passionate about: climate change, the gender pay gap, racial trauma, gentrification, the mistreatment of animals, public corruption, just to name a few. It’s seldom easy to find choices that lead to clear positive impact on all these different aspects of our personal and global lives.

Instead, I’m hoping to share my own internal compass, the way I find my “true north” when I’m not sure how to proceed. I call that true north an integrated life.

What Is an Integrated Life?

We don’t always connect the words “integrity” and “integrated,” but they are both saying something about wholeness and consistency.

Someone with integrity stands by their words, backing them up with action. They have the same principles in public as they do when no one is looking. They are consistent. This quality of being whole, and consistent, is what an integrated life is about. It’s about understanding that your values aren’t compartmentalized, just like your life isn’t compartmentalized. We no longer want to separate “making money” from “making the world better” or separate our personal lives from our work lives. We don’t want to be one person in real life and an edited and polished (and unrealistic) version of ourselves on social media. We want to work for socially responsible companies and buy organic and fair trade products. We want our role models to be good actors and athletes and leaders and also good human beings. We want our homes to be comfortable and fashionable and also energy efficient. We want our cars to be high-tech and well designed and not contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.

In short, we want to express a consistent set of values in every part of our lives. We want to take what has become splintered and make it whole. Taking the fundamental value of shared prosperity and applying it to every facet of our lives — that’s an integrated life.

Be Better, Not Perfect

There is a scene from the NBC sitcom The Good Place that explains how humans are scored on every action, and at the end of their lives, they either end up in heaven (“the Good Place”) or hell (“the Bad Place”) based on their cumulative score. But, as one immortal character explains, human life is so complicated that you can’t always anticipate the consequences of even the simplest actions:

These days just buying a tomato at a grocery store means you are unwittingly supporting toxic pesticides, exploiting labor, contributing to global warming. Humans think that they are making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices they don’t even know they are making.

When you don’t know the consequences of your actions, how can you make choices that are aligned with your values? You can’t. And in some ways, you aren’t supposed to.

The Good Place is actually saying that the game is rigged because the game is invisible. Sometimes it does feel like that when you live in American consumer culture. If you are just doing what everyone else seems to be doing and what movies, TV shows, social media, celebrities, and other culture keepers tell you, then the consequences are often invisible. So am I here to tell you we’re all going to the Bad Place? No. First, I don’t believe in the Bad Place, so there’s that (sorry, Sister Anne!). But I’m actually not here to bring you down — I’m here to empower you. I think the corporate culture wants you to feel helpless, to feel inconsequential, to feel like it’s impossible to change the way things are, and why should you try so hard, anyway?

I’m actually here to tell you the opposite — that you are far more powerful than you realize. To tell you that you do in fact have choices and that those choices can be less harmful, more helpful, and, most importantly, more in line with your values and intentions. I’m here to empower you to live an integrated life.

As an American, the environmental impact is high and the social benefit of our lifestyle is pretty low compared to many parts of the world. I am not planning to move to a remote terrain and grow my own food and make my own candles and clothes and walk everywhere. That said, there is a long way to go from our standard American lifestyle to living an integrated life. So I continually work at getting better but don’t beat myself up for not attaining perfection. I prefer Starbucks coffee to local places, so I go to Starbucks. I drive less and walk more, but I’m not selling my car (although it is a hybrid). In short, I try to be better, not perfect.

That’s why you won’t find recipes for perfection in this book. Instead, Part I lays out seven principles that I’ve found helpful in guiding me to make better decisions. Part II provides action tips for how you can turn the principles into small or large changes in how you live your life every day.

BABY STEPS, BABY STEPS

As you read through this book and think about your own life and what you care about, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the huge number of possible life changes competing for our time and attention. Overwhelmed enough that you might be tempted to decide it’s just not possible to make a difference and give up. So my advice to all of us who simply want to do better is “think baby steps.” And my challenge: Pick that one issue and really adopt it and follow through on it in every aspect of your life. Don’t try to tackle everything all at once — it’s too much. Whichever one speaks to you the loudest, ignites your outrage and your passion — pick that one, and live it. Let your choices every day be part of the solution.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I don’t want to be pulling with all my strength just to try to get some kind of forward movement. I want to help create a world where others are pulling in the same direction with me, whether in an organization, a team, an office, or a community. I want to be aligned, to be joyously working toward the same vision of a more just world. One where we can live our values in every aspect of our life — in the clothes we wear, in the food we eat, in the entertainment we consume, in the way we earn a living, move around our community, and interact with our neighbors.

There are some aspects of American culture that have rubbed off on me, and I can’t quite shake them — the fear of being labeled a “communist,” sure, but also the need to save for my kids’ college education and for my own retirement, to build a nest egg for me and my family (in other words, to “get mine”). But in writing this book, I hope to shake off that scarcity mindset, to be brave, and to live authentically. I hope that together we can find the courage to make individual and collective choices about the world we want to live in and to bring that world to life. If you feel the same way, I hope you’ll keep reading.