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I’ve had lots of interesting conversations with my wife Alex over the last year or so.

To be honest, there hasn’t been much else to do 😉

Some of them inspired by the various conversations going on in the public domain about racism, sexism and other subjects.

She’s had some very interesting trainings through her work that I’ve either watched with her or half listened to whilst doing my own work.

I’ve always considered my self “not racist”.

I have clear memories of friends at school saying “Don’t tell Hally racist jokes – he doesn’t think they’re funny”.

But I came to an interesting realisation recently.

“I’m not racist” is what people normally say directly before what I would consider a racist comment.

They don’t consider themselves racist either.

When we describe ourselves as “not racist” we’ve come up with a definition of what we consider racism to look like.

And when we feel we don’t do ‘that’, we class ourselves as “not racist”.

And are, perhaps, not open to questioning some of our thoughts, actions and behaviours.

Have I ever said anything that would be considered ‘overtly’ racist?

I genuinely don’t think so.

Have I ever made initial assumptions about someone that have turned out to not be true based, in part, on their ethnicity?

I have.

Racism, like most things, isn’t an “am” or “aren’t” thing.

Excuse the phrase, but’s it’s not ‘black or white’.

One or the other.

It’s a spectrum.

Shades of grey between what we could consider the two extremes.

Realising that and that we are all on that spectrum and that we display different behaviours at different points along it is powerful.

Helps us question and improve our thoughts, beliefs and behaviours.

It’s like when we say we’re too busy to exercise.

We’ve, essentially, created two definitions out of thin air.

Firstly how busy you have to be to not have time to exercise.

And secondly, how much exercise we would need to do for it to be ‘worthwhile’.

And we’ve decided that we don’t / can’t fit that position of having enough time to exercise.

So do none.

Let’s face it, there’s 10,080 minutes in the week.

A handful of 5 minutes of exercise here and there would do something.

Not perfect, of course.

But something.

Saying we’re “too busy” to exercise is creating a level of ‘black or white’, ‘all or nothing’ thinking that isn’t serving us.

Same with ‘healthy eating’ being too expensive, restrictive and / or boring.

We’ve created a very specific definition of what ‘healthy eating’ looks like.

And we’ve decided “I can’t do that”.

When we could just make some better choices than we are now that, again, wouldn’t be perfect but would lead us in the right direction over time.

Very little in life is ‘black or white’.

Always worth remembering.

Much love,

Jon ‘Do The Bartman’ Hall

P.S. Yes, believe it or not, ‘Do The Bartman’ was Michael Jackson’s single directly before ‘Black or White’.


Jon Hall
Jon Hall

When not helping people to transform their lives and bodies, Jon can usually be found either playing with his kids or taxi-ing them around. If you'd like to find out more about what we do at RISE then enter your details in the box to the right or bottom of this page or at myrise.co.uk - this is the same way every single one of the hundreds who've described this as "one of the best decisions I've ever made" took their first step.