What does it mean to thrive as someone who is opposed to capitalism but still has to exist in a capitalist system?
This question is one that my friend and colleague, Helen Tremethick, has spent a lot of time thinking about. Helen is a business coach, writer, and entrepreneur who GETS IT. Most of her clients share the same story: they don’t want to play the game, they don’t want to take other people's money, and they don’t know how to help their business grow without compromising their personal beliefs.
Helen’s insight and both/and approach help provide guidance to those struggling to understand how best to tackle these questions. Her wisdom shines through in this podcast episode as I ask her about all my personal questions, offering forgiveness and challenging me to push through instead of going around, and sharing her experience navigating late-stage capitalism as an entrepreneur and small business owner.
You can find out more about Helen on her website at https://helentremethick.com.
You can support this project and podcast by becoming a paid subscriber here on Substack.
If you have a person or project who you think is doing really awesome work in their community, please recommend them by emailing me at kel@novitasmag.com.
TRANSCRIPT (excuse the typos)
Intro: Welcome to Novitas, a podcast that explores stories about how we might live outside the capitalist paradigm towards collective liberation. My name is Kel Smith and I'm so excited to share today's conversation with Helen Tremethick.
Helen and I first met over a decade ago in a garden volunteering together to build a new community space to grow food. It didn't take much time to recognize Helen as a friend and co-conspirator, an ally in navigating the challenges and celebrating the joys. Helen is an anti-capitalist business coach, a profession that may seem at odds, but with more of us critically questioning what it means to be alive during late-stage capitalism, Helen's wisdom has become so critical.
Helen sees the world in a real way, in the rich multiplicity of lived experience mixed with the honest challenges many of us face. Not only as entrepreneurs, but as human beings. Helen's work asks the ever important question, what does it mean to exist inside the capitalist system while also working to dismantle it? In this episode, we explore what it means to be anti-capitalist, how we find joy while living in struggle, how we use our labor to have our needs met, and how we balance those needs with the work of building something better. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Kel: Hello Helen, I'm really excited because we are in the same space together recording this podcast. The stars have aligned and we are able to be in the same room having a conversation, which is awesome.
Helen: I know for the first time in like six, seven years.
Kel: It's been a while. If you didn't catch it, Helen contributed a really beautiful piece to the first issue of the Novitas magazine talking about what it means to be an anti-capitalist business owner or entrepreneur, I guess is a better word.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: Yeah. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that means?
Helen: Sure. So where to start? The other day in my membership community, we were talking about being anti-capitalist versus being capitalism critical. And I think that's a really good place to start because I think more and more of us are becoming capitalism critical, not necessarily anti-capitalist per se. There's a lot of connotation that goes along with that term that I think mainstream folks are uncomfortable with. And I'm not. I love being anti-capitalist. I love being capitalism critical. But having that kind of accessible language I think is really really important.
So essentially as an anti-capitalist entrepreneur I approach my business with the desire to help people over profit more money. I try to make very conscious decisions about my pricing and the accessibility of my pricing, knowing that I still live in this system, I still need to be making a certain amount of money in order to be compensated both for my work as well as pay for my rent, pay for my food, etc. So what I like us to think about
as entrepreneurs is where can I make more intentional decisions that do not put profit, money profit specifically over the other reasons why I got involved in this work.
Kel: Right. Yeah. I... sorry. I did tree planting when I was in my early twenties and when people sign up to go tree planting, I think a lot of they time they think of the trees and being in nature and being in the woods, but like little do they know that tree planting is like grueling work. And if you're not in it for the money, you're probably gonna go home in the first two weeks.
Helen: Absolutely. It's grueling work.
Kel: Yeah.
Helen: And it's monocropping one species in your pockets, well they're not pockets, but they're, you know...
Kel: Your planter bags. Yeah, that's like just a really good example that has never come to me before until you said that that's, that's the profit over the people.
Helen: There's a profit over the people. It's the profit over the ecology of it. And I do really want to disclaim that we still live in this system. So we still need to exchange money in order to survive. And so when I talk to my clients or when I talk to my audience, I tend to talk about the fact that we still need to make money. We still need to be in the system and we still need to consider money as a neutral tool of exchange. We can make good decisions with money and we can make bad decisions with money. There are numerous examples of people in the world who are making bad decisions with money. And so those of us who have anti-capitalist tendencies also tend to have money stories where we don't want to earn a lot of money because the examples of what we've seen are so bad of, you know, what people are doing with those giant amounts of money. Notwithstanding the fact that we will never make that kind of money, but we still need it. So if we can consider it as a neutral tool then we can start thinking about it in terms of what amount of this neutral tool do I need to exchange in order to feel fully compensated and feel like it's accessible for people as well. So I'm still helping people.
Kel: Yeah. And that's a tough one because I find the benchmark that people are going to use for like how much money do I need is am I having my needs met? And that is a largely arbitrary term. Having my needs met is going to be different than you getting your needs met and the amount of money that's required to meet those needs is inherently different as well. So it's like this slippery sliding scale of how much money is, am I justified in
charging or taking from other people, right?
Helen: Yeah. Well, there's a really good point. It's like are you taking from other people or are you exchanging at a rate that feels fair for both of you and you're right that is completely arbitrary. What your needs are will depend on where you live. If you're living in a city, it's going to be more expensive than if you're living rural. You're gonna have to factor in the size of your place, the size of your family. Also, what you consider your needs. Do you consider the newest smartphone your needs? Because you need to have the fastest technology. There are a lot of people out there who would say yes. So where do we draw that line and say this is what enough is.
I'd like to consider that a lot of times, when we say okay, I'm gonna price my services, this is what enough is, we also don't factor in future care because that feels selfish or greedy or what have you,
Kel: Hoarding...
Helen: Or hoarding. But this is also important. What my needs are aren't just so that I can get to the end of the day. And I talk a lot about how sustainability and sustainability as a whole is bullshit. The idea is bullshit because it considers only what we need to sustain ourselves. But when we start thinking about this in terms of thrivelihood, what do we need in order to thrive? Then we can start making decisions that aren't just money-based, but are also time-based, that are also connection-based. So when we're thinking about profit, we're taking the idea of making enough money, yes, but also making sure that we have enough time to spend with our families, making sure that we have well-being, and making sure that our future selves cared for and there are ways to do that that are not hoarding, that are not selfish, that are not greedy, that are not all of these things that we connect our money stories to and they are and always will be subjective but that there is the work, that there is where we need to do the work for ourselves, where it is not a formula that you can... I could never say this is how much you need to make this to happen, therefore this is what you need to do. That's not the work at all. The work is more introspective. How much time do I need to spend with my family in order to feel like that is enough?
Kel: Yeah, for sure. I think it's interesting when you factor in those other pieces as well to say like, in the work that I'm doing, how are my needs getting met, not just financially, but in community connection and in all these other different ways as well, that makes the formula even more complicated, right?
Helen: It does.
Kel: I know I talk a lot about doing volunteer work and the type of rewards that you get from volunteer work is very different than the type of rewards that you get from paid work.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: So how do those things then play in together as well?
Helen: Yeah. And the vast answer for a lot of people, well therefore I need to sell my services for a higher amount and the trouble is is that it's not that easy. Chances are if you're listening to this podcast and you are an entrepreneur you probably do need to raise your rates and and there is also an element there of, you know, what the market can withstand what people are able to afford and of course I would rather spend as much time with my family as I possibly can and there needs to be there needs to be an ebb and flow. There needs to be some flexibility. So it's not just about raising our rates more. Although it probably that's probably a bit
Kel: ...that is probably a piece of it...
Helen: But it is that we need to consider all of the factors in our personal ecosystem, work being one of them, that includes compensation, but also what else is in our ecosystem, and that will be wholly individual. So for you, there's volunteer work in there, as well as paid work. And there's also parenting and being part of the family, and that is going to be a factor in your ecosystem as well. There's going to be growing food and making decisions outside of the status quo society. So when we start plotting out your ecosystem, then we can start looking at, okay, what makes most sense for you in terms of your capacity. So your financial capacity, your time capacity, your well-being capacity and so on.
Kel: Right, right. You talked a little bit at the beginning about the difference between anti-capitalism and capitalism criticism, is that what you said?
Helen: Yeah, critical.
Kel: Critical capitalism. I guess for those people, who are listening and are interested in doing more of this work, what is the difference or what is the boundary between those two things? Because I think it's really clear that we are seeing a cultural shift towards being more critical of capitalism, like becoming mainstream in the status quo kind of thing. But there is also people really interested in doing this work of how do I remove capitalism from being such a huge influence in my life.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: And like, what is, what is the, the jumping off point there?
Helen: That's a great question. What is the jumping off point there? I think there are those of us who enter into this sort of thought process as realizing where we're realized that the system isn't really working to benefit us as individuals. And that's where we start what I would say becoming capitalism critical. Then we start learning terms like anti-capitalism. We start learning terms like wage theft. And we start criticizing the amount of money that the top earners in the world are making and seeing how that is directly affecting those in society. If there's a jumping off point between that and anti-capitalism, I would say that that's in the action.
Kel: Right.
Helen: That's in the active space of going from, hang on, maybe there is another option or other options, or maybe there are different decisions that I could make to be more intentional. And then the action of it saying, no, I do not want to participate in this particular way and I see the option and I'm going to take it. That is where we become more anti-capitalist. I think that anti-capitalism is a verb.
Kel: Right, right. So it's in the action itself. And I don't want to be exclusive and say because you work in nine to five and you're making money for a fat cat somewhere that you're not anti capitalist.
Helen: No!
Kel: I don't think that's the work.
Helen: That is not it. We cannot get we cannot get further as communities by shaming each other for our current situations. All we can do gosh, so much of this work is internal and individual. It is not pointing fingers at people who are also trying to make the decisions that they can for their family. There are a lot of people out there that are working two, three jobs just to make ends meet. I'm not going to tell them to quit one of them because their boss is stealing their wages or because capitalism is awful and will not ever because we can only do what we can. And until those options are available, we're going to keep doing only what's available. The things that we have to.
Kel: Yeah. I wrote in a recent blog post that capitalism harms us all. And I really think it does, like from the top down, because the people who are even doing the hoarding are still suffering under the same system internally, right? How well connected can you be to the land and space and people when you're partaking in this system, which you're told is how you succeed in life, right? So it's definitely not just, the suffering doesn't just happen on the bottom, it happens on the top too and I think the more that we can identify the harms of capitalism as systemic and not necessarily attached to specific individuals who make it worse.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: I think that the change needs to come from that space, right?
Helen: I wholly agree. And the way... some of the things that you talk about a lot is how community will be the way that we move away from this system.
Kel: I hope so.
Helen: I hope so too. And community is very hard to create as adults when we are stuck in nine-to-fives or in the ways that we make our money in order to get our needs met and so on. Community is very, very difficult. And even more so because we live in a really divisive society right now, which benefits the system, it benefits the structure. If we're in-fighting about this versus that, then we are going to be less of a tight-knit community and therefore more hyper individualistic and therefore the system gets more ingrained. So saying like making community, that's the solution. It is one of the solutions, but it's not easy. None of this is easy. If it were, then we'd be shining examples of how easy it was and you could do it too for only six payments of whatever, right? But it's not that, because it's so individual, because it's so personal and because the current wants to push us downstream.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. So I moved back to Guelph, back to the city from the country and I was looking for community to tap into and one of the things that I have found and I don't know if this is universal, probably not, the city where I live is a pretty special place, but there's all of these little pop-up markets. I don't know if you've experienced this, but I came back and it was like during the summer and there was this swell of local makers coming together and doing these little pop-up markets, which is really cool except now there's this super saturation of them and for the most part, not including the farmers market, I would say but for the most part people are selling handmade clothes, jewelry, trinkets... I sell rugs and zines. These are not things that people need to buy and before we were talking on the podcast we were talking a little bit about how as a business that sells a non-essential items, sometimes it can be very hard to want to market yourself. So there's this strange juxtaposition where we're like, yes, let's relocalize our economies, but the things that are being offered in those spaces aren't necessarily the things that people need.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: And as an entrepreneur or a business owner, I am now struggling kind of with the idea of like, is the thing that I am selling worth selling? Is there value in me in participating in these spaces? Am I justified - that may be a strong word - in asking people to spend their dollars on a non-essential item to support my entrepreneurial idea or my small business?
Helen: Yeah. Oh. So the question that you're asking is a really common one, especially for those of us who take the time and look around and say see what's happening, seeing what's happening with the market, seeing what's happening with people in general. I think we are currently in a place where people don't have as much disposable income as they used to and that means that they're not paying for things that are, like, quote-unquote, unnecessary. That includes stuff like therapy, that is necessary, but it includes stuff like self-development, it includes stuff like hobbies, it includes art. And this is such a shame that these are the things that drop by the wayside when those are the exact things that build us up and make us healing and whole humans. So the question you ask is really common. Should I even be selling this? You know, it's not something that people need. And the only thing that I can say as somebody who, you know, facilitates ideas and questions in other entrepreneurs is the world needs you, the world needs your gifts, and we can't make up what other people's money stories are. We can't spend our time inside other people's wallets guessing at what's there. We can show up, do our best, try and have fun, and there will be people who will say, actually, you need a new rug. Like I actually do, because my dog chewed up the last one and this is exactly what I need right now. Or I have a little bit of disposable income and I really, really, really want to support zine makers. And so there are those people still.
The other thing, I love to think about, and as I know you do, and it's not talked about a lot, is the gift economy where we take money out of it altogether. Most of the time, sometimes money is involved because again, it's a neutral tool for exchange. And you know, it doesn't work for entrepreneur necessarily because I tend to think about the way that we make our livelihood and currently our livelihood involves being compensated with that neutral tool of money. And there are these options as well. And when those options are in play, we can then decide intentionally whether this is a decision we want to make in that direction or not. And that way we support each other more.
Kel: Like, as far as like whether I need to make money in order to pay my bills or whether I can offer this as a gift, like in that kind of economic model.
Helen: Yeah, or exchange something else with it. So whether you can accept something as a gift, that is a big one. The big one is really hard to accept the gift, especially when we've attached value to it in our head and that value seems high. It's very difficult to receive and it's less difficult to give. But these are ways that we then sort of build up that community in kind of a subversive way that is outside of making money. Again, not withstanding that we still need to make money to survive.
You did touch on something that I think is important to note about there are all of these pop-up markets happening and that that is becoming quite saturated and I feel the desire to mention that it is so fun, there is just so much dopamine in starting a thing. And sometimes, we don't need to start a thing. Sometimes we need to find the things that are happening and then join them because there are other people who have started it and they need more hands.
Kel: I've been thinking a lot about that since moving back and leaving the volunteer opportunities that I was working at when I was more rural and coming in and being like, where do I wanna spend my time and energy? And the default is always I want to start this new cool thing.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: Not because I want to have ownership of it or because I want it to be mine, but because I love planning shit, like it's really exciting for me.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: But I did my research and talked to a number of different community members who are doing work in the same kind of space that I'd like to be doing and they were like, oh do you know this person? They could really use some help. Or have you heard of this farm? They could use some volunteers for sure. Or there's this program happening that is very well aligned. Maybe you should check that out. And it was like, this is a little bit of come down. I mean like, okay, my gifts aren't needed here. But also like having worked in spaces that are volunteer run, you always need more hands. Always, always, always. And joining those communities and seeing the cool work that's happening is definitely the same kind of dopamine hit as starting your own thing. And sometimes like in an even more rewarding way.
Helen: Absolutely, it can be. If we can put the ego piece aside, right? Because it's not that your gifts are not needed. Your gifts are needed. And sometimes starting a new thing isn't the best decision for the whole of the community. Sometimes, sometimes it is, sometimes it is.
Break: You're listening to the Novitas podcast with me, Kel Smith. And my guest today is Helen Tremethick, a business strategist for established yet weary entrepreneurs tired of compromising their ideals and vision to play the game of capitalism. Helen's insight helps folks like me that struggle with existing insight while also trying to tear it down. Helen wrote an amazing piece for the first issue of the Novitas magazine, which is sadly sold out, but you can follow on the socials and on the Novitas website to stay tuned as the next issue is coming together. You can find Novitas on Instagram at @NovitasMag and online at www.Novitasmag.com. Now back to the conversation.
Kel: So we're talking about the difference between capitalist, criticism, say it properly for me again.
Helen: Capitalism critical.
Kel: Yeah, capitalism critical, I was saying it the other way around. And then people wanting to do the work to move to anti-capitalist. I feel like sometimes a lot of people fall into this habit of like, okay, I need to work for myself. I don't wanna work for other people. And then, or even people saying, I think the work that I wanna be doing isn't producing widgets anymore. I really wanna make art, which is awesome. Like that's great, that's needed. It's a form of self-expression that I think everybody needs to, you know, but then we get to a point where every, like there is a super saturation of people making art. And I think I feel this a lot social media culture as well. We have a lot of people saying the same thing in different ways and the message gets saturated and I just I feel like maybe we've reached this point of like independent creation outside of the capitalist paradigm but there's all these people doing the same thing and for me personally it makes me want to pull back a lot. Like, a lot a lot like on the bad days like why am I even doing this there's so many other people doing this work in this space. I am just contributing to the noise, I'm contributing to the clutter, what I really need to do is pull back and just maybe just listen more instead of speaking so much.
Helen: Right.
Kel: I don't know if that plays into it at all.
Helen: I want to offer this. And this is so very not business coachy. It is not a thing that people are supposed to say as business coaches. They're not supposed to say, maybe you make your money elsewhere. And maybe you make your joy separately from your money. Because the whole idea of being an entrepreneur has been really tied into do what you love, do what you love for a living. But here's where I'm getting stuck, especially recently. I think that this idea of the entrepreneurial landscape, the freelancing landscape of doing what you love for your living is actually just another perpetuation of living the American dream. It is just another perpetuation of capitalism as a whole. You as an individual, you can make your money, live your life, do this one thing and have it all. And all you gotta do is sell it more. All you gotta do is sell it more. All you gotta do is show up, say the right thing and then people will come and I don't know that that's true and I got I gotta say I've been doing this work in one iteration or another for 13 years and this one idea has thrown me for a bit of a loop because now I want to say what if what if we make our money because we need it in the ways that we can make our money and not put so much pressure around what that money means or where it comes from or how it's made and we find our joy where we find our joy. In microjoys at work, in macrojoys in you know that beauty of creation. And when they overlap, to notice and be super grateful, but not to consider it a failure if they don't overlap. What if we can pull ourselves away from this idea of the way I make my money must be the way that I fulfill myself.
Kel: As a rule of anti-capitalist behavior, right? Like, in order to be anti-capitalist, you have to do it this way.
Helen: Right?
Kel: Yeah. That's very insightful, thank you Helen. I'm just asking all of the questions that I'm struggling with.
Helen: Well I love that we're talking about it because these are questions that I struggle with as well. I recently got a part-time job, like a J-O-B, where I have a supervisor who has a supervisor who also has a supervisor. I am not a union employee, but it behaves a lot like one because there are union employees in the county. I'm a county employee. I love it. I love it. And in order to get this job, I had to make a resume. I had to submit the resume online. And to go through the interview process...
Kel: ...which all probably felt kind of icky.
Helen: Oh my gosh, I had to prepare for the interview. Why am I a good person for this position? What experience have I had that would add to the culture of the space? It did feel icky. It felt like, it felt like kind of a failure. It felt like taking a step backward because I was supposed to have made it. I was supposed to have not needed the part-time job and there are other factors that this part-time job fills for me, namely my need for community, which has been entirely online for 13 years and I have felt a real lack of physical provides that and that's a beautiful thing and in all honesty it also provides a regular amount of money in my bank account that I don't have to worry about and I don't have to market for and I don't have to produce content for that I then have to edit that content and then write something that's so piffy and witty that people are like, oh, I want to buy her services right now. I don't have to do that. I just show up.
Kel: And it also facilitates your ability to continue doing this other work that you love doing.
Helen: Exactly, exactly. And how beautiful is it that I can then go and get some money elsewhere so that I can continue doing the thing that I love.
Kel: Even if it doesn't make as much as I need if it's not fulfilling your needs, like in all the ways that we talked about. Yeah, I think that's really beautiful. And I love the permission to be able to do that. And also, hopefully for folks being able to find work that they do find meaningful.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: And it's funny because a lot of typical questions that gets asked in like anarchism 101 groups is, who's gonna pick up the garbage and who's gonna do all the jobs that nobody else wants to do. But in reality, like when you find a job you love... It's... you love it for many different reasons. And sometimes it's picking up garbage, right? So hopefully for people who are on the fence about that kind of stuff and listening to this, that the permission to go and find something that you find meaningful for paid labour does not mean that you're a capitalist.
Helen: It doesn't.
Kel: You know, pig or anything like that. It just means that you're surviving in a system just like everybody else.
Helen: Absolutely.
Kel: Hopefully, while also building the new structures that allow us to operate outside that system in the future.
Helen: Yeah, where it provides you options to make more intentional decisions. And I would also like to offer, we've been talking a lot about chores in our household because I live with a pre-teen, and we talk about how they say, oh I don't like doing that, and I found myself saying the other day, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you like it or whether you don't like it. It is a thing that needs to get done. And when we wrap it all up in, well, I like it, well, I don't like it, it puts a whole lot of pressure on the task to serve you in a particular way. And sometimes the kitty letters just needs scooping and it doesn't have to be enjoyable or not enjoyable and we don't have to be like compensated in ways that we're like, oh, that was worthy and I feel worthy. Sometimes you pick up the garbage because you want to live in a clean house and that's it. Sometimes you just scoop the litter boxes because they were gross.
Kel: Yeah. In some ways the chore conversation is such a big one for me ebecause I think a lot about contributing to the collective as well. So just because you don't find a task individually rewarding, can you get some gratification knowing that you are contributing to a whole where you are helping meet the needs of other people as well. Right? So yeah that's a big one that comes up a lot in our unschooling world because there is these different branches of unschooling and some of them tend to be hyper individualistic where I say to my child, no you don't have to do anything you don't like. And that's not serving them I think, and it's definitely not serving me.
Helen: Yeah.
Kel: Because then I'm picking up everything and then I get strained on, right? So this idea of unschooling as a community activity where we're all taking care of each other. So if I say, can you come do this thing with me? And I know you're not necessarily going to like it, but it's really helpful for me. And then like, here's the prime example: Yesterday I got home after a very long day of being out and I had to do grocery shopping and we're trying this thing to do grocery shopping by bicycle, which is great except someone stole my bike trailer. Oh no. Yeah, which is unfortunate. I hope they needed it more than I did. So I have a basket.
Helen: That's very generous of you by the way.
Kel: There was some choice words when it happened, but I have a basket on the back of my bike and I have a basket on the front of my bike and I can put two on my handlebars so I'm pretty sad but if we need more groceries as we did yesterday sometimes I need my teenage son to come with me so that he can carry some stuff as well and he doesn't want to do this at all right this is not his idea of a fun Friday activity biking down to the grocery store when we could be going in the van, right? Really we could but he didn't complain at all yesterday about it I just asked him and he said yes and I asked my younger son if he wanted to come and he said no and there was no argument he just came. And it was really beautiful and I hope maybe deep inside like a representation of like him providing assistance to me in a way that I needed so that all of the family could have groceries
Helen: Yeah, and seeing value in that work not for what it serves how it serves individually, but how it serves as you say like the community collective in this case your family and that is a really beautiful way of thinking about, you know, these tasks. Well, who's going to pick up the garbage? Well, it, it doesn't necessarily have to be your top skill. So when we're talking about business. I don't want to forget that we're also talking about life. We're talking about life. Don't want to forget that we're also talking about business. We're essentially talking about how does my ecosystem work in a way that is most favorable? And this is where the permaculture piece comes in, where these are all of the pieces of my ecosystem. How do I get the most yields while meeting the needs of all of these pieces? And that is a very, very personal solution. And very disappointingly, it is not a fixed solution either. It is fluid and flexible, just like every ecosystem. So what we want to do instead is learn how to resource ourselves so that we're caring for our nervous system, so that we can make better decisions for, and not just reactive decisions. So we care for our nervous systems, and then we consider the whole, and then we make our decisions intentionally. And when we're doing that, then all of a sudden, money doesn't play into it as much. It doesn't have as much weight and that is so anti-capitalist. It's not that it doesn't have weight. Of course it has weight. We live in this system. But we can pull out and see what else there is available.
Kel: Even just to acknowledge that there are all these other pieces to it, which I think for the most part, when you're stuck in that nine to five grind that is leaving you unfulfilled and unsatisfied in all the other ways. You don't even notice that those pieces are there or required or missing or attainable, you know, absolutely. They don't even come into play.
Helen: Until somebody says, Hey, actually, do you want to do community food prep on Sundays because the food thing is driving me bonkers and I'm eating crap all week. And then all of a sudden you've created a little community of people who are prepping food together and then you're eating better throughout the week and then you have this connection piece even though you're in the nine to five there's still there's still ways that you can serve the other pieces in that ecosystem so the nine to five becomes just a thing
Kel: And to tie it back right in here the activities that maybe are not our favorite activities become more enjoyable and more fulfilling right because we're doing them in a different way.
Helen: Exactly. So there are ways, not around, but through those pieces in us that are stuck or hesitant or resentful about. Because one of the things that comes with being an anti-capitalist more often than not is resentment about the fact that we live in a capitalist society where like I hate it here and I want to just opt out altogether.
Kel: This is not how I want to live my life!
Helen: Right and the only way out is to pay your way out. The only way out is to make so much money that you can now afford to opt out and most of us, slash all of us, aren't going to get there in that way. So how do we game it so that we're going through these pieces that we usually resent, but are being rewarded in other ways?
Kel: Yeah. We've been chatting for a while, kind of non-stop. Is there anything else that you want to talk about, Helen?
Helen: Oh, so off the top, I want to say sometimes the decisions that we make are not the ones that have the latest footprint. They're not the ones that are necessarily the most anti-capitalist or divest from the system. Sometimes they're just the ones that make it easier today. And sometimes that has to be okay. And sometimes, sometimes it won't be. Sometimes it'll be like, actually, I'm gonna work a bit harder and I'm gonna make a better decision here.
But gosh, we can't do this work from a place of guilt. And we can't do this work from a place of judgment. We need to come back to our self-compassion. We need to come back to caring for our nervous system. And if we're gonna be making our money from a nine to five, then that's just, that's okay. It doesn't mean that you failed. If you're gonna go and get a job on the side so that you can continue to do the work, that's okay, you haven't failed. It's not a step back. It is actually a step forward in a clear decision and an intentional decision that makes your ecosystem work better.
Outro: Thanks for listening to this episode of Novitas with Helen Tremethick, a holistic business coach that helps entrepreneurs navigate the business world in late-stage capitalism. If you'd like to learn more about Helen, you can visit her website at www.helentremethick.com. That's www.helentremethick.com. I hope you've enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can become a paid subscriber on the Substack at Novitas.substack.com. Thanks for listening.
Anti-capitalist Existence in a Capitalist System