This week’s STOP is going out to everyone — because this particular topic feels like one we all need, wherever you are in the Subtract to Succeed journey.
🎵 Today’s song: It’s Not Right But It’s OK - Whitney Houston
Acknowledgment is the first step in healing from moral injury. Not confession, not condemnation. Just honest recognition of what is true, even when it’s complicated. Sounds a lot like our STOP practice, right?
Here’s what’s true about capitalism: it has pulled more people out of poverty than any economic system in human history. And it has roots in slavery.
And it currently produces the richest companies the world has ever seen, many of which offer health insurance too fragile to be useful, don’t pay living wages, and structurally penalize anyone with a sick child, an aging parent, or a body that doesn’t perform on demand.
All of that is true. Simultaneously.
I’m not advocating for communism. You don’t have to liquidate your equities portfolio or cancel your Amazon Prime (we’ll get there).
The invitation is to recognize that the system is not neutral — and your participation in it is not without consequences.
That’s it. That’s today’s whole STOP.
Acknowledgment doesn’t require action. It just requires honesty. And in a culture that rewards relentless forward motion, pausing long enough to say this is complex and it costs something is a more radical act than it sounds.
“It’s not right, but it’s OK,” in Whitney’s words, for now at least… The rest of the week, we’ll talk about what to do with what you find. Acknowledgment is where all real change begins. Let yourself sit with it today.
And if this resonates, join me and Alison Taylor — author of Higher Ground and one of the sharpest thinkers on corporate ethics alive — on April 30 at noon ET for a live conversation on exactly this: what it actually looks like to lead with integrity inside imperfect systems.
Keep on rollin’,
Nell