Healing Our Politics

Welcome to the Debut Episode of Healing Our Politics!

Guest: Jonathan Cappelli, a dedicated public servant, Executive Director, and regional expert in affordable housing and urban development.
In this inaugural episode, host Skippy Mesirow delves into Jonathan's remarkable journey in public service. From the mangroves of Ecuador to the forests of Colorado, Jonathan shares his experiences, highlighting how he has navigated his career while managing ADHD and a recent bipolar disorder diagnosis. Together, they explore how Jonathan's unique challenges have become strengths, enhancing his problem-solving, decision-making, and leadership skills.

Ultimately, Jonathan has learned to leverage personal challenges as strengths to improve problem-solving, decision-making, and management abilities, and you will learn how you can, too…

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Key Topics Discussed:
  • [00:03:32] Protecting Mangrove Ecosystems: Jonathan's internship in Ecuador and his efforts against illegal shrimp farming.
  • [00:05:27] Cultural Insights: Understanding the Afro-Ecuadorian community and culture.
  • [00:11:40] Environmental Conservation: Reflecting on the lessons learned from conservation challenges.
  • [00:27:40] Nature & Mental Health: The therapeutic role of nature in Jonathan's life.
  • [00:41:47] Managing Neurodiversity: Insights into living with ADHD and bipolar disorder.
  • [00:51:00] The Role of Jiu-jitsu: How practicing jiu-jitsu has been a transformative experience for Jonathan.
  • [01:01:15] The Concept of Monotaxyphilia: Discussing the love of single explanations.
  • [01:15:30] Reflections on the Keshet Program: A look into special needs education.
  • [01:30:25] Coping Strategies: Jonathan’s techniques for managing stress and staying productive.
  • [01:57:45] Workplace Strategies: Effective approaches for managing neurodiversity in professional settings.
Where to Find Jonathan Cappelli:
  • Neighborhood Development Collaborative - The Neighborhood Development Collaborative (NDC), is a 501(c)3  composed of 20 Front Range affordable housing and community development organizations. Their mission is to build thriving communities by connecting the voices and coordinating the efforts of NDC members working to create stable, secure, and affordable re-housing, rental, homeownership, and wealth-building opportunities for Coloradans, regardless of their race, class, and zip code.
  • Cappelli Consulting - Specializing in affordable housing and urban development strategies. Cappelli Consulting provides comprehensive solutions to complex regional planning and development challenges.
  • LinkedIn
Where to Find Host Skippy Mesirow:
Key References and Resources Mentioned:
Episode Sponsor:

Elected Leaders Collective (ELC)
Helping You Heal Our Politics
The ELeaders Collective (ELC) organization is the leading US-based provider of mental well-being training for public servants, conducted by public servants and the world's best mental health and human optimization professionals. With ELC Training, you will learn to rise above and become the political healer you were meant to be, improving your well-being in the process.
Contact the HOP Team:
Do you have an episode idea, want to suggest a guest, or want to offer critical feedback? We'd love to hear from you! Contact us at jesselink3@gmail.com with your suggestions and thoughts. Your input helps us create content that matters.

Creators & Guests

Host
Skippy Mesirow
Skippy Mesirow is a prominent leader, certified Master Coach, and founder of the Elected Leaders Collective (ELC) and ELC Foundation. ELC leads the US in mental health and well-being training for public servants, recognized in The Apolitical Foundation's Mere Mortals report, and named as one of 26 worldwide political well-being "Trailblazer Organizations." A transformational leader in political innovation and wellness, Skippy serves on Gov. Polis’s Natural Medicine Advisory. Skippy’s work has been featured in numerous podcasts and publications, as well as main-stage speaking engagements for organizations NLC, YEO, CML, MT2030, Bridging Divides, and Fulcrum, highlighting his significant contributions to mental health, community, and policy reform. Alongside his professional achievements, Skippy lives in Aspen, CO. with his partner Jamie where he enjoys running ultra-marathons, road biking, motorcycling, international travel, culinary arts, Burning Man, and lifelong learning.
Producer
Aaron Calafato
Aaron’s stories are currently heard by millions around the globe on his award-winning Podcast 7 Minute Stories and on YouTube. Aaron is a co-host of Glassdoor's new podcast (The Lonely Office) and serves as a podcast consultant for some of the fastest-growing companies in the world.
Editor
Jesse Link
Jesse is a strategy, research and partnership consultant and podcast enthusiast. A 2x founder, former Goldman Sachs Vice President and advisor to 25+ businesses, Jesse brings a unique and diverse background to HoP, helping to elevate the range, depth and perspective of HoP's conversations and strategy.

What is Healing Our Politics?

Hello,

I’m Skippy Mesirow, host of “Healing Our Politics,” the show that shows you, the heart-centered public servants and political leaders, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror.

Healing Our Politics, “HOP,” is a first-of-its-kind show that provides tools and practices for mental well-being, health, and balance, specifically for public servants so we can do good by feeling good and safe in our jobs.

HOP brings together experts, scientists, doctors, thought leaders, healers, and coaches to share their insights in practical, tactical, actionable ways specifically tailored to the public service experience for you to test and implement with yourself and your teams. Episodes feature intimate conversations with global leaders about their self-care practices and personal challenges, providing insights for a more holistic, connected approach to leadership. Whether you're a Mayor, teacher, police officer, or staffer, this podcast will guide you to be the best version of yourself in service to yourself and the world!

Sign up for our once-per-month Leader’s Handbook newsletter to receive an actionable toolkit of how-to guides on topics discussed on the podcast that month to test and implement in your life and with your team: https://leadershandbook.substack.com/

Skippy Mesirow:

Hello. My name is Skippy Mesirow, coach, former elected official, and lifetime public servant. Welcome to Healing Our Politics, The show that shows you, the heart centered public servant and political leader, how to heal our politics by starting with the human in the mirror. It is my job to sit down or stand up with the best experts in all areas of human development, thought leaders, coaches, therapists, authors, scientists, and more to take the best of what they have learned and translate it specifically for the public service experience, providing you actionable, practical, tactical tools that you can test out today in your life and with your teens. I will also talk to leaders across the globe with a self care practice, getting to know them at a deeply human and personal level so that you can learn from their challenges and journey.

Skippy Mesirow:

Warning. This is a post partisan space. Yes. I have a bias. You have a bias.

Skippy Mesirow:

We all have a bias. Everybody gets a bias. And I will be stripping out all of the unconscious cues of bias from this space. No politics, partisanship, or policy here because well-being belongs to all of us, and we will all be better served if every human in leadership, regardless of party, ideology, race, or geography, are happier, healthier, and more connected. This show is about resourcing you, the human doing leadership, and trusting you to make up your own damn mind about what to do with it and what's best for your community.

Skippy Mesirow:

So as always, with love, here we go. This week, I sit down with public servant Jonathan Capelli, a leading regional expert in affordable housing and urban development out of Denver, Colorado. We dive into Jonathan's years of service from the mangroves of Ecuador to the forests of Colorado. We discuss serving with ADHD and his recently diagnosed bipolar disorder and see what you can learn about serving with or managing those who are also neuroatypical. We dive into habit replacement techniques, addiction cessation, nature exposure as a balm for the stress of public life, and monotaxophilia.

Skippy Mesirow:

More fun on that to come and so much more. Ultimately, Jonathan has learned to leverage his personal challenges as a strength to improve problem solving, decision making and management abilities. And on this episode, you can learn how to. So I hope you enjoy this fun and wide ranging conversation with my friend, Jonathan Capelli.

Jonathan Capelli:

I'm very happy to be here with you, Skippy. That was fun. I had not thought about the Ecuador job in quite some time, but that was that was really kinda where it all started. So that was interesting to reflect on. But

Skippy Mesirow:

Let's start with Ecuador then because this is something I actually don't know a whole lot about, and it sounds super interesting. So I I guess can you give me just a thumbnail of what you were doing there? And then how does a kid from Rifle, Colorado end up in Ecuador doing effectively mangrove conservancy.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. So this falls more in the in the internship internship category than the full on job. This is just a semester in college, but but it did start things. So I went to St. Olaf College, which is a small liberal arts school in rural Minnesota.

Jonathan Capelli:

How I got there is a different story, but ended up there. And they have a j term, essentially where you get out, during the during the winter in January, which makes sense because it's it's in Minnesota. So literally everyone tries to leave campus. And so I didn't pick Ecuador for any particular reason other than that it's at the hottest place on Earth during the winter since it's at the equator. So I just it's actually gotta be.

Skippy Mesirow:

Ecuador is at the equator? Shocking. I I figured that while I was there like an idiot. I was like, oh. Yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I was like, alright. I'm gonna go down there. And had an amazing j term and then felt that a month was too short to spend there, so I decided to just go back the very next semester and then spend as long as I could after that as well. So I spent a good, I don't know, 8 months or so down there altogether. So I, at that time, had already worked for the forest service, but also in the internship position or capacity when I was in high school and then as a summer job later in college too.

Jonathan Capelli:

So that was so the the environmental side of that was interesting to me. And while I was down there for the 2nd semester, I decided to take this internship with an organization out in Eastern Ecuador I'm sorry, Western Ecuador. And it was this tiny little island called Muizne, which is in the Esmeraldas province of of Northern Ecuador, and it's a pretty fascinating place. It's culturally, it's interesting. It's it's there's a lot of sort of Afro Ecuadorians there.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's really, really black, essentially. It's a it's a combination of histories of folks who have a very similar history to, like compared to African Americans in terms of the history of being imported there essentially first through slavery. But then there's a whole bunch that also were brought there, but then escaped almost instantly and then created, like, a fusion culture with the indigenous folks who lived along the coast there. So there's 2 distinct sort of Afro Ecuadorian populations that live in Ecuador, and between them, they compose this region that is just culturally very distinct from the rest of Ecuador.

Skippy Mesirow:

Just from my own because I I'm totally ignorant of the history. So while Ecuador is part of the Spanish empire, this is when they're bringing in slaves and this is for, like, sugar cultivation, or do you know what the

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

Okay. So similar deal, but somehow this small pocket has a rebellion, and they end up forming an alliance with the indigenous populations.

Jonathan Capelli:

More or less. Although I don't know

Skippy Mesirow:

if it

Jonathan Capelli:

was how formal it was, but it's similar to how the Seminoles escaped slaves integrated with sort of Native American communities over time, and ex were able to exist more or less independently. So you'll you'll have places in Northern Ecuador where there will be certain words that are, like, Ghanaian, like, from Ghana, will still, like, exist and and have been used culturally. But then at the same time, having, yeah, a number of of elements of the culture that are tied to just indigenous Ecuadorian culture.

Skippy Mesirow:

And did you know is that part of what attracted you to that area, or was that something you found out when you got there?

Jonathan Capelli:

I was interested in the area because folks in the middle of Ecuador, in the Serrano, in the in the higher altitude, central area, Quito, etcetera, that are mestizo. Often thought that I was from from Northern Ecuador because I'm similarly complexion to the lighter skinned folks that are out there because of their having this mixed background. So everyone always assumed that I was from the coast. And at the time, I had dreads, so then they they assumed Photos. Present photos.

Jonathan Capelli:

So, yeah, they they really thought it was from there until I said more than 3 words, and they realized that I was the gringo. But it meant that I was treated in a in a interesting way. Until I was they discovered that I was American, they there's a similar level of discrimination and racism that has has gone on in Ecuador against people of Afro Ecuadorian descent for a while, but it's not similar for, like, Americans. So as soon as they discovered I was American, it was treated very differently. It was just interesting.

Skippy Mesirow:

So they treated you worse when they thought you were of Yeah. Ecuadorian descent.

Jonathan Capelli:

It was it wasn't uncommon to call folks who lived on the coast, especially in that African region, monos, so like monkeys, for instance. And, yeah, Ecuador is a very interesting place. There's a lot of a lot of races, and boasted both against the indigenous and folks who are from who speak Quechua, who are further east Yeah. And then also the Afro Ecuadorians on the on the west. So I had heard all this and was just curious about that part of the country.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I got there, and the there's a little island right off the coast called Muizne that's like a mangrove environment. It's think think Everglades. Right? But there's there's a shrimp industry there. And the way that some of these shrimp farms essentially are are created is that so the mangroves are an extremely biodiverse important ecosystem, and it's known as, like, the nursery of of the ocean.

Jonathan Capelli:

So a lot of whether you're a baby octopus or you're shrimp or you're a baby fish, you can hide out and kinda hang out in the mangroves because it's protected a little bit from the tides and protected from

Skippy Mesirow:

It's like a coral reef equivalent.

Jonathan Capelli:

Coral reef equivalent. Exactly. But then, yeah, but, like, on the coast. Interesting. And so it's extremely biodiverse.

Jonathan Capelli:

If you ever get a chance to snorkel or swim in the mangroves, it it's almost like you're in a coral reef, but instead of the corals, there's all these, like, tubular roots that you're, like, swimming through and around. It's really interesting.

Skippy Mesirow:

Interesting.

Jonathan Capelli:

Long story short, why I mentioned it being this sort of, you know, beginning, I think, of of my journey or at least one of the beginnings was because the shrimp farms that are out there, most of them are illegal. In in order to set them up, you have to cut down huge swaths of the mangroves, and you could basically use the fact that there's that the mangrove shore up against the water and against the tides, etcetera, to create these these pools where you've clear cut the center of, like, the mangrove forest, but you've left the trees all around it. Mhmm. And you just yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

So it's sort of like the the maritime equivalent of slash and burn farming in the Amazon where you are getting rid of the natural ecosystem, but taking advantage of what the natural ecosystem left for a period in terms of rich soils and the rest of it. But over time, you degrade the ecosystem and it doesn't come back.

Jonathan Capelli:

Exactly right. Yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. Interesting. What I'm curious about is I get curious in 2 places here. One is you have a as evidenced to everyone immediately already have a very high fidelity perspective of different cultures and backgrounds. And I wonder if, yeah, I wonder how much of, like, growing up in a black family in Rifle, Colorado sort of ceded the interest to go down to Ecuador because in some ways, there's like this I would imagine there's some kind of similar relationship.

Skippy Mesirow:

The other direction is what what is this through line for you of the love of nature? Right? Because, like, you're you're down there to protect nature, but, like, I see that in the forest service. Yeah. So I'm curious about that.

Jonathan Capelli:

So you're out there. They're doing all this deforestation, and a lot of it's happening in a Refugio del del Vida Silvestre. So, essentially, like a forest refuge. But there's a lot of corruption, and so a lot of officials are supposed to be protecting those mangroves as if it was the Everglades just get paid off by this huge multinational shrimping industry. But there are some nonprofits that sort of fight against it, and so our job was to go around and find these illegal pools where they were doing the shrimp farming and map them and report them, which sometimes resulted in things happening and other times did not.

Jonathan Capelli:

And I think the the the one thing that really got me almost, like, radicalized me in some ways, was we found this this illegal pool and went up and started. And they were starting on a new one, and there was some scaffolding setting set up to sort of, to start filling up with water. So we got out some sort of sledgehammers and started taking it down. And the guy who owned the pool was there, and he was just chilling on a chair, smoking a cigarette, and watching us, and then being like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yep. Sorry about that. Go ahead. And, was just kind of supervising us, knocking down this the scaffolding for this pool. And while we were doing that, I ended up cutting my hand on, some of the the scaffolding.

Jonathan Capelli:

And it got pretty like, it was pretty deep cut, so I was bleeding a lot. And so he comes over off his chair, and he's like, just follow me. And here, we'll fix this up. And he's, like, taking care of my bloodied hand, you know, the bad guy. Right?

Jonathan Capelli:

And he actually said this is gross. I don't know if this is medically good advice, but he asked me to dip my hand into the pool because there's so many, like, chemicals and antibiotics and stuff to yeah. Right? To keep, yeah, to to keep

Skippy Mesirow:

Percent of the time, it goes right all the time.

Jonathan Capelli:

Really gross. But he says, like, dip it in there. And, like, our goal is to keep is to keep out bacterial and biological growth. So it's it's very clean water. Dip your hand in there.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I dip my hand in there. It burned.

Skippy Mesirow:

Is your Spanish good enough to understand all of

Jonathan Capelli:

this at

Skippy Mesirow:

the time?

Jonathan Capelli:

Or Yeah. At the time. So, so washing my hand off, I was like, why are you even helping me? And what is you know what? You you don't seem bothered at all by the fact that we're doing this.

Jonathan Capelli:

And he's like, oh, yeah. Like, I'll just hire some guys to for, like, a couple bucks to fix all this after you guys leave. This doesn't bother me at all. And I was like, oh. So so we bandaged up my hand, lets me continue doing the work, smoking a cigarette while watching us, and then waves to us goodbye as we leave.

Jonathan Capelli:

And I spoke to some of my sort of colleagues, and they're like, yeah. It'll probably be up in a couple days again, but at least it's registered and that we know where an illegal operation is happening. I was like, what is the point of all this? I don't know if there was a specific lesson other than that there are different types of activities that one can do in any given field. And, some regardless of the motivation, you know, doing an activity or or or working on something, no matter how much your heart is into it, can be completely futile.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? And there's there's effective action, and there's ineffective action. And I was out there feeling like we were doing something and spent that whole sort of, like, summer doing feeling like I was doing something, and it, like, it just wasn't. It was it was like walking on a treadmill. But I was putting a lot of energy into that, and so is this entire organization.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so figuring out how to make sure that your interventions or your activities are actually making a change as opposed to walking in place. And then yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

It's interesting. It raises the thought for me of, I guess, if I were to kind of project I don't know anything about the the mangrove deforestation, but it would be easy for me to find myself, especially as a younger person in the mindset of, like, these people don't care about the environment. They're just doing it for the money. And thinking about that in a very negative light. Then taking a second to step back and be like, oh, whatever that story is behind that guy, what are his other options?

Skippy Mesirow:

What part of his family does he need to feed? Like, what are the what are the very human realities about why this is the best choice for him? And then switching sides and looking at what I would have imagined to be this sort of valorous government program that is trying to save the rainforest, not the rainforest, the mangroves, and yet, actually, at least in this case, it sounds like not doing anything. And what are we really doing the program for? Is it just so that the person in the office gets a paycheck?

Skippy Mesirow:

And it's like, are they actually are the motivations behind these things any different? It's, like, interesting.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. That was a huge other consideration. It did turn out that most of the guys who were running these operations were from the larger cities and weren't weren't locals and were making a lot of money because the shrimp industry is huge. So unless you're eating shrimp that's been certified, whatever, to be well and sustainably sourced, there's a chance it's coming from any one of these pools at any given time. So these these guys weren't hurting financially, which is part of why they were so unbothered by anything we were doing.

Jonathan Capelli:

But but regardless of that, it your your question is still is still right or your statement because this was how he made a living. Right? He and everyone else like him weren't out there to destroy the mangroves. Right? Just like anyone who works in oil and gas, right, in in America or any other given place isn't out to destroy the the environment or or start climate change or or worsen climate change.

Jonathan Capelli:

They're just doing they're just doing what they're doing. It's it's how they make a living. There are bad guys out there, but, there are fewer and further between than I think the narratives that we, construct about what's right and wrong in the world.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. Don't apply to, don't interpret malice where incompetence or laziness can apply.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right. Or indifference or ignorance, or, circumstantial necessity. There's a a ton of reasons besides malice for any given thing happening.

Skippy Mesirow:

I gave a a talk at the Wheeler, Wheeler Opera House. Jonathan knows where that is, but it's in in Aspen. It was part of a lead with love program called Slay Your Dragon, and it was about owning part of yourself that that was uncomfortable. And for me, it was prejudice. Not prejudice against a race or a sex, but against conservatives or southerners.

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, having grown up in the sort of progressive bubble in Chicago, I just really I was one of those people as a young person who who looked down on people without understanding it. And as I got older and began to work in not just Democratic, but Republican politics, conservative, liberal, and and started to actually get to know people, I came to understand that so much of my judgment was completely misunderstood. And one of the examples that I gave in the talk was about people in oil or natural gas on the western slope rifle and further out and how I had, in a more ignorant phase in my life, really looked down on these people as being backwards or uneducated, being completely unaware or just blind to the fact that almost every single element of the life that I enjoy that I'm so lucky to be in was built on the backs of fossil fuels, on the backs of those those labors, and that those communities had well well paid, respected jobs for generations and were part of the great American middle class that rose in the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, and then woke up one day, and all of a sudden, they're the enemy and they're doing everything wrong.

Skippy Mesirow:

And how wildly unfair that is. And as a result of those perspectives from people at that point like myself who didn't who were just ignorant, the quality of life, the income during the transition declines. No one's making investment in retooling those communities. Now my kids' life expectancy is lower than mine is. Like, diabetes, obesity, drug addiction are on the rise.

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, my computer my community genuinely is is doing worse, And yet and this was, like, the punch line in the talk that got me a lot of uncomfortable response in my town was like and the people that I had been lionizing as those who were doing the most for the world by giving to nonprofits or investing in green tech or whatever were also flying their private jets to and from New York to get to the talk, and one flight from New York to Aspen had more carbon emissions than that whole family who was involved in the extraction was emitting the entire year and how wildly backwards my thinking was. It just it just reminds me of that, of of how quickly we can or I could, I should say, come to judgment out of a place of ignorance and that when you get down on the ground truth level, so often the choices on all sides of a sticky situation make a lot of sense for the individual, but make little sense for the broader picture.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. It's funny you you bring up that oil extraction on the western slope because that's another aspect of of this. And I think similarly to the situation in Ecuador, I had a very superficial sort of understanding of what was going on, and so had constructed a narrative with good and bad, in my mind even though it wasn't really truly descriptive or or fair. But, you know, as you as you mentioned, I grew up in in rural Colorado. We were in in Rifle, although we were actually outside of Rifle.

Jonathan Capelli:

We were in unincorporated Garfield County way up on this in this rural area. And there essentially, there's a there's a lot of drilling that happened. First, it was difficult to access the oil. So there's a promise early in in the, I guess, the I think it was the eighties or the nineties, someone else can check me on this, to to extract oil or gas rather from the shale deposits out there, but then it didn't work. So it took a while for technology to catch up with what the industry wanted, and then they started fracking was invented.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? And so they suddenly could go back to these communities and exploit all this oil or gas deposits. And so they start fracking in our in our area, and we ended up getting a pipeline laid through our property, which is like a very rural dry scrubby area, but lots of shale underneath it. Across the street, they set up a big, tower and and, yeah, started extracting all this this gas. And there's actually a documentary called Split Estate, I think, is what it's called.

Jonathan Capelli:

And there's a flyover of that region, and you can, very briefly, if you pause it at the right millisecond, see, like, our house, underneath it. Yeah. That was another part that got me a little bit more interested in the environment. It's probably why I started working for the forest service because I saw that happen, you know, firsthand, and we were powerless to do anything about it because they had the mineral rights. And this is tied to this thing called split estate.

Jonathan Capelli:

But if you really look back, you know, you have the ranching industries that were in rural Colorado that for one reason or another stopped being lucrative, mostly because of sort of industrial scale agriculture and, like, larger sort of companies that came in, CAFOs. Right? The What's that? Animal feeding operation. The industrialization of our food systems, which meant that smaller farmers weren't sustainable, right, or smaller scale folks.

Skippy Mesirow:

They got priced out, basically.

Jonathan Capelli:

They got priced out. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of the big ranches in in rural Colorado ended up getting sold off. And so if you go across Colorado, you'll see lots of these 40 35 acre.

Jonathan Capelli:

They're usually all part of what was originally a really large, like, ranch land where the ranchers stopped being lucrative one reason or another, usually reside related to the reason I just mentioned. And so they'd sell them off, but they would sell the the top area for residential development in 35 and 40 40 acre parcels, but they would sell the mineral rights underneath it to oil and gas.

Skippy Mesirow:

Oh, interesting. So you you could actually split vertically the land rights.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yes. So

Skippy Mesirow:

you could sell someone, plot a land to maybe have their llamas, but also just to build a house or a subdivision. And then underneath that, you could be selling to oil and natural gas company that's gonna do extraction under those homes without the consent of those above. Is that true?

Jonathan Capelli:

Right. Yeah. There are certain things you have to do to make sure, like, you don't damage the the house or the improvements, the property of the people up top, but your your rights are to the minerals underneath. And so that situation is called a split estate. So the reason why the gas was able to be exploited legally underneath us was because of a much larger, like, historical phenomenon of, like, smaller mom and pop, like, ranching industries, because of agricultural policy getting, you know, undermined, in such a way that they had to sell off the land Literally.

Jonathan Capelli:

Literally in these two

Skippy Mesirow:

different Underbodies.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, nice. Oh, nice. Nice.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yes. Yeah. They're undermining, literally. Anyway, that that's a bit of a or is a tangent, but

Skippy Mesirow:

No. That's it's fascinating. And and the irony, of course, is I would think from my experience in land use and development that most people don't like the idea of someone fracking under their home, and yet those same people would love to have the cheaper, cleaner option for fuel that is also more local. So it's like the market is complaining about the solution. I mean, it's very Mhmm.

Skippy Mesirow:

Very interesting.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. At that time, folks might remember Sarah Palin and her drill baby drill mantra about reliance on domestic sources of oil to reduce our, you know, rely on reliance on sources in the Middle East. And so a lot of the Republican folks in that area, which was mostly red, it's a very red portion of Colorado.

Skippy Mesirow:

Very red. Yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? We're all about that local gas and local oil. And then and then the drilling started happening in their backyards. And, you had some interesting changes,

Skippy Mesirow:

you know, for sure. What is the perspective of a I've never dealt with this personally, but I've dealt with it in the analogy, which is everybody in where I live in Aspen wants to say that affordable housing is the most important thing until it's next to them and then they don't want it. Is it a similar dynamic? Is it different? I guess, how does how how did you perceive the town of Rifle responding to this new exploration and extraction?

Jonathan Capelli:

Nice transition to affordable housing because that is funny because I don't actually work in environmental issues directly anymore. Although there's one initiative that we're working on that's pretty close. But so I will have the leave the caveat that I was a kid through most of this. Right? So I can't really speak to the full community's feelings.

Jonathan Capelli:

And a lot of folks got jobs through this. There was a lot of local jobs that were created from this. So not everyone felt bad about the the fact that it was happening locally. There was a huge job surge. But the folks who had the drilling happening directly on their property, certainly, the not in my backyard, right, NIMBY approach definitely definitely came forward to the point where my parents I knew were super supportive of local gas exploitation and then ended up being extremely vocal and outspoken against what was happening on our land and in our neighbor's community.

Skippy Mesirow:

We ended up running

Jonathan Capelli:

out of water too.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. You ran out of water. So yeah. So tell me more about the the direct impact.

Jonathan Capelli:

So the other direct impact, which is also the caveat is we don't actually know because there's no way to prove it. But as soon as the drilling started happening, our well water went dry. And so my dad, and this happened to a lot of the our sort of neighbors, had to go down to town, fill up a large tank, and put it on the back of a pickup truck with with water from the city, from the town of Rifle, drive up, put it to park on a hill, and then we connected a garden hose from that tank into the house. And that's where our water came from when our well went dry. And so you have simultaneously all the fracking, which folks probably know is really water intensive happening.

Jonathan Capelli:

Folks' water are are is running out. Land is being deforested. Pipelines are being laid. Just a total rearranging of, like, the landscape, both on the top and, you know, underneath of many parts of rural Colorado that have pretty big impacts on people's day to day life.

Skippy Mesirow:

Interesting. So this may be a good segue to your initial interest in environmental not just environmental concerns, but just connection to environment has, for me, been a big piece of my own mental health. My self care is connection to nature, and I think that's the case for many people. It seems like you had this connection early on, and I wonder if if

Jonathan Capelli:

you have

Skippy Mesirow:

a sense of where that came from, if it was related to this. Because it's also interesting to consider the real human effect of policy in asynchronous and unexpected ways. Right? Like, those who are pushing for natural gas exploration probably don't think what I'll be doing is creating a lifetime public servant connected to nature. Right?

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. Let me just try something. Let me just go go

Jonathan Capelli:

off the

Skippy Mesirow:

rails for a second.

Jonathan Capelli:

Let's do it.

Skippy Mesirow:

And and just see if this goes anywhere. This I'm pulling this from the coach's playbook, and it may not go no go nowhere. So if it does, we'll go back to where you were going.

Jonathan Capelli:

But Okay.

Skippy Mesirow:

If you were to close your eyes for a second, sit up in your chair Mhmm. And bring the sensation of nature into your body. So you can imagine yourself being at the top of a hike or a skin or in a woodland creature in around in the fall in Aspen. Whatever it is, bring some visualization into your mind until you can feel the sensation, the feeling in your body. Mhmm.

Skippy Mesirow:

How would you describe this sensation?

Jonathan Capelli:

Had a instance or an an experience recently

Skippy Mesirow:

that No. No. So stay stay in this with me.

Jonathan Capelli:

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Skippy Mesirow:

So so not not talking about it, not making a story

Jonathan Capelli:

Alright. Alright.

Skippy Mesirow:

But just feeling into this sensation. What does it feel like? Where do you notice it in your body? Does it have a density, a temperature, a color, anything at all?

Jonathan Capelli:

It feels like a lack of separation. I feel myself flowing outwards to where if you were to describe all of that environment as, like, a certain color, where we become the same color and a pooling and a spreading out and emerging with until the dot that is myself is indistinguishable from the larger palette of that environment.

Skippy Mesirow:

Beautiful. So just tap into that. Just feel into it. What is the first memory that comes to mind?

Jonathan Capelli:

The first feeling for me is, being on my dad's shoulders while in a forest in Japan, actually. I'm a little kid. And there's a a snake. It's the one single poisonous snake that exists in in Japan. My dad was really into nature, and he found it.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so he put us up on his shoulders or me and walked us into the woods to sort of look at him. I just remember feeling this this change when the air, how much light there was. All of a sudden, we were in an urban area, and suddenly we were enveloped by leaves. And I'm just interacting with another creature from the safety of my dad's shoulders, but also not feeling particularly safe And realizing that there are little realities or islands of reality that and, of course, I didn't realize it quite like this at the time. But this ability to sort of teleport from one area where you're feeling a certain thing and you're feeling like you're part of something to suddenly feeling and just being enveloped by a completely different sort of environment and just the full visceral feeling of that, of, like, fear, elation, the temperature changes.

Jonathan Capelli:

You're suddenly part of the food chain. That's why I think that's my first sort of feeling of that of that change of suddenly becoming a part of it instead of looking out at it.

Skippy Mesirow:

How do you call upon that phase change, my words, not yours, to in your in your daily or if not daily, your your regular practice. How does that connection to nature or that ability to shift your relationship to environment affect how you show up as a human or in your work?

Jonathan Capelli:

There are a couple different ways with this. One is a realization as we're saying this that that that feeling, that pulling out and that mixing of color and texture and lessening of self that described in being in nature. Something we don't always think about, but is it all happens in almost any system. And it ties back to what you were describing about your experience at the Wheeler Opera House and these these realizations around oil and gas. I'm looking at a at a container that I have on the ground here that next to my desk that has some of my climbing and outdoor gear and camping gear in it, and it's made of plastic.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? And this sort of, yeah, realization that all around us and everything, including the things and the tools that I think I need to get myself into the outdoors are created and composed of some of the things that we agree are not the best for society and how no matter where we are intellectually when it comes to how we think about society, our our lives are pretty intertwined with it, including with the problems. But nature. So so how does that feeling when I'm out there combine? I guess I or or show up in my life.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's really easy to thinks think in terms of single narratives and single causes, single anythings. And, this reminds me of the word that we were talking about earlier, actually, recently in this book called A Ministry For the Future. And, there's a word that pops up in it, and it's called, monocaisotaxophilia, and it means the love. So mono is 1, caso cause, taxo is like order, and the philia is is love. Right?

Jonathan Capelli:

So it's the love of a single description or single, yeah, idea that explains everything. And it's very easy for us to to do that both in positive ways and negative ways. The one the single problem with society is x or the best idea, right, to fix all this, if only we did y or only we did x or whatever, that would, like, fix it. I kind of feel that that recognition of our tendency to do that appears in everything. And so when I'm in nature, I'm out there with a certain intent and a certain idea.

Jonathan Capelli:

And if I was to answer your question about how it makes me feel, like, I could answer it in a single way. There's a lot of other sort of actors and agents that are interacting with you in any given situation that go far beyond what you want or what your desires are. When I'm out in nature, I just had an experience because I had a fairly gnarly backpacking, trip. That's my most recent brush with nature. I've had a very, very, very, intense, professional sort of environment for the last few months, and been working too hard.

Jonathan Capelli:

I had pulled, a couple of all nighters for work, and that's not unusual for me and unfortunately and it's because I knew I had this longer vacation coming up and had a lot of stuff needed to get done. But I knew I had a vacation coming up, and my vacation was supposed to be a backpacking trip, which then led to getting out of the country for the first time in a while and hanging out with some friends down in in Panama. But the first part was this big backpacking trip through the White River National Forest. Folks who live in Colorado might be familiar with the 4 Pass Loop.

Skippy Mesirow:

Can we just describe, for people who have no idea what the 4 Pass Loop is? So from Aspen, Colorado, you go to the maroon bells, which is about 14 miles from downtown Aspen. Google maroon bells right now. You will see some of the most beautiful mountains anywhere in North America. And correct me if I'm wrong about this, but the 4 pass loop is effectively a diamond that goes around the maroon bells.

Skippy Mesirow:

And at each one of the points of the diamond is a pass. So a pass is not the peak of a mountain, but it tends to be the saddle between two peaks, and it's higher than where you start. So you are climbing effectively up 2 thirds of of a mountain's height to the pass, then down to the floor, then back up, then down, then back up, then down, completing this diamond shape around it. And you are completely in the wilderness, and it's it's roughly in the space between by air where Aspen is and Crested Butte is. And so you're just in this it's about it's about 26 miles.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. And we did it from Crested Butte, actually, and there's more miles that way. So I think we were in the 30, 30, 30, or maybe 32 miles. I start on the trail at almost 5 o'clock, 5 PM because of how I let, like I said, work and life get in the way of me getting on the trail. And I knew I'd be hiking at night at this point, but I felt relatively confident that I'd be okay doing that.

Jonathan Capelli:

I did misjudge how long I would have to hike before I caught up to my friends, which was a problem. And also misunderstood my I had a higher estimation of my which kind of shape I was in. And at the time, I've been smoking a lot of cigarettes, which is a a stress habit that I have. And so my cardio was not where I thought it was gonna be. I get out there and just start just start going.

Jonathan Capelli:

I get to the first pass right as the sun is setting, and it was beautiful. But that immediately started to get kinda cold. And I am still very far away from my friends. There's no reception or anything. So all I knew was generally the lake that they were supposed to be camping around, and then my plan was to get there sometime in the middle of the night.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I start hiking down this one, the first pass of the 4 passes. Right? The sun's going down, but it's still bright out. And I could tell from the map that there was a a way for me to do a shortcut, essentially. And having worked in the area before as a forest ranger, I never advised people to hike off trail, and I felt comfortable doing it.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so I disobeyed my own advice and just made this shortcut. I can do that in air quotes. So I find myself hiking at the base of this of this valley, but on the high side of it, kind of near Screefield with a bunch of trees and everything kind of to my right and bare rocks above. And I'm moving through, and it's taking longer than I thought. It's getting darker and darker.

Jonathan Capelli:

I know that there's, you know, lots of animals out. The one number one thing that you don't wanna do is surprise a bear, and it's definitely bear country. So doing what you're supposed to do, which is making noises, clanging human noises so that you don't, like, walk up and surprise anything. And, I keep moving, and a bunch of spruce grass exploded at my feet, which, is a, something folks may or may not be aware of. But, often, grass will sleep together at night in these little circles, these rings, all of them faced out and all their butts together in the middle.

Jonathan Capelli:

So when a predator

Skippy Mesirow:

thing I've ever heard. Right?

Jonathan Capelli:

So if a predator or coyote or something comes across them, they all just, like, fly off at the same time in different directions to to essentially scare and to confuse whatever is trying to prey on them. And these are big, like, chicken sized, like, birds. So I come across make

Skippy Mesirow:

a request that the the next time we end up at Burning Man together, we we assemble a group of friends, and we sleep like the grouse. Amazing. Somewhere on Deep Playa for at least an hour. Yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

That's my dream. Okay. Put a notes. Deal. Oh, man.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. So they do that. They they exploded literally, like, in a ball and a flying ball of multiple of feathers because shooting off for a rocket of feathers in different directions, almost touching me. I got right up to them. And that's their strategy.

Jonathan Capelli:

That's how they confuse and scare whatever is preying on them, and it worked. I was confused and scared. It was like a bomb of feathers that went off on my feet. So I I kind of freaked out, and I fell and kind of twisted my my ankle just a little bit and tweaked my knee a tiny bit. Got up, and I was like, well, that was stupid.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's just birds. So I keep walking. It was just a little bit tweaked. It happened again. I ran into another ball of grass, and they did it again to me.

Jonathan Capelli:

And this one and I have a lot of weight in my back, right, like a 40 pound pack or something like that. This one was, a little bit worse that I retwisted exactly the same way, my my knee and ankle. And I was kind of starting to go down a slight downhill, so I fell forward downhill. And so now I'm just, like, sitting there. The shadows are gathering.

Jonathan Capelli:

My knee and leg are hurting. I'm pretty far from the trail and and just realizing that maybe I made a mistake. Probably shouldn't shouldn't be here.

Skippy Mesirow:

Are you from your your sleeping destination at this point?

Jonathan Capelli:

Based on the trail, I was probably 7 miles, maybe 8 miles.

Skippy Mesirow:

You got a ways.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah. And as a crow flies, shorter, which is why I thought a shortcut would work.

Skippy Mesirow:

But Unfortunately, in this instance, the grouse are flying.

Jonathan Capelli:

So Grouse are flying. Yeah. Just no crows and certainly no Jonathans flying anywhere. So, I just end up wandering in the woods off trail, limping around, not able to really see exactly where I'm going, with some topography that I wasn't prepared for, that was pretty steep and a little dangerous to navigate, especially at night. There were a couple more falls, and falls with a heavy backpack on are not fun.

Jonathan Capelli:

Eventually, it gets quite dark, and so I can actually hear other animals moving around. I don't know what they are, but mostly were probably benign, but you never know. So I had my bear spray out, and I'm basically pushing through bushes in, like, almost pitch black, other than, like, my headlamp, which is just a single cone or circle of light that's not making it very far in the forest. Every shadow is pitch black. And I started feeling, for the first time in a very long time, like, fear and not comfort while being in nature.

Jonathan Capelli:

And I didn't feel like the top of the food chain and feel like, you know, I mean, there's this in the bible, right, or, like, for folks with a religious background that in we're supposed to be called to be stewards of the earth. Right? Which which and, by the way, I'm not religious. It's just from my upbringing. That term, steward of the earth, gives the feeling or the conveys the feeling that you are master of the earth.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? You can care for. You're up there. You're at the top. So I didn't feel like top of the managerial structure of the earth, managing other things.

Jonathan Capelli:

I just felt like a rabbit, or if we're gonna talk about a spruce with a with a broken wing, can't actually fly away limping alone through the woods. And I realized that, like, another bad fall or something like that or a surprise animal encounter could, like, result, like, pretty badly. And that's a little bit hyperbolic. Those things happen very infrequently. It's not like it was you know, the likelihood of getting attacked and eaten by a bear is extremely small.

Skippy Mesirow:

Not how the mind works.

Jonathan Capelli:

But that's not how the mind works. My true danger was probably exposure because it was very getting pretty cold. I eventually navigated back to the trail. I hiked another pass that night. But as I'm doing this, I'm increasingly losing this feeling of being, like, separate from nature.

Jonathan Capelli:

I'm feeling, again, increasingly like part of the food chain. There's nothing special about me realizing that I could die. I could just die out there. And it was humbling and also made me, you know, like, dissolve in the way that I was describing earlier, this distinction between me and and the nature and realizing that there's just there's other narratives that can characterize any given thing. The the narrative of that forest was that there was a unskilled animal wandering through it that was relatively defenseless, not from that area, biologically speaking, that could, in a certain set of situations, end up just becoming nutrients in the soil and calories for another animal.

Jonathan Capelli:

There's a there's also a human scenario where a hiker gets lost in the woods, dies from exposure, or wanders accidentally off of a cliff. Don't hike off trail, kids like story. But all that aside PSA. Yeah. But all that aside, the the narrative of an animal just being absorbed eventually by the environment that it's in.

Jonathan Capelli:

At this point, any thing I've been thinking about when it came to work was just not was even close to the top of my mind. Right? The thing that had caused me to be so stressed and, like, be damaging my own health was not at the top of my mind anymore, but was also part of the cause for why I was in this situation. At this point, I'm going on 3 nights without sleeping. I survived.

Jonathan Capelli:

I eventually found my friends at about 7:30 AM around the lake, which meant I had hiked overnight from 4 PM to or from 5 PM till till, yeah, 7:30. Found them, and then we had another pass we had to hike because we had a certain amount of food and water. Well, we had water filters, but food, and so we needed to make time in certain amount of miles each day. So just kept on hiking until 7 PM. And all unforced errors, right, all mistakes that I made that were extremely avoidable, but things that were humbling and made me rethink how I was living my my life and the kind of decisions I was making.

Jonathan Capelli:

And And what's the takeaway? Well, in some ways, I'm still wrestling with it. One of the takeaways is that if I want to be physically in a in a a place where I'm prepared to meet the challenges of being in the outdoors, I need to actually be prepared both mentally and physically. The other was when you realize that there's other narratives besides your own and that and and you are confronted with mortality, you start thinking about the priorities, that you've made for yourself differently.

Skippy Mesirow:

I mean, the thing that comes through for me is thinking about you in the kind of moment of greatest fear or uncertainty and talking about how all this work that had driven nights of nonsleeping kind of completely drops out of out of your head space. And I'm imagining, because I've been in this situation, and correct me if it's wrong for you, it's not as though those things become unimportant. If anyone at that moment had asked you, is housing security important? You're still gonna say yes, but the relationality of that thing versus everything else really shifts. And it becomes a piece of a complex kaleidoscope rather than the unitary or singularly dominant piece of importance in the universe, and it just puts it into perspective.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. And the reality of any given person in in economic straits or in poverty or in housing insecurity are are those are dire straits too. So it's it's not to say that anyone's individual situation is not important. When your basic needs aren't met and suddenly you're in that situation of of, like, fear, you start thinking about start sort of distinguishing between essential and nonessential parts of your of your life. And, you start thinking about the ways that you're damaging your own ability to thrive.

Skippy Mesirow:

It's interesting because, like, I think what I heard you doing is going right to defense, which is something that we do a lot in public service. I'm like, oh, someone's gonna take this some other way, and so I've gotta make sure that I'm covering my bases there when it's, like, no. Actually, you had a transcendent experience on your own. It was your experience. It was no one else's.

Skippy Mesirow:

It's instructive. It's not your job to anticipate what everyone else is gonna think. And what I'm hearing from you is, like, wow. This really helped me establish my place in the universe, and that's incredibly helpful. It doesn't diminish the needs of those who you work for daily on housing.

Skippy Mesirow:

If anything, it helps you find greater empathy for their own choice architecture because of their own life and death constraints. I I was just with Molly Nakazawa last week at a climate conference, and she talks about how the oil industry invented the carbon footprint to move the locus of blame from the extractor to the individual, looking at those who live in conditions of impoverishment and saying, hey, why aren't you lowering your carbon footprint? And it's like your recognition being out there that, hey, staying up all night for housing policy is not the only thing in the goddamn universe is also how we can recognize that, like, for that single mom raising 2 kids on $25,000 a year, like, I don't have time for my goddamn carbon footprint.

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm.

Skippy Mesirow:

And it is like I think it's these opening experiences of relativity that open us to greater empathy and greater understanding with people across the entire spectrum, not not falling back into that old place in the foxhole that we get into as public servants of someone's gonna come at me on Twitter or at a council meeting or at my office, and so I gotta cover all my bases. But by doing that, I actually put up this wall and effectively, you know, build a barrier between the humanity of people.

Jonathan Capelli:

Very spot on. It's actually kinda helpful as I as I'm, thinking about this experience and placing it. And there's a number of different ways that it's significant, which is the danger of a single narrative. Right? But, also, how I'm responding to it and exactly the ways I'm am or I'm not minimizing it or how I feel like I don't wanna say politically correct because that there's a bunch of other connotations with that, but kind of the

Skippy Mesirow:

what's

Jonathan Capelli:

the what's the politically correct takeaway from in the context of privilege and and also professional sort of narratives. And, there's also just the personal experience, which is parallel to that and, in some ways, the most, like, core or it is obviously the most core is your own personal experience. So, yeah, without equivocating or or making any statements or value judgments about about that experience and how important it was or wasn't at the time, it was the most important experience in the world to me because it was it was my continued existence or pause or permanent stop.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. And and with my coach's hat on, I would argue that if you choose, which you are, you've you've already made that choice as evidenced by this conversation to use that challenge as a teacher. To take from it the lessons that it was there to show you, to up level your daily practice, your way of being, your approach to whether it's overwork or substance in the form of cigarettes, which of course are downstream from lack of boundaries of work because we need the stimulant. Mhmm. If they can if that experience can both connect you to the broader universe while also giving you a new toolkit to show up more fully, then the next time that you show up in the office as ED working on housing, the equivalent.

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, you're not going to show up in the psychosocial emotional condition of having not slept for 3 days and the sun's going down. Mhmm.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. A 1000%. That was, one of the one of the many takeaways was not letting the crisis at the moment create even worse crises subsequently, and that the only way to do that was to preserve your own ability to meet any given challenge. And the only way to do that is to treat yourself well with nurturing and caring and at least the meeting of basic physical needs and not minimizing sleep as one of the primary, ones one one of one

Skippy Mesirow:

of those primary needs. I do the same damn thing, and you know it, Jonathan. One of my my most hard to overcome patterns or pathologies is overwork. I just kinda pathologically need to be moving all the time, And I know it's because I grew up in a a really chaotic environment where I only had kind of one one adult role model growing up, which is my grandfather, and I put him on a pedestal and a throne, and he should have been, but he also worked a 120 hours a week. Mhmm.

Skippy Mesirow:

The fun family lore was that he would get pulled over by the police all the time on the way home from work because he'd fall asleep at the steering wheel. And we all, like, laughed and lionized that as something great. And it's, like, that's actually really not so great.

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm. Yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

And I so I I fall into that pattern, and I was there all all week of just getting up early, working until 10 PM or later, rinse and repeat, and I was dragging all week. And last night, I got a great night of sleep, and I woke up, and I was just on fire. And I have a practice with Jamie, my partner. You know that, but for the audience, and we have a thing called the Love Journal. I got it for us last February 14th.

Skippy Mesirow:

Is that when Valentine's Day is? So we do it once a week, and it gives you kind of these prompts or whatever. And my commitment to our relationship this week was to get more sleep. Because I was like, god. I am just in such a better place as a partner and lover to be with you and present with you in this state that I woke up in today than I was all week.

Skippy Mesirow:

And it's just, like, subtle reminder.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Huge. Journaling has been a another sort of lesson that's come out of this, which for me was into partner journal, but it's still a a writing down and a chronicling of life. Because, otherwise, you're you you just remember certain things. How you selectively remember things and what you and what you focus on might not always be the best sort of lessons from any given situation.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so spending some time to sit and think about them, about about life and about what what's happened with some intentionality allows you to take away and also to shape the right narrative or the narrative that's the most useful that allows you to be the best to yourself, the best to, in your case, your partners, and the most effective in the world in the in the in the way that you're choosing to impact the world and also taking all that out of it, just how to be happy, like, what made you happy this week versus what made you not happy and how does better your own life. After that, after I met up with my friends and finished out the hike, I then went on on vacation and went to Panama the next day. So I still hadn't slept much for that. That's what plane rides are for. And started reflecting on a lot of things we've been talking about, how I got in that situation, why I got into that situation, what I wanted about my life to be different so I wouldn't repeat that kind of error, and also just what was important in my life.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so I crave cigarettes still, but I was resenting them more than ever before because a big part of why I had trouble making that making the good time that I wanted to make in order to get my friends and why I was out there in the dark and the cold for so much longer was because I was exhausted and really huffing and puffing up these, you know, super high altitude big passes. And then I found myself in in, like I said, in Panama. And, one of my other great sort of pastures or goals is, is being in the water, being in the ocean, snorkeling, and freediving, of which currently I'm a baby freediver. I'm not can't I can't quite claim that. Probably, I can I've gone down to about 30, maybe 40 feet once.

Skippy Mesirow:

Wow.

Jonathan Capelli:

Not not sure if it was that deep that I've ever been.

Skippy Mesirow:

Being the practice of diving. So going going down and and checking out life in the ocean, but without oxygen tanks or anything. Just using the breath in your lungs.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right. Right. Yeah. Which is, difficult if you're a smoker, needless to say. And, yes, it's it's a beautiful sort of experience and a trying one physically, but also a very meditative sort of one when you when you learn to slow down your your heart rate and and relax when you're when you're down there.

Jonathan Capelli:

But I was I was sabotaging my own ability to do what I wanted to do and loved. And after that 3 or 4 day purge sort of of technology and just a reacquaintance with my own basic needs, and then finding myself in an environment where, you know, not just from a basic needs perspective, but a form of, like, having the most fun that I could and getting the most out of it perspective. Some of my habits were not were not conducive to that. And then through a through line through it all was a complete lack of technology, where for reception based reasons, both in Panama and in the wilderness, I just didn't really have access to my computer or my phone. And I've had breaks, like, similar before, but not not not quite the same.

Jonathan Capelli:

And I started realizing that a big part of where I was getting my my pleasure from in in life was in, sort of artificial dopamine hits where I either chemically induced a little moment of dopamine or happiness with cigarettes, or I did it digitally with doomscrolling. Right? Funny meme or a show or name your thing. I was, taking dopamine, artificial dopamine pills either through social media and entertainment or through chemicals in a way that was just keeping me going. I was addicted to them.

Jonathan Capelli:

Again, this this acquaintance with what my actual basic needs were and then not having the technology and then recreating what was gonna be fun and how I was gonna spend my time put me in a situation where the idea of having an artificial dopamine hit from from either of those areas was kind of became kind of loathsome. And I was like, do I smoke a cigarette, or do I just jump in the ocean right now? Do I doomscroll, or do I play a game with my friends? We we made up a we used coconuts instead of horseshoes and, like, made a coconut horseshoe game in the sand. Do I stay up all night sort of working, or do I wake up before the sun and go diving with the sunrise?

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm. And, yeah, and how do I reacquaint myself with the sort of the the natural animal part of what it's like to to be a human and the rhythms thereof instead of trying to squeeze myself into the shape of a highly efficient sort of mechanical cog in a in a system that I have decided is one that I need to be a part of.

Skippy Mesirow:

Love it. Love it. And that resonates with me. I I used to for years, I would wake up, the alarm would go off, and literally the first thing I would do is roll over and start scrolling on Instagram every morning. And I have, over over a number of years, renegotiated my relationship to those things.

Skippy Mesirow:

And and being a recovering addict myself, I can tell you that that it's not just a thing people say. It really is the same thing. Quitting quitting cocaine, quitting Instagram, maybe there's a different degree, but it's the same process. It's the same experiential tug. It's the same mental gymnastics.

Skippy Mesirow:

It's the same need to change environment, to prioritize, to create new systems, replacement behaviors. Like, it really, at least for me, was was was very similar. And so I'm wondering, now that you're back and all of those, what would we call them, temptations are are returned. Yeah. How have you or how are you renegotiating your relationship to the doomscrolling, to the gram, to whatever those, little bits of candy around the house are?

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm. Really good question. It was easy for the 1st week because my lessons were it just happened. And I'd already set patterns over that extended vacation and the hiking or the backpacking trip to mean that I'd my natural to use the the the candy and algae, I wasn't salivating, right, actively for any given treat I had become accustomed to. And then life started kinda ramping up a little bit.

Jonathan Capelli:

Things that I had deferred when I came to vacation. I don't wanna say bit me in the butt because it's sort of like that makes it sound like the apt punishment for something that I had done wrong. But or consequences feels wrong too. Like, the consequences of me taking time out, that that makes it sound like a punishment for something you should have done. I'll just say that other narratives or goals and things and systems that I've set up myself up and and and put myself in started having demands that started ramping up, demands that were counter to what the required actions counter to the needs and the lessons that I had just learned and made would have had me do instead.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I started having pressure for all nighters, started having pressure for chemical hits to maintain my ability to pull those all nighters. I started becoming not working out quite as much as I wanted to and feeling a need for artificial sort of dopamine as well. Here's how, for me, I was able to sort of continue doing keeping that lesson at the front of mind was, sort of raising the stakes for messing up just personally. And so, you know, one of the things that you mentioned earlier in the introduction about jujitsu. Right?

Jonathan Capelli:

For me, personally, jujitsu has been pretty life changing, and it set up or it has set up these high stakes. So I have now that I've been competing for a while, I've tried to go to competitions. I went to my first competition not long after I got back. Yeah. And, so life is making me, like I said, pull pulling me to jump into these old patterns again.

Jonathan Capelli:

But I had a competition coming up. And jiu jitsu is a very high cardio sort of activity. You need to have you need to be able to breathe, and you need to, like, maximize your lung usage and your access to oxygen. And smoking does not help with that. You need to be in good shape, and you need to be well rested to do well and to avoid things like injury.

Jonathan Capelli:

And when you're when you're competing or you're or you're even during practice when you're rolling, it's not life or death, but there's adrenaline because there are moments of extreme duress. You're in danger of being tapped out or choked out, put in a in a in a leg lock or an arm lock that is imperils your limb, all things that you do in such a way that you don't actually get injured, but in a way that makes your body feel like it's in dire straits and that you really need to do something else in order to sort of overcome that. Essentially, in short, I've created a system of consequences for myself, that if I go back to these bad patterns but I also but the word consequences is almost too negative because the consequences are not having as much fun and not maximizing, like, happiness. The consequence is an appreciable decrease of joy in in my life. Because these things, whether it's jujitsu or it's being in nature effectively, spending time with friends, writing, reading, reflecting, being a fully present human, are are things that I want to maximize.

Jonathan Capelli:

And if there's an appreciable decrease of ability for me to do those things, combined with, like, some physical consequences, like losing a jujitsu competition, losing every match, maybe, things like that. It's that combination of of a loss of of good things and an increase in bad things as a combined consequence of not being able to do your desired activity that have made the pool to get back into these old patterns much less appetizing.

Skippy Mesirow:

So what I'm what I'm hearing is you've you've isolated a behavior. In this case, it's cigarette smoking. Mhmm. And you've recognized that that behavior is giving you both positive and negative outcomes. So the positive outcome is the boost of energy, the mental acuity, the sense of satisfaction, the rush of dopamine.

Skippy Mesirow:

But the downside is it hurts my lungs. It makes me less able to enjoy the outdoors perhaps for I'm making this up now, but maybe maybe it makes me smell less nice on a date. There's some there's some downsides to it, and what I've heard is that you've identified effectively a replacement therapy in the form of jujitsu, which gives you the adrenaline, the dopamine, the boost. But rather than those downsides, it's actually giving you additional upside which match with things that you already loved. Physical activity, social ability, challenge, fitness.

Skippy Mesirow:

And so you've kind of found this alternative, and then and then there's a process of reflection where you're kind of taking stock informally on on how it's going and how you're feeling. Does that does that sound right?

Jonathan Capelli:

That's a really good summary. The only word that I would change potentially is replacement. Well, actually, the replacement and the replacement therapy probably still works. But when I think of the word replacement, I often think of, like, an identical, like, switching out of something else of equal value. I was unhappy.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? Like, deeply unhappy in my sort of previous sort of way I was arranging my life. And so it wasn't a one for one swap out to just maintain my past level of happiness, which was low. It was an upgrade. Right?

Jonathan Capelli:

So by switching out the bad things with something objectively and subjectively way better, it's even less tempting to slide back.

Skippy Mesirow:

And now a quick break from our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is supported by Elected Leaders Collective Foundation silver donor, Patrick Tierney and Dave Mayer, and gold level donor, doctor Jerome Burt II. We could not do this without you. Thank you. Do you like what you are hearing and wanna support more of this content?

Skippy Mesirow:

Please go to elected leaders collective.com and click the donate button. So for for someone listening who has identified something for themselves, whatever that is, it doesn't have to be a cigarette. It could be a recurrent a recurrent uncomfortable conversation with a loved one. Like, it could just be any any behavior that is habitual, regular, but no longer serving you. If they wanted to take a similar approach of finding another behavior, not to replace with, but shift to, which brought along the positives, but reduced or eliminated the negatives.

Skippy Mesirow:

And we know that a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest. The tendency is to be stuck in the old behavior. How would you recommend someone start to even identify and then engage in a new behavior?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. I would say that you gotta find something that is fun, something that you enjoy, that is, particularly difficult to do given your current life. If your addiction is to something like cigarettes or really any sort of stimulant, honestly, that isn't isn't good for your heart, in the case of cigarettes, not good for your lungs, maybe something that minimizes your appetite, which most of the stimulants do, Find something that is particularly disadvantaged by those things, and so that it's particularly difficult to continue doing those things while also doing something that is more fun that you've identified. Love that. Right?

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. What a great constraint. Yeah. And then so you've identified this thing or maybe you've identified multiple because you're not exactly sure what it's gonna be. How would you begin to carve out the time, or how would you think about shifting those behaviors?

Skippy Mesirow:

Do you simply go from a 100 of 1 and 0 of the other to a 100 and 0? Is it more of a dimmer? How would you go about that?

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm. I think, you know, everyone's different. Right? So what I say might not make sense for others, but I definitely needed to train my will. So my I I I have a I think I have a strong will in certain areas of my life, but it's definitely weak in other areas.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I couldn't just cold turkey stop. And I also I couldn't just suddenly become a jujitsu jujitsu practitioner all the time and wake up early all the time. I couldn't just choose to get off of social media. I couldn't just choose to, not pull all nighters and stop filling the pool and the demand of work. So it had to be gradual.

Jonathan Capelli:

And it had to make and it ended up being, like, uncomfortable in the beginning. So I went to a jiu jitsu class that was perfectly aligned with, like, my schedule. The only thing I had to do differently was not go and meet a friend. And instead of the social time, they would have done that. I just had to I just went to the class.

Jonathan Capelli:

It was just an hour. It wasn't far away. And I was still smoking cigarettes for the 1st few months of of of practicing jujitsu. Sometimes it would be a treat. I would I would smoke it, like, right after.

Jonathan Capelli:

Mhmm. But it got increasingly difficult to Victory. Yeah. Exact oh, man. I mean yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

Don't don't put me back in that mental situation. I mean, yeah, taking a a drag of a cigarette after something that was good is unknown, a well known human call.

Skippy Mesirow:

It brings up no specific images for anybody.

Jonathan Capelli:

Oh, man. So just, yeah. So I was I would I would do that. For a while, it was it was almost a source of pride. Like, people could smell cigarettes.

Jonathan Capelli:

I mean, you smoke cigarettes, and you're so rolling. Like, yeah. That's right. I'm a badass. Although, now it's, like, also is making them smell cigarette smoke.

Jonathan Capelli:

Gross, Jonathan. But whatever. I for me, it had to be gradual. So I gradually stepped up my involvement in the thing that was difficult to do while smoking, and which gradually made it more and more difficult to justify smoking and then kept on doing that and kept on doing that, had to sleep more, also was forced to sleep more, right, because I was physically exhausted. So it became less and less easy to pull all nighters.

Jonathan Capelli:

So a lot of things that contributed to it. I mean, you asked for a specific lesson, but I think it was, yeah, an an increasing inconveniencing your addiction gradually. It was the best way to start to get into it. And then for me, I also had this existential realization, which was really the the coup de grace of the of the addiction. And it's difficult to to artificially create that coup de grace.

Jonathan Capelli:

The only way really to do that is to take yourself out of what your your normal patterns, whether it's a a trip or or a a place where you can't access that addiction anymore, whether it's a retreat or it's vacation or it's a cabin in the woods. For me, it did take one big step that I was not ready to take earlier, but then was able to take finally towards the end. It cut it off. If I hadn't done that, would my gradualism have worked? Maybe not.

Jonathan Capelli:

So combination of things.

Skippy Mesirow:

The only the only way through is through. And what I'm observing, and this has been my experience too, and what you're saying is the transition from an in virtuous circle or cycle to a virtuous cycle is gradual, but there is an inflection point. And though it's rarely a moment that we can point to, You do go from the place of overwork requiring the stimulant, getting into blame and shame of self, then repeating and repeating to a place of hitting the jujitsu studio, getting the natural high, then having additional sleep, being more prepared for work, going back. And, you know, there's a point where we can look back and go, wow. Like, something's really shifted.

Skippy Mesirow:

Mhmm. And I feel so much greater. It's not it's rarely obvious in the moment. Like, the the the inflection point of I need to do something or I I will do something can can often be there. But when you shift, when you kind of go from the toilet bowl going in the left and then you cross the equator and all of a sudden it's going the other direction, like, it doesn't actually happen like that, but it does happen and it requires that persistence.

Skippy Mesirow:

And in in my experience, there's kind of two levels of healing, whether it's addiction or something else. There's a complete cessation or change in the behavior, which can be, in my experience, accomplished by simple constraints. Right? If I don't buy chips and I only have broccoli at my house, I will not eat crap. I will just eat broccoli.

Skippy Mesirow:

That's great. It's effective. I'm healthier. I'm not eating something bad, but I still actually have the desire. And if the chips come back to the house, I'm gonna eat the entire bag at once.

Skippy Mesirow:

Right. 2nd level of healing is I really understand what the internal unconscious psychological motivations or pathologies were that were underlying the desire for the behavior in the first place. And when we really come to truly understand that, then we can walk down the aisle with a free pass to eat anything we want and not pay a dollar, and we won't even wanna eat the chips. And that's that's a deeper level of healing. Not available in all cases, but is there.

Skippy Mesirow:

And that second piece takes not just the shift in behavior, but then the observation and unpacking of the behavior and the old behavior. And so that to me is a perfect place to shift into your journaling practice, which is the place where that observation is happening. Tell me tell me what the practice is currently and how it serves you.

Jonathan Capelli:

I will also say, just really quick, that's huge, really good, I think, description of the 2 different levels of moving out of your addiction. Deprivation, first, is one way of approaching it, and then there's the one where you the level that you get to where you don't even if it's there, you don't want it. I recently found some tobacco in my in my house, actually. Just a a bag of of loose tobacco for rolling cigarettes, and that didn't, like, mean anything. Love that.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's just something to throw away.

Skippy Mesirow:

And Beautiful noticing.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? But if I I didn't have the willpower to to throw everything away and then and then deprive myself in the way that's what does work for some people, unplug from all your social media accounts, get rid of that bag of chips, do whatever you need to do. Didn't have the willpower to do that, which is why some of these things still exist in my house. I needed to want to do it less, right, before I could get to the point where I got rid of the things. So different people have different approaches.

Jonathan Capelli:

But, anyway, so when it comes to to journaling and self observation self observation sounds so scientific or clinical. Self reflection, maybe. I just noticed that in some ways, it's connected to some of these other things. The less I polluted my brain with entertainment and thoughts and ideas from external sources, the more time I had on my hands, which meant the more desirous I was of making it interesting. And the more you you write and reflect, the more interesting the moments of silence between activities become.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. And what does the actual practice look like? Are you doing this on a digital device? Is it a a piece of paper with a pen? Is it a daily practice, a weekly practice, a sporadic practice?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Piece of paper with a pen or rather a journal actually happens to be sitting next to my desk. Now just little those little black Moleskine things. Nothing fancy. It's become something I just carry around all the time now because I am not very good at unless we just discuss discipline.

Jonathan Capelli:

I'd like to get to a place where I'm doing it, like, every morning or something like that. But I'm a pretty sort of impulsive person. And I think being for folks who are have ADHD, you might resonate with some of this. It can be difficult for me to get into into habits and patterns. And you only ever would do well things that you want to do, like, almost biologically.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? Like, it's for folks with ADHD, it's, right, it's really difficult to concentrate on things that are that bore you. And then your your leg will start bouncing, and you'll your mind will start spiraling. You'll start doing other things. But when you're fascinated into it, then you can just focus for hours at a time.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? It's like a constant common hallmark. So I like to get to the place where I'm waking up every morning and, like, my little alarm goes off. And I wake up and I stretch, and I find my immediately step into, like, lotus position and meditate and then and then roll into journaling. And, I think I can get there because there are other things, other patterns that I've started to successfully integrate into my life.

Jonathan Capelli:

I'm not there yet with with The Morning Journal or anything like that. What's happened for me is that journaling has become rewarding enough that it is something that I just want to do whenever I remember or think about doing it. And certain certain things pop up, like, relatively often where I want to do that. So it's right next to my desk. It's literally right next to my computer.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's fun. It's interesting. And so I do it often now, and I think that will turn into a pattern over time. So far, it means at least every maybe maybe every other day, I'm probably probably scribbling in here.

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, literally present. Like, you're keeping it with you so that it's always available. It's accessible. So you're you're putting it in a place where it's it's observationally obvious that it's an option for you. If you need a little distraction from the computer instead of going to Instagram, that's something that's, like, within your line of sight.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

And you're doing it semi regularly. So by daily, but not on a regimented basis because you are wanting to be called forward into when it's of real interest to you once it becomes compulsory. And I can say this as someone who is not diagnosed ADHD, but 10 out of 10 of friends, 10 out of 10 teachers, and 10 out of 10 life partners would say, yep. Yeah. So so it it it is also self directed in that way.

Skippy Mesirow:

Does that all sound right?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah. Very self directed.

Skippy Mesirow:

And then when you're on the page, is there a particular prompt? Is it just free writing? What are you doing there?

Jonathan Capelli:

I'm I'm just thinking about this, and I'm wondering wondering how many folks resonate with this. I've often just found it particularly difficult to, like you said, like, like, as you just described, do things with with regimen and and, like, a pattern and things like that. So, would having a prompt be useful? Probably. It's not something I often remember to do or how I really think about it.

Jonathan Capelli:

I pick it up whenever I have an idea that it'd be good to not forget. And so there's never a prompt. It's just, oh, yeah. Or whenever I'm confused about something, and I've been thinking that I don't have the full picture or I don't I haven't fully been able to describe or, if I'm having a hard time creating a steady mental sort of, like, image or concept of, like, something that I'm struggling with, whether it's work or it's personal, then this becomes my external mind's eye that allows me to sort of figure it out.

Skippy Mesirow:

I love that. And since

Jonathan Capelli:

that happens a lot for me, it ends up popping up in my life.

Skippy Mesirow:

Your mind is highly active. I can tell you that. That's cool. And do you ever do you ever do you have any practice of capturing or saving these? Do you ever go back to them, or is it just you write it and then they they get recycled at some point?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. So, I write everything in sort of, books or books, journals, and I don't throw them away. So they're all there. Eventually, I'll probably run out of room, but they're there. How often do I reflect on them?

Jonathan Capelli:

There are certain ones that I'll bookmark that are big realizations that I'll go back to. I don't have any set pattern of going back to them. I think that'd be nice to do. But as long as I have the bookmark there, I can see things that, at the time, I thought were important to me, which means that I can easily peruse them when I want to or need to.

Skippy Mesirow:

That's cool. That's super cool. I imagine that'll be helpful to a lot of people who keep hearing about journaling, and they're like, what what is that? And making it into something bigger than it is, and then not starting as a result. And it's like, yeah.

Skippy Mesirow:

It's just it's just there for you. Yeah. I love it. Beautiful. I wanna come back to something we were talking about earlier, and the the connection in nature in your life.

Skippy Mesirow:

And how I heard it is a feeling of being part of something greater than myself, a feeling of putting myself into a a relatively smaller place versus the universe, the sense of connectivity as being part of it, but also this this element of, like, being in awe and wonderment and simply moving the body, just getting a reset, having a time to step away from the laptop, all of those having benefit. And and I think it's well studied as well that nature exposure is really great. I wonder if you have any particular practice or would suggest any practice to people for sort of the minimum necessary dose of nature, how someone might do that if they live in a tight inner city, what you might do to open the aperture to that experience if it's not an experience that's familiar to you. And then on the other side, just how do you think about it in your own life? Are there a particular number of trips per year that you wanna do?

Skippy Mesirow:

Do you try to get out, you know, x number of days a month? Are there particular qualities or approaches to that? Anything that other public servants could do to more readily touch in with those benefits that you found?

Jonathan Capelli:

I would say this, again, will have a potentially limited applicability or resonance with with, you know, the audience, depending on how your brain works. For me, most of the time, regimen is not something that, like, works or is easy for me. I'm getting better at it, but it's not natural. And so I can't say, in a for any given year or month or week period, I need to get out this many times into nature a year, just like I don't have that goal for jiu jitsu. I almost every day, though, because almost every day, I really want to.

Jonathan Capelli:

So it's the same thing with nature. Essentially, I think that if I have to turn that observation to advice, you have to cultivate a desire to do that thing.

Skippy Mesirow:

Let's see that by bulleting what the benefits are.

Jonathan Capelli:

Okay.

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, why would someone even want to?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Okay. The benefit is it's the same kind of benefit that you get when you step out of your room. When you're in your room, like, all day, then there's some folks with maybe you're sick. You might might that might happen.

Jonathan Capelli:

And then you step out into, like, the rest of your house or your my case, my small apartment. There's a changing of scope and, like, a widening. And then you can be inside, and that's, like, one level of encapsul sort of environment. And then you open the door and you step outside. And, you're still just in maybe in an urban area, but you go from inside this little contained house.

Jonathan Capelli:

It might be comfortable. It might be warm, all those things. But you step outside, and your field of vision just expands. And you take in the breath, and the air is just different. It's been stirred about more.

Jonathan Capelli:

And your sounds are different. It's more immersive. That feeling of stepping into the outside is one that's really pleasant. It's it's nice. You kinda need it.

Jonathan Capelli:

There's another level beyond that where you step out of the city or out of the town. It's like another set of doors that opens. It's a different, even more clear and more stirred and more, like, abundant type of air. It's it's more interesting sounds, and it's wider, much wider field of vision. So you want to go outside you want to go and be in nature for the same reason that you want to step outside your house at least once a day.

Jonathan Capelli:

So that's what it feels like to me.

Skippy Mesirow:

And is it do you find it to be important to be alone with others on a crowded trail or a vacant trail? How far removed do you need to be to receive the, let's call it, 80% of the benefit?

Jonathan Capelli:

That's a really good question. I think that I need to be myself to get the full benefits, but that doesn't necessarily mean without other humans around. It just means, like, not in the social group, not with my friends. You can create that some level of sort of silence and even with when others are technically around. All you have to do is step off the trail.

Jonathan Capelli:

Not too far, as we just learned, but, yeah, that's important. It's also really great to get out with friends and nature too. It just becomes a social engagement as much as a natural one. So and I say it this way too because it can be really hard to get into into wilderness or to a place where you're really, really far away from other people depending on where you live. I find in most places, you can find an enclave of of solace if if you just step off just a little bit off of the the trail that everyone else is on.

Jonathan Capelli:

There is a feeling, though, when you're in true wilderness, when you're really out there, and you couldn't find people even if you tried. And that is another level. That's that's maybe the for using the doors opening, another perspective broadening sort of experience. I mean, there's places in the wilderness where you stand on the top of the mountain, the highest point that you can get to, and you look around in all directions, and you still can't see anyone. And that is another level of sauce that is very transformative in terms of your mental state to find yourself in that situation.

Jonathan Capelli:

So that is one that's that's really important to get to, and that's that's the kind that's the most likely to give you the catalytic kinda change that we're talking about that at least was helpful for me.

Skippy Mesirow:

As a former forest service employee and outdoor expert, for someone listening who's saying, wow. That sounds amazing. But grew up in an urban environment, hasn't been alone in nature, and doesn't have your experience of doing big backpacking trips and summits and skis. And it just sounds scary and overwhelming. What could they do?

Skippy Mesirow:

What resources might be available? Where could they look? How could they prepare in such a way to make it feel safe and approachable for them?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Very good questions as well. The easiest thing to do is find a friend who's into it, and that that is definitely not available to everyone, though. But if you do have one, then they'll probably be happy to take you out. If you don't have a friend like that, then start small, but you gotta push yourself a little bit too.

Jonathan Capelli:

So you gotta go to where there's a trail, and you gotta hike it. You know what? Here's what I'll say. Everyone assumes when you start on a trail, you have to make it to the end of the trail and that maybe you haven't successfully hiked unless you've done the thing that everyone else is doing. You can go a 100 feet in and come back.

Jonathan Capelli:

You can go a mile in. You can go half a mile. You can go 10 miles. Choose your own adventure in every, like, sense of that of that phrase. As someone who really likes animals and nature and like bird watching, right, for me, anytime I get on a trail, the the the destination is not that is not the end of the trail.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's the experience. It's the animals maybe that I've interacted with or the things that I've seen. So I go until I've satisfied that, and then I turn back if if that's what I feel like doing at that time. So if you are not used to getting out into nature and there's a trail somewhere and you see it's a 14 mile long trail and you think there's no way I can do a 14 mile trail, then don't do 14 miles. Do exactly That's

Skippy Mesirow:

such good advice. I mean, it sounds so simple, but it's such good advice, at least for someone like me who assumes that I must do the whole thing and probably twice. Right. That's great. Really good.

Skippy Mesirow:

I love it. I love it. Kinda have time to touch on one other thing. You know, I wanna talk about being a human in service who has diagnoses. You mentioned ADHD.

Skippy Mesirow:

Again, like I said, I don't think there's anyone I've ever worked for or has worked for me who didn't already assume that that was the case for me. I don't I don't have the diagnosis, but there are others for you. And I I really have no way of knowing how anybody does or doesn't relate to working with someone with any number of diagnoses. But what I do know is we are fortunate to live in a time when people are beginning to share what's really going on for them, where the perspective is shifting from from fear to understanding, from projection into reality. And I think it's really beneficial for people to just get a sense of what's real and what's not.

Skippy Mesirow:

And I remember I was, I guess, sophomore in high school. I was in my my buddy's 93 Jeep. We were we played football and lacrosse together. We were I'm gonna out myself now. We were smoking weed illegally out of an apple, and we had a 3rd friend in the other seat.

Skippy Mesirow:

We were having some strange argument, intellectual exchange over the spelling of the word brash. And if it was actually brash or rash as in a rash irrational decision or brash. I can't believe I remember all this specific. Wow. Somewhere in the course of this argument, he brings up as a point of consideration as to why he would know this correctly, that he's bipolar.

Skippy Mesirow:

I had never heard of bipolar before. And I I I just remember like being like, great. I'm still right. Like, that was my orientation. I I like it, like, it didn't bother me at all.

Skippy Mesirow:

I recognize that I grew up going to a a school that I really didn't enjoy at the time, but came with some huge benefits. I went to a bilingual Jewish day school till 8th grade, and within the school was something called the Keshet program. Keshet means rainbow in Hebrew, and it was a special needs school. But people with with some fairly severe disabilities, including students who were nonverbal, things like that. And it was always the philosophy or the requirement those students were in normal classes.

Skippy Mesirow:

They sat at a desk like everyone else. They ate lunch with us, and it was just instilled with us that you treated them exactly like you would treat anybody else. So when I first heard about bipolar relative to these other conditions that I had seen, it seemed like a kind of afterthought, and yet I know from a client that I work with who also has bipolar that when he came out to his office, it was really challenging. And so I know it's relatively new for you, but I'm I'm curious if you could kind of just talk about the process of even, I guess, even how one gets diagnosed, because this tends to happen late in life. Like, what's going on in life that this brings something into your awareness, and then what's the process like of just kind of getting this news and becoming acquainted with your own relationship to this moniker, this title.

Skippy Mesirow:

Really curious how how that process has been for you.

Jonathan Capelli:

I'm, as you said, new to this, and then so in many ways, still still learning those things. And for instance, for anyone who's who's also bipolar, to give you an idea of how new, I'm, like, not on medication yet. And part of that is well, this might be familiar for some people is maybe some systems in the some failures in the medical system. But I, I'm in the Kaiser Permanente system, and I had to wait for months before I could go to a psychiatrist. And then after I went to psychiatrists, they went through a battery of sort of questions and are just basically trying we oh, it didn't get to complete the interview last time we chatted, and so I have to wait another 2 months before getting, into it again.

Jonathan Capelli:

Even though I was first told that I they by a by a therapist, right, not a psychiatrist, that I had it last year.

Skippy Mesirow:

Just an observational an observation. Diagnosis. Exactly.

Jonathan Capelli:

Well well, there was there was a a lot of verbally conveyed, like, written text. Right? Like, he's asking the questions, and then I'm saying

Skippy Mesirow:

Would it be fair to say it's like the the the analogy is a roadside sobriety test versus a breathalyzer? Like, they both have they both have a margin for error, but one smaller? Yeah.

Jonathan Capelli:

I think that's right. Although, that's true for almost for any mental illness. Almost. Almost. It's always it's always a roadside sobriety test because they can't actually scan your brain.

Jonathan Capelli:

I mean, they can. But most cases, neurotypicalness is all about, like, a q and a and someone and you telling your therapist or your psychiatrist what you're feeling. Right?

Skippy Mesirow:

That's fascinating. I didn't I actually didn't realize that. And I would imagine that for all the same reasons that in general research and survey, asking the participant for the result yields fairly unreliable results. There are all sorts of confounding things that go into that, and so there's probably a lot of misdiagnosis out there.

Jonathan Capelli:

For sure. And overdiagnoses as well, of, like, certain things that, you know, maybe are something else. So, you know, this this is another thing that might be of limited utility. It's been fairly clear for most of my life that I'm, you know, atypical neurally in a way that has been very challenging for me. Most people would say that it's pretty clear that I have ADHD.

Jonathan Capelli:

I was diagnosed with something that was called a processing disorder when I was a kid. So math is extremely difficult for me. And, I was given extended time on, like, all school related things. Although my pride meant that I never took the extended time. My I was told that I had a math related prosthetin disorder.

Jonathan Capelli:

I was so mad about it. Then when I went to college, I declared myself a math major so that I could overcome it, and then immediately regretted it. After a couple c's and nearly failed calculus, I decided that I needed to get off my high horse and get back to political science. But, so, again, full disclosure for anyone who's out there listening and may and maybe has some some experience with this too. I am on the journey of figuring out what exactly it is that I, you know, need to do to address it and what it is that I have.

Skippy Mesirow:

How does it how does it affect you? If the diagnosis is correct, when did you first notice symptoms? And and how would you describe them for someone who has no idea what those even are?

Jonathan Capelli:

My therapist came to conclusion that I am bipolar 2, and we spent months trying to address it non medically. I ended up losing that therapist for no particular reason. And but there's a recommendation, I guess, that I should pursue maybe a medicated route potentially or at least, yeah, try that out.

Skippy Mesirow:

For someone as ignorant as myself, is it is there is there 2 types? Are there 3 types?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. There's 2 types. So bipolar 1, the one that people are most familiar with probably, is where you are you'll go through long bouts of depression and long bouts of mania. And so so when you're in the manic phase, it could be months where you're extremely outgoing, but also maybe you know? That's where you're more likely to have the negative consequences of, like, having, like, maybe made brash or rash brash or rash decisions.

Jonathan Capelli:

And, and that I mean, everything that kinda is connotated with the word mania, and then long bouts of really, really deep depressions, also months at a time. Bipolar II tends to be more cyclical and faster switching between depression and mania. It tends to be like a less intense depression and a less intense mania. And that's probably a simplification, but that's how I've come to understand it through my therapist, and then and then and then research after that.

Skippy Mesirow:

So Got it. And do you remember having those experiences over the course of your life? Did they show up at a particular time? I guess, you know, the question is for someone who's in their mid thirties, and I and I understand the diagnosis tends to come later. Is that because symptoms show up later or they're just undiagnosed?

Skippy Mesirow:

What's that?

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Well, if you don't go to therapy, then nothing you have will ever be diagnosed. So so some of it is just whether or not you've gone to a therapist. And if you and if you have bipolar 2, you're less likely to have made life shattering decisions that really cause everyone in your life to, like, say, go and get diagnosed, right, or something like that. So bipolar 2 can be sneakier.

Jonathan Capelli:

I went to get therapy because for a number of reasons. Like, I just had a lot of things going on in my life, then I was also and and also just a feeling I probably should go to therapy since everyone's everyone says you're supposed to. And and I had been diagnosed with ADHD years before, and but I've been trying to do it in an unmedicated way because I really don't don't like medication. And was starting to feel that this one day in particular, I was going kind of no. It's one day.

Jonathan Capelli:

This one, I guess, couple weeks where I felt like I was very, very unable to concentrate on anything. I was staying up super, super late all the time. And in my mind, my fast moving brain was a result of, like, my ADHD going out of control. And so I was like, hey. Like, I need some to to get a prescription, I need to bring my brain, rein it in, stop spiraling and and and going off all these tandems and being unable to concentrate on on anything.

Jonathan Capelli:

So I go, and I get this get this appointment, and it's remote. And it's just it's just funny because I was describing everything like I need like, I had ADHD. Like, that was my assumption going into it, that that was the cause of what was going on in my life. And after a few sessions, I'm like, alright. So when can I get the prescription?

Jonathan Capelli:

Well, not the prescription, but the referral to get the prescription to a psychiatrist. Right? And he's like, well, after thinking about this all, like, you clearly have ADHD, but I'm also thinking that the best descriptor of your current situation is you have, like, bipolar. And that just floored me. I was like, what?

Jonathan Capelli:

This is not what I expected. And he kinda talked it through. It's like when you first, like, joined, you were talking a mile a minute. As a evidence of your your mania or of your ADHD, you proceeded to give me, like, a tour of your house, which at the time was a complete disaster. I had, like, a food piled up, DoorDash almost exclusively, trash everywhere, completely cluttered.

Jonathan Capelli:

I was, and, again, was like, yeah, talking a mile a minute, and, I was just just a total disaster. Like, that's not, like, just ADHD. That is there's other things going on here. And the way you were describing yourself and and how you're interacting and then how you were during other times and our subsequent conversations where it was much more chill and relaxed, weren't going through those things, were a sign of this sort of cyclical kind of the fast cycling bipolar, which is known as like, I call him or we have a meeting. I'd be like, actually, everything's fine.

Jonathan Capelli:

And he's like, really? And the next time would be, things aren't fine. These are crazy. Look at my life. It's

Skippy Mesirow:

turmoil. And and while this is going on, I mean, I I I don't know the answer to this, but my my guess, tell me if this is true, is, like, if if I were to, like, drop into your office at work, like, you're going to work every day, you're doing really meaningful stuff, you're showing up in community, you're getting things passed, you're working with teams. Is that is that true? Like, there's, like, this there's this internal variability, and yet from the outside looking in, someone might not even know.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah. I see that that's accurate. I actually just had a conversation last night, with a really good friend of mine, and we were talking about how we feel on the inside versus how we are perceived from the outside. And, she's a singer, and so was talking about being perceived as this a massive extrovert, extrovert, but how she spends most of her time by herself as a as essentially an introvert and and how what people's impression of her is so different from what she's actually like.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so my version of that story was, oh, and we asked each other what our first impressions were of each other, essentially. And, her description was that I was extremely an extremely ordered and efficient and decisive person. And, that's just hilarious to me knowing what my actual life is like. But, yeah, professionally, getting stuff done. And and the way I think through issues and concepts in my field, diagnose and create policy.

Jonathan Capelli:

Everything that I'm doing probably externally makes it seem like I have this very, like, ordered sort of, like, mind. But it was just funny to hear that observation and then compare to what it feels like on the inside.

Skippy Mesirow:

I mean, it's so interesting because I think of the way my mind works, and I think one of my greatest superpowers is to be able to draw from things that people don't normally connect, to really see the interplay between policies, between people, between perspectives. And I would I would argue a prerequisite for doing that is having the interest, like, the genuine interest and cognitive space to hold for all those things, to to want to know about everything. And so to me, let's let's say if I do have ADHD, right, if it was diagnosed, then that's a superpower that without that, I would probably be very ill suited for those multifaceted deep dives that are a prerequisite for the compiling of all of that into a broader systems understanding. And I I imagine you feel the same way, and I think Richard Branson talks about all the time about having ADHD, and how he would never have started any of the companies that he did if he didn't. And it's not about suppressing it or judging it, but working with it, getting the most out of the benefits and mitigating the downsides.

Skippy Mesirow:

And I wonder, and this may be too early in the journey, but do you, at this point, view bipolar as something to be managed or to be leveraged or both?

Jonathan Capelli:

When when appropriately directed, it served me. So when I ventured those those periods of sort of mania, I've used them in sometimes really destructive ways, and then in some ways that were more productive. So a manic obsession with, like, what everything was going on during BLM, for instance, and and also just various times during COVID had me throw my every fiber of my being into the issues and, create lots of material and research and broader lessons for my sector, how it connects to affordable housing, the the intersection of race, crime, housing, zoning, redlining. I don't know. In in a way, that that drew a lot of different connections and and and and resulted in some a pretty cool body of work that I think was influential and important for our field to grapple with, some connections that weren't being made naturally.

Jonathan Capelli:

And there's been a number of moments like that in my life where I'll just get obsessed for and I'll just go and go and go and go. And it can be it can be awesome. It can it can result in starting my little consulting firm. Doing that and juggling multiple other things, though, can be, like, difficult. So, like, I'll I'll start something that, like, later I end up being proud of.

Jonathan Capelli:

But maybe in this in about a sort of sort of type of mania, I'll start another thing, like, multiple things, multiple little projects. And each time, it's exciting, and I get to do more and produce more. But those things add up until eventually you're, like, stretched out overstretched. So and then sometimes it it's direct in a way that's not productive, whatever. It it means you're, like, you know, chain smoking and and and doing multiple all nighters and running around and, like, not being productive at all, making a bunch of, like, social sort of promises maybe to your friends about things you're gonna do and whatever, and then not being able to do any of those things, betraying yourself and others.

Jonathan Capelli:

It's just there's a ton of ways that it, like, doesn't end up being good.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. And I would also draw your attention to identical behaviors carried out by any number of people who don't have that or any other diagnosis. It's also part of the human condition.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. A 100%. I I A 100%.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. But what I'm hearing is, like, yeah. There's downsides like there are to everything. There's also superpowers that come with this. And so I'm curious if you were to isolate your ADHD and your bipolar, what are the three things for each of them that you are most grateful for?

Jonathan Capelli:

ADHD. I'm most thankful for the ability to float from one thing to another, sort of in terms of, like, ideas and concepts. Okay. So there's a saying, and I actually can't remember who says this, but the idea is that and the quote goes something like this. In order to fully understand biology, you have to understand sort of chemistry.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? In order to understand chemistry, you have to understand physics. And in order to understand physics, yeah, it just kind of goes around. And and so the idea is that in order to fully understand anything, you have to fully understand everything. Of course, that's impossible.

Jonathan Capelli:

But there are no concepts that aren't actually, like, Venn diagrams that overlap with other things that exist. There's nothing in isolation. That's what I'm thankful for with with my sort of ADHD is that while it can be frustrating to to free associate compulsively and go from one rabbit trail to another rabbit trail to another rabbit trail creates a a web of connections between concepts and things and ideas, both my personal life and in my professional life, that I think otherwise I probably would not have made. And it can be difficult to finish any one task, but by cycling through all these different things, it, I think, has helped me web together a broader understanding of some concepts and and things in my work. So that's not three things, but that's the one.

Jonathan Capelli:

That's one thing.

Skippy Mesirow:

Take it just as you like it.

Jonathan Capelli:

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. For bipolar, it has it has meant that when I've gotten really passionate about something, I've thrown, like, every fiber of my of my being into it. It means I've started a number of different things that I wouldn't have otherwise started.

Jonathan Capelli:

I would have thought I didn't have time to do, and it turns out I didn't, probably. But, it's resulted in more hobbies, more experiences than I think I would have had otherwise or even even tried and allowed me to not just just do them a little bit, like, really dive into them in a way that sort of created a tapestry of, like, that's woven together to create, like, a personality that I that I think I'm that I some days feel decent

Skippy Mesirow:

about. That's awesome. I love that. That's great. That's such that's such good perspective.

Skippy Mesirow:

So second to last question, the last one is the same for everyone. This is my last question, which is most people listening to this will not have a diagnosis, but they're they're much more likely to come into contact in their work and in their public service with someone who has bipolar than to have it themselves and to not know what to do with it. And so I'm curious if there was a because you you you run a consulting company. You run a nonprofit, so you are a manager. If you suddenly became aware of a significant bench of highly qualified potential employees who you knew had bipolar, and that the resume was good, the experience was good, the motivate they checked all the boxes.

Skippy Mesirow:

And let's just say you had to hire 10 people for the sake of argument for your organization. No particular reason. I'm curious for you as the manager. Would you want to hire 1 person like that? Would you want to hire 10?

Skippy Mesirow:

Like, is there an ideal mix of that aptitude of that superpower? And if so, how would you construct the workplace environment to just very selfishly for the organization? Right? This is all about the organization, not the individual. How would you construct kind of the workflow or the management to get the most out of that individual's strengths while minimizing the known challenges?

Jonathan Capelli:

When I hire myself is another way of asking that question ever. Okay. What would what would the the best mix be? I'm not sure. Would it be a disqualification?

Jonathan Capelli:

Definitely not. Would it be something that I would have to think consciously about and create some systems to manage and help them manage? Yes. So, let's say you have some folks that are neuroatypical in that way. What would what would what is some advice?

Jonathan Capelli:

Again, be okay hiring them because they're they'll there there are ways that it'll be an asset asset and will deliver benefits. But you gotta cultivate an environment of transparency and and openness. Otherwise, you won't be able to work with them, and you won't be able to work together, through sort of the the downsides of it. The person will hide the downsides maybe from you. You'll and especially during, like, parts of mania, you might, like, exploit that side where this person is getting a lot done, and, like, they're getting all this done.

Jonathan Capelli:

And then and you just absorb it all. And then when it gets followed by a period of downness, you'll be surprised and maybe hold them to that standard, the previous standard, their previous output of work, and that's not really good either. So you have to understand that that it'll be cyclical. The person will not always be exact the same all the time. Make sure to help them understand help them describe to you where they are in their sort of mental health journey at any given time so you can adjust your expectations accordingly, both the positive and the negative ones.

Jonathan Capelli:

Right? Like and I mean, like, oh, this person is gonna be useless now. It's like, well, they're gonna be this way as opposed to that way. And if if whether you've established it with yourself, if they're a direct report, or through your managers, just instill a sense of the ability to communicate where you are in your mental health at any given time. This is probably decent practice anyway.

Jonathan Capelli:

Check ins, I think, with your employees should always be, what's going on right now? Like, how are you, like, how are you doing, essentially? Maybe aspect to their personal lives. But if it's, like, affecting their work, then, like, let them tell you where their status is. It's like a status check-in.

Jonathan Capelli:

But for folks that have something like bipolar, then it might be a little more in-depth. But in general, I think it's a good thing to check-in and then be responsible.

Skippy Mesirow:

Amazing. I mean, it's beautiful advice for the specific, but also for the general. I think just really good management practice overall, recognizing people as whole humans and getting the most out of their passion and investment, which meets their individual experience. The the diversity of our workforce, the diversity of our perspectives, our orientations is such a strength when leveraged towards a shared goal, whatever that goal is. And so I think it's just a beautiful way to to frame that.

Skippy Mesirow:

So thank you for that. And and I imagine that your life experience has led you to those conclusions, so I'm also grateful for that. So last question, same question to everybody, which is, you know, our audience are not passive humans. These are leaders and public servants, whether they're firefighters, police chiefs, executive directors of housing organizations, advocates, organizers, elected officials. These are the people that are in the work, and we are here to heal our politics, one person at a time.

Skippy Mesirow:

So if you were to leave one thought, one takeaway, one suggestion, one piece of advice, one practice, one anything short and concise and memorable that you would want all of those humans to leave this episode with, which would best resource or empower them to be a vector of that healing internally or externally, what would you leave them with?

Jonathan Capelli:

The one that has come comes most to mind right now that is the most active in in my life professionally is is revisiting that term, the monocosotaxophilia, but applying it to everything. The love for a single answer, solution, idea, etcetera, cause behind things, and the obsession with with finding that. We look at things, and then we our brains naturally try to diagnose essentially what's going on and then put a label on it as a way of putting in a cognitive box or whatever to fit it into your system. There there's very few things that are just one thing in nature. Almost everything is myriad, both in its substance and in its causes and its effects.

Jonathan Capelli:

And so, again, whether it's an idea or a that you have or a a theory that you've adopted, a religion, a political belief, anything. Never never ascribe just one sort of narrative to it, and be wary of of any conclusion you make that is based on oversimplified premises, both in your personal life and in your professional life, because it'll oversimplify your solutions.

Skippy Mesirow:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Skippy Mesirow:

Wow. Yeah. Jonathan, thank you so much. This has been super fun. I I I knew we'd go all over the place, and we went to so many places that I didn't possibly imagine that we could have gone.

Skippy Mesirow:

And I'm so grateful for it, and, I just really thank you for taking the time with me.

Jonathan Capelli:

Thank you, Skippy. Yeah. I really know where this is gonna go either, like, at all. I knew it was gonna be wide ranging. I also didn't realize it was gonna be this wide ranging, but I knew I would get a lot out of it.

Jonathan Capelli:

So thank you for helping me. I mean, it's not like we journaled, but this almost felt like a journaling. It felt like a verbal collaborative journaling of, like, our collective thoughts that was useful for me to sort of reflect on in a different way. So thanks for the time.

Skippy Mesirow:

That's awesome. Public servant, Jonathan Capelli. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you wanna put what you've heard here today into practice, sign up for our newsletter, the leader's handbook, where each month you'll receive just one email with a curated selection of the most useful tools and practices discussed on this podcast today and over the course of the last month. Delivered in simple how to worksheets, videos, and audio guides, so you and your teams can try and test these out in your own life and see what best serves you.

Skippy Mesirow:

And lastly, if you wanna be a vector for healing our politics, if you wanna do your part, part, take out your phone right now and share this podcast with 5 colleagues you care about. Send a simple text, drop a line, and leave the ball in their court. Because the truth is the more those around you do their work, the better it will show up in your life, in your community, and in your world. Have a beautiful day.