If you've listened to a lot of this podcast, you've heard me walk guests through sharing their values on sustainability and acting on them.

Why do they enjoy what most people consider deprivation and sacrifice?

You can learn to do it. A growing team of us teach workshops in sustainability leadership. One is coming up, September 10, 2024.

You can become a leader in a movement to live joyfully sustainably, to change global culture at the last minute.

Here is the recommendation I quote

I would like to share with you my experience with confronting climate change head on this year. I decided to make it the year I stop my gloom and doom and to let go of my self-talk that reinforced that I am helpless to do anything. I am discovering that changing my own behavior is joyful and empowering. Deprivation and sacrifice are the OPPOSITE of how I feel about the daily journey toward habits that care for our beautiful planetary home.

How did I come to this change of heart? My daughter took a class with Josh Spodek in Sustainability Leadership and I happened to be at her house while she was taking it. This led to conversations that challenged my pessimism about being able to do anything more than I was already doing. My pessimism about individual action making any difference was challenged. It fundamentally came down to “I can continue along as I am and for certain nothing will change, or I can take the reins of my part of this giant puzzle and have the chance to be a part of the solution”.

A large part of my motivation came when I used an online carbon calculator to determine my “carbon footprint”. I discovered that from flying alone for the first seven months 2023 I had belched out over 10 times the amount of carbon that is considered the “sustainable limit” per person per year. This number didn’t even include gasoline, natural gas, or any other modes of consuming or polluting. It literally made me cry. It also made me get serious.

I took the course that my daughter had taken and found a source of support, inspiration, information, and skills that were new. One of the things about this class that I think is most powerful is that there is nothing “prescriptive” about it. There are no lists of things you should do now and things you should avoid now. No one is deciding for you or shaming you into choices. Instead, it is an inward journey of connection to one’s own internal motivation that is grounded in our own experiences in nature. It is a process of continuous improvement, so I didn’t decide to reduce my trash consumption and then stop when I did that. I look every day for new ways to lessen my impact, and every time I find another way I feel GREAT and motivated to figure out what’s next.

I am writing to invite you to take this class. Josh’s model is to use conversations with each other as the foundation of connecting to our internal motivation, conversations using the Spodek Method. These conversations help build a community of people who have experienced the joy of taking self-directed action in one’s own life. As with any BIG problem, the solutions require all of us. This class helps, one person at a time, to build a community of people who see themselves as part of the solution. I think you will be surprised and delighted with the empowerment you feel to take action.

• The Entrepreneurship Strategy
• Contact me and sign up
• The episode with Trish, who has cancer

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