Turning our lives upside down

Whether we like it or not, our lives are being changed in ways that we cannot control. And that makes us uncomfortable, fearful, regretful, angry and a whole host of other emotions. 

If you, like me, try and go positively into change, there are some techniques I employ to turn those emotions into ones of optimism, acceptance, excitement.  I'll be sharing some of those in the coming months.

What doesn’t work, never has, never will, is denial. 

Turning negative emotions into positive impact

Some emotions can become the momentum for action:

• anger at polluters can drive you to shift your consumption or your custom to other systems or organisations
• regret about times past and lost opportunities can hone your focus onto wringing out positive experiences and making good memories going forward
• fear of what might come can encourage you to do more than you imagined and to be part of mitigations and innovation.

But denial puts you into a place of ‘un-control’ – its not that you have no control, its that you’re failing to take the control that is yours alone to take. And subconsciously you know that, so you feel even worse!

So, if we can move ourselves on from denial, through grief, to acceptance and action – we become simultaneously both free from that tether, and more in control. 

And that gives us the mandate to be creative, and the impetus to be impactful.

We have the answers, we need to collectively act

In my podcast interviews with Dan Sherrard-Smith and Johnny Singh, my thoughts coalesced into the following observations – which I am reflecting on personally as well as advocating to you. 

• People are making conscious choices to think about themselves and the people they’re close to, without understanding that the situation has long since passed when that would be sufficient for their safety.
• It is not good enough to categorise those people as bad, evil, doing it to hurt others, ignorant, money-hungry, colonial, prejudiced, poor – they are trying to survive and thrive. If we continue to ‘other’ them, we will never find sufficient common ground to co-design our way through the polycrises we are in. 
• We have, collectively and globally, the answers we need.
• We just lack sufficient will to put them into effect in ways that are systemic, equitable and focused on ‘collective’ outcome rather than a binary, power-based relationship (give/take, loan/repayment, global north/global south).
• We have the ability act in both small and exponential ways now, as individuals, families, communities, organisations, political affiliations, governments, sectors, trading partners, hemispheres.

Sometimes all we need is one quote, one hero, one shocking scene, one glimpse of hope

 And that gives us that will to do something different, to say something, to plan forward. 

Here is a selection of my current favourites, please comment with yours so we can share the inspiration.

“I don’t talk about climate change. Change happened a long time ago. Crisis is where we are, and crisis is what we have to fight, and today I want us to recognise that what is required of us is going to have to allow us to one, develop partnerships in places where we may have never dreamt of so doing before, and to be able to do things in new ways that we have never thought of doing, and that the actions required are not simply those of others but of us, because it is the collective action that has led the world to be where it is today.”

Honourable Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, at the 20th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture on 12 November 2022, transcript sourced at https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/speech-by-the-honourable-mia-mottley-prime-minister-of-barbados-at-the-20th-nelson-mandela-annual-lecture

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"After a lifetime as a forest detective, my perception of the woods has been turned upside down. With each new revelation, I am more deeply embedded in the forest. The scientific evidence is impossible to ignore: the forest is wired for wisdom, sentience, and healing. This is not a book about how we can save the trees. This is a book about how the trees might save us.“

Suzanne Simard, https://suzannesimard.com/finding-the-mother-tree-book 

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“We know that we only have the possibility of avoiding a looming climate catastrophe if people like us refuse to give up. While you work to meet the challenge of climate change, I beg of you, don’t forget nature. Because today the destruction of nature accounts for more global emissions than all the cars and trucks in the world….

If we don’t stop the destruction of our nature world, nothing else will matter…

Simply put, if we don’t protect nature, we can’t protect ourselves. This is what we need to do. We need to include nature in every corporate, state and national climate goal, put in place the plans, the timetables, to meet those goals.”

Harrison Ford, Global Climate Action Summit 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAX7Qz8uO7A

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“Keeping communities of trees intact by maintaining the network of connections should help them resist the stress of climate change and recover more rapidly when climate-related disturbances do occur. In other words, connected forests are better able to cope with climate change and be productive, healthy and diverse and around for many generations to come.”

Mothertree, https://mothertreeproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Nat-Geo_EX-IntelligentForest_final.pdf

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