How to Create a Sustainability Movement: sneak preview of my book and workshops

On a call with Dan McPherson, podcast guest and friend, I mentioned recent advances on my book and how to lead people and create a movement. We decided to record part of the call sharing my screen. It's based on my work on This Sustainable Life leading hundreds of world-renowned guests to live joyfully sustainably based on intrinsic motivation. Nearly all return for second episodes. Many refer me to peers based on valuing the experience. Many have become friends. The video mixes story with theory. By sneak preview, I mean it's a work in progress, but I wanted to share…

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Why you shouldn’t live sustainably (not really): Coming clean about my shameful sponge

Every time I look at my floor sponge I think, "it's beyond the end of its life. Time to get rid of it." Below are pictures of the front and back. It's in tatters. But look at the third picture. It still cleans the floor. Why get rid of something that works? I've cleaned my floor every fifth day without fail for about five years, maybe more. I do it before my weight lifting routine to warm me up and start the process. It's more than a routine, almost a ritual. I used to mop, but my apartment isn't even…

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Finally, I illustrated what’s missing from sustainability

Working on the book proposal, I finally saw how to illustrate what's missing from sustainability. It's simplicity almost embarrasses me that I didn't think of creating it before, except that I remember that simplicity comes from more work, not less. The Venn diagram below illustrates what we're missing. We don't lack facts or bold ideas. We lack leaders experienced in LeadershipScience and complex systemsLiving sustainably, not just talk. It won't come from scientists, professors, journalists, or politicians---the "experts." I put the term in quotes because, however brilliant and effective in their fields, they don't know how to lead effectively. Facts,…

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Remember the “Crying Indian” Anti-Litter Ads From the 70s? You’ll Cry More at Our Pollution Levels Today (Inc.)

Remember the Single-Tear Anti-Litter Ads From the 70s? You'll Cry Too at Our Pollution Levels Today The chart below puts Keep America Beautiful's "Crying Indian" public service announcement in today's deplorable context A headline in The Guardian two days ago, "$180bn investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge" led me to some statistics about plastic production. Plastic Production Then The chart I saw, reproduced below, showed dramatic increase around 1970. Normally I wouldn't think much of that date, but it reminded me of the so-called "crying Indian ads,"--the Keep America Beautiful public service announcements from my childhood. I hadn't thought of them…

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Updates on Limits to Growth, finally!

One of my top resources on the environment is the book Limits to Growth. Reading it was revelatory. They approached the environment the way I thought made sense, then created a model, researched the numbers, plugged them in, and got answers. What made sense was what they call a systemic approach---not to look at one of all the interacting parts, but to look at the whole system, including how the parts interacted. For example, I sensed that just improving technology didn't feel like it would solve everything. The Green Revolution, for example, led to more food, but used fossil fuels…

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How to review a podcast on iTunes (Video)

Apple approved my podcast, Leadership and the Environment, for iTunes yesterday. If you want to help the environment, I hope you'll review it there. Why review Leadership and the Environment? Leadership and the Environment helps people who want to change their behavior but feel discouraged. Americans pollute and degrade the environment more than almost anyone. Everyone I know wants to degrade less, but does little. I see a leadership vacuum---someone to help people achieve their goals. Leaders help people find meaning and purpose. Leaders help change beliefs and goals. The mainstream belief that growth solves most problems is exacerbating the…

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I’m no longer “not flying”

A friend wrote Your perseverance in not flying around is beyond impressive. :) Are you still not consuming normal packaging? The longer you live outside a system, the less its goals and values control you. As with fitness, my skills living by my pollution-related values becomes easier all the time. I responded I'm no longer "not flying" or avoiding food packaging. I'm living by my values, which means creating adventure, cultural exchange, and what flying and eating brings without polluting the fuck out of the environment and lying to myself that I'm not, or that I'm powerless to do anything…

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Leadership and the Environment podcast episode #5: The slideshow, June 23, 2017 [video]

I've delivered this talk a lot lately. It continues to iterate and I'm years from being able to deliver it at the I-Have-A-Dream-level quality to motivate people as the cause demands, but I consider it ready. Please share! (with @spodek) I welcome suggestions to improve. This is the 90-minute version. I will create shorter versions too. Most of all, please contact me to join the movement. I'd love to hear from everyone interested in helping, whether you can help with the areas I name or otherwise. Remember to do part 1---an effective personal challenge---first. Please tell me if you take…

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Genuineness and authenticity: What it takes

I finally watched Gone With the Wind. People routinely rate it one of the top movies. Watching it, you automatically rate it by the standards of its time. But watch the acting these iconic scenes. The morning after watching the movie, I woke up realizing how ungenuine and inauthentic the acting was. Sure, by the standards of its time, the acting was probably great. But watch this scene, the opening scene of the movie. Do you not see what are supposed to be grown men behaving like caricatures of children? At 0:56 the man shows his happiness by dancing. What…

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Hustling

What do you do when they cancel your flight? In the late 70s, a man and his fiancée were visiting the Caribbean. They found themselves stranded in an airport when their airline canceled their flight to Puerto Rico. The man was disappointed, but based on his experience running a record business that he had founded, he took initiative to solve the problem. Noticing other people from the same flight were also stranded, he called a chartering company to find the cost to charter a plane. $2,000. He agreed to charter it. He divided that cost by two less than the…

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Video: The Worst Problem in the World

I've shown this representation of what I call The Worst Problem in the World at many seminars. I wrote about it about five years ago. Now you can see the video. Watch all the way through to see some solutions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUycXlo4OX8 Take my course if you want to get beyond it and resolve it in your life, mainly by doing the exercises in it to develop compassion and empathy.

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This is not leadership. It makes people think it is and that’s part of why we have poor leaders, part 3

"Just do what I say." "Do it now." "John, do X. Sally, do Y. I'll do Z. Then we'll met and put everything together." Wouldn't leadership be easy if we could tell everyone what to do and they'd do it? It never seems to work like that, though, does it? Most people understand that problems come up. They don't always realize that command-and-control leadership often discourages people from working with would-be leaders who work with it. Why do people still order people around? I think one reason is how much popular media show leaders working with it. It's simple and…

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This is not leadership. It makes people think it is and that’s part of why we have poor leaders, part 1

"You don't understand me!" "I wish I'd never been born!" Who hasn't yelled something like that at their parents? I'm sure I did. I argued with my parents like all kids. I've grown since then and don't argue like that any more. I still disagree, I just try more to seek understanding, not to confront so adversarially. I was just in a line and overheard two workers argue. They weren't yelling, but they weren't getting anywhere near resolving their conflict. They were adults but as best I could tell hadn't grown past a juvenile way of dramatizing conflict, trying to…

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What makes relationships last: resolving conflict

Do you remember how your favorite relationships started? Business, personal, or whatever, you felt mutual attraction to work together, play together, or whatever. Something about the other person made you want to interact with them. Do you remember how your relationships ended? Sometimes you or they change and you lose interest. No problem. Often you want to keep the relationship yet it ends unhappily. Many people blame differences you couldn't overcome. I suggest the key point in those cases is not the differences but your inability to overcome them. No two people agree on everything. Every pair of people have…

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My scientific and engineering view of coaching and teaching leadership

Science is the study of nature, looking for patterns, to predict results. For the moment I'm not approaching leadership with the institutional view of science with researchers applying for grants from the National Science Foundation to do double-blind controlled experiments for peer-reviewed publication, though I've had a few graduate students approach me to do research like that. Here's a simpler view: science turns observations about nature into models and predictions about the future. It's simplified, but I think captures an important part of science. Thousands of years ago people noticed that what went up came back down. That's an observation…

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How to handle leadership issues when you don’t have authority

What do you do when you see ineffective or counterproductive leadership of a group you're in and you're not one of the leaders? Do you just let it happen? Do you act? Do you talk to the leader? Usually I don't step in if I'm not in a position of authority and no one asked me to act. Rarely I step in. In 2008, I spoke up on a mailing list for Columbia Business School's alumni club when things seemed polarized, divisive, and moving toward desperate actions, which I posted here. The administration emailed me to thank me for that…

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How to increase empathy, part 1: why it seems so hard to

You want to improve your empathy because you've heard it's fundamental to leadership, influence, and motivation, but find it hard to define, measure, or see in use, making it hard to improve or learn from others. In other words, empathy is important for working with people, but hard to learn, all the more so for those who lack it most. While I don't pretend to be the most empathetic person, having started with little, I've improved a lot. I can teach you to improve yours. Today let's see how others make it hard. The world makes learning empathy hard when…

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Explore and expand your boundaries and those of people you lead

Exploring and expanding your boundaries and horizons creates freedom and comfort in your life. Doing so can be challenging---"getting out of your comfort zone," as many put it---but creates results and emotional reward. The more experience you have in it, the more you can lead others to do the same, creating freedom and comfort in their lives. I'll illustrate the process with some simple diagrams. I find visualizing would-be complex things simplifies them and makes them easier to do. First, consider a diagram of the things you do, as illustrated below. As I've illustrated it, the light-colored center is where…

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Master introversion AND extroversion

Yesterday I wrote about freeing yourself from constraining beliefs. Today I'll expand on creating new beliefs to free yourself from such constraints. I wanted to illustrate at least one alternative to the standard one-dimensional model of introversion and extroversion that I find impedes self-awareness, understanding, and personal growth and development. Many people continue to believe it because they have no alternative that helps their life more. Others rigidly hold on to their old belief because they can't distinguish between the belief and the object of their belief -- for example, telling people who disagree with their view that they don't…

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How to bring happiness and emotional reward to your life by analogy with pleasure—the series

I've written, thought, and acted on distinguishing between pleasure, happiness, and emotional reward. I like them all, but sometimes life creates situations where sacrificing one will get more of another. Knowing their differences and similarities helps you figure out how to create the optimal balance of each in your life. For example, lately I've been experimenting with cold showers, although the following applies for any other SIDCHA or challenging activity. It's incredibly important for improving your life if you prefer living to sitting on the couch eating ice cream. Everybody I tell about them who hasn't tried them evaluates the…

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The Method: long term

If you lined up all the cycles in your life by the amount of reward they brought you, you might represent them like this. The low bar on the left might represent something you can never get right -- like feeling helpless about your weight if you're overweight or about a big debt you have to repay. The high bar on the right might represent the joy you feel for your favorite hobby or spending time with your best friend. I'm only casually representing things. I don't know how objectively you can measure the amount of reward, but in general…

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The Method: long-term growth from many transformations

[This post is part of a series on The Method to use The Model -- my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development -- which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don't see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you'll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday's post showed how one transformation -- that is, one application of the Method -- not only cycles you…

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The Method: how-to

EDIT: I modified how I present the Method slightly. Please see the new version of this page and the updated series on implementing the Method. The next few posts will describe the Method, which is how to use the Model to lead yourself and others and to improve your life, in particular, using the elements you have voluntary control over. In time, you'll probably think of the Method as I do, through the Model's voluntary levers -- environment, belief, behaviors. I call one application of the Method a transformation because it transforms one part of your life. Preparation is as…

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