I'm continuing my practice of bringing leadership to sustainability, following my bringing speeches and messages by Patton, Frankl, JFK, King, Mandela, Henry V, and others. Today I bring President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address honoring men who fought and died in battle. I hoped to draw parallels to acting in stewardship today but faced two big differences. First, we don't have to risk our lives---the opposite. Living in harmony with nature creates joy, connection, and community. Second, nearly nobody today acts sustainably! Lincoln could speak in honor of people who acted. We can't today because we feel too entitled to flying when and where we want and everything that goes with it. I see Lincoln's address as motivation for us to act, however easy compared to…

For years I thought fusion could solve our environmental problems. Serious consideration betrays that false promise, illustrating it would only continue the the pattern creating the problems we're trying to solve. Even if it works, it leads to two results I see as problems. One, it will lead us to keep changing our world away from the environment we evolved in to allow us to thrive and enjoy a bountiful world. Two, it will lead us to keep growing beyond the limits of what it can support, as we have with comparable technological advances. If we ever expect to stop growing, why not do it now, when the stakes are lower?

Andreas and I go back five or ten years. He hired me as a coach when he was selling his share of a business he cofounded. He appears in my book Initiative about that experience and what he's done since. I invited him as a guest for two reasons: One, he started the Leadership and the Environment Sweden podcast. I shared with him my vision of working on sustainability in a way to help people become valuable in their communities. I coached him on podcasting. He's still ramping up with only a few guests so far, but you'll hear in this episode his experiences, how shy and introverted he felt before starting, and how much the training led him to enjoy it. Two, he's taken…

I love talking with people who strive to reach their potential and beyond, and who elevate people around them---their teammates. People like that exist everywhere, especially in professional sports. Jaeden plays for the Atlanta Falcons. We start by talking about his first touchdown pass, which you have to watch. It's what you'd dream of for a first touchdown pass. Loving sports as I do and hearing about the personal experience, I indulge in asking about that play. He said he was open, but not much. It looked like a mess except that Matt Ryan through it right to him. He got hit but bounced right back, spiked the ball and did a dance. He shares the inside view, what went different than planned and other…

You've heard people calling for moonshots---challenges so great we take them on as a nation. But regarding sustainability we also ask people to do as little as they can, "here's one little thing you can do for the environment." In this episode, I bring you John Kennedy's speech at Rice on the original moonshot, fraught with peril, expensive, asking a lot. He spoke with resolve we lack today everywhere, entitled as our culture has become, but especially in taking responsibility for our actions that affect others helpless to defend themselves from our hurting them. For our mere comfort and convenience. For our waste! America outright wastes forty percent of our food, which we use more fossil fuels than ever to create. I am endeavoring to…

Margaret is the Executive Director at The Climate Mobilization. Writing Facing the Climate Emergency brought her to me. Her psychology background leads her to approach the climate psychologically, which I appreciate and consider missing. Our internal resistance, fears, and emotions that we don't like facing seem our biggest challenges to act. Of course, more research and education help, but we crossed the threshold of knowing enough to act long ago. We aren't acting not out of ignorance but out of emotion and the skills to manage them. She writes about facing our fears, which leads ultimately to how rewarding acting on so great a challenge feels. People don't get how rewarding acting on our values feels. We both struggled to describe the ineffable emotional and…

Many people are looking to return to something they can call normal since the pandemic undid their earlier normal. In the meantime they struggle. Almost everyone I know knows Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. I don't know what they think the book applies to, but it applies to exactly this situation. I'll give the perfectly relevant quote here and elaborate in the episode: We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.…

I shared a story with a client the other day that he found deeply meaningful. I'd never shared it with anyone before because it felt so shameful. Enough time has passed that I can talk about it, so I'm sharing it here, but I still cringe over it. When others share stories they say make them feel shameful, it never sounds as serious to me as it seems to to them, so I hope my story doesn't either. I'm not going to write it here so you have to listen to the episode if you want to hear it, but it starts with girls, or rather lack of relationships with them, and ends with huge life decisions in other areas that I would not have…

You're about to hear a conversation post-George Floyd by two leadership writers. Normally we write for mostly business audiences. this conversation felt more personal. Normally when a friend introduces a potential podcast guest, we start by talking each other's work and figure out scheduling. With Chester---maybe given his openness and, I think, mine, as well as the protests raging---we jumped into talking about race and our interactions with people of different color. We spoke for a couple hours about a topic that polite conversation often avoids, let alone makes it the first thing two people meeting for the first time discuss. Those past conversations set the tone for the conversation you're about to hear, also the continued protests, media discussion, and our growing friendship to…

Here are the notes I read from for this episode: Stand up comedians Growing up in 70s I thought everyone would want to lead, to give I Have A Dream speech of their generation Felt so natural, though universal So until recently felt others could do better, wouldn't want to compete Dawning on my almost nobody wants to Nobody seems to want to change I expect they'll be happy to change if they don't have to do work After all world has changed. Seems easy to change with it Maybe people are waiting for someone and I can or should be it Crazy for me to think nobody wants it Question I've asked lately: Genie Mandela choice I thought all the people competing to be…

Here are the notes I wrote and read this podcast from: It's no secret the tension between police and protesters in this country. I've talked to a lot of protesters in my day, having protested myself many times, especially in college. In grad school a post-doc once worked as auxiliary policeman Recently listened to Jocko Willink on Joe Rogan's podcast. I won't explain who they are because they're both big public figures and you can look them up. Except Jocko is a former Navy SEAL and Joe hosts the world's top podcast. As a martial artist, he speaks Jocko's language and they both talk about cops and uniformed people. I'm going to play about a minute from their conversation that inspired me. <play clip here>…