Imagine a team where each teammate believed they would choke when it counted. That’s us with sustainability.
In sustainability, most people I talk to see living more sustainable as making their lives worse. That is, when I ask people if they can imagine a world where everyone lives sustainably, they can’t. If I ask them to try, they think of dystopic or Stone Age wastelands.
Many only see sustainability as not seeing family or exacerbating inequities (it does the opposite, polluting and depleting cause those things). If we think a path will lead to failure, we’ll sabotage ourselves before failing. In sports, we call it choking.
If everyone thinks they’ll choke, the team will likely choke. Teammates will sabotage the team’s success. That situation describes our culture today.
A way out is for someone like a coach or leader to help people expose their secret fears. Only then can we work on them, help people overcome them, and transform them or replace them with helpful, productive beliefs.
Often the difference between success and failure are the beliefs of the person trying.
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On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees