515: Chad Foster, part 2: A blind man overcoming the trap of feeling you have to fix the world
Our conversation in this episode starts by covering his commitment from last time. After a few minutes, it becomes apparent he picked a commitment based on feeling he had to fix the world—that is, extrinsic motivation disconnected from his heart.
We revisited his intrinsic motivations and came up with a new commitment. Acting on intrinsic motivation is leadership. Your emotions create meaning or not. If you’ve been acting halfheartedly on stewardship, you may have fallen into a trap of feeling you have to act because the media or whoever warned you that you have to but the warnings didn’t connect with you. So you feel you have to act for abstract, impersonal reasons.
No wonder anyone would fall into that trap. Nearly all loud voices on the environment push them. We feel if we don’t do enough to save the world, there’s no point in trying.
Chad changed his commitment to something more aligned with his connection to nature. See if you can pick up the shift. You’ll hear he prefers acting for personal reasons. I predict you’ll also hear his motivation increase, even become inspiring. I predict he’ll do more and, more importantly, influence more people also to change, by starting where he is, not where others think he should be.
If you’ve felt obliged to act but not inspired, Chad’s experience and our conversation may help distance yourself from that burden