—Systemic change begins with personal change—
(Formerly Leadership and the Environment)
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Leadership turns feeling alone and complacent into action.
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617: Janet Allaker: A long-time listener shares what This Sustainable Life means to her
Janet shared how she found This Sustainable Life, what kept her coming back, the guests she liked, and how it's affected her. I wish I had recorded episodes with listeners before to learn what you all like, don't like, and want more or less of.
Listening to it after recording, I consider our conversation one of the most accessible for new listeners. Janet described various aspects of it that I suspect will resonate with many listeners.
One thing that hit me was how the podcast restored her enthusiasm to act. Years ago she acted as much as she could on sustainability, to the point of picking up fruit rinds people had littered to put in compost. She didn't act for internal reasons but external, so she burned out and stopped acting. Then she found This Sustainable Life and it restored fun to acting. She does it for the joy of it, which keeps her going, gives her energy, not feeling like giving up.
Plus she did the Spodek Method, so you'll hear what she commits to do more.
If you are a listener and would like to be a guest, contact me and let me know.
Show Notes
Leaders who know how to lead and change culture know culture eats strategy for breakfast.
This concept figures strongly in Michael's book, Gridiron Genius. When most people watch football, they see the game, maybe the game plan and strategy. We see it on the scale of a play, maybe a game involving twenty-two men on a field, maybe also the coaches and trainers.
Michael sees each play in the context of the game, season, and overall culture of football as it evolves over decades. He knows the key players, coaches, owners, past players, their careers, their relationships, and their families if relevant.
To understand and change culture doesn't come from just telling people what to do. It means listening, understanding, testing, trying, failing, coming back, succeeding, relationships, and using tools like stories, beliefs, images, role models, not just carrots and sticks or instruction.
To hear Michael talk football reveals levels of leadership and culture beyond what most of us ever see, honed through decades of living and loving the game and everything in it. I hope the application to sustainability is obvious. You'll hear in his sharing what fans miss when television hides the full game why I can't stand people thinking they're leading in sustainability by coercing, cajoling, convincing, or seeking compliance.
Give everything you've got because you love it. Reach your potential. Break past what you thought your potential was to new possibilities.
Regular listeners know I started an experiment disconnecting from the electric grid. I began May 22. Then on July 22, I posted an episode that the solar panel or battery broke, or both. I didn't see how I could continue so said that after I finished recording, I'd declare victory, reconnect to the grid, cook lunch, and move on.
Regular listeners and readers of my blog know that I posted about keeping going. What gives? Did I stop or not?
I'd meant to record an episode explaining that I kept going without even solar power, though still using my "cheat" of allowing plugging my computer and phone at NYU. Recording my second episode with Michelle Nijhuis, I got to share that story, so I'm posting it here. She lived off the grid for fifteen years, so had plenty of relevant experience.
Where was Michelle Nijhuis all my life?
She lived off the electric grid for fifteen years and I was about two months in, so we shared stories of the experiences. She did it much longer and her fiance had to assemble everything from scratch. I'm only two months in and can use off-the-shelf parts, but I'm in Manhattan, so can't set up a permanent system. Some similarities: connecting with nature, learning to respect power, living with less resulting in living more. Michelle shares her challenges of connecting with the human world when disconnected to a power grid, but I don't think you'll hear regret.
I have to correct myself: I said kilowatt-hour when I meant watt-hour. My battery isn't 1,000 times bigger than I said.
It's hard to put into words the benefits of living without electrical power at the touch of a button. I recommend turning off your power every now and then. I wish I had earlier.
My proposal and rationale for the next amendment for the United States Constitution.
It will sound crazy, impossible, and too hard at first, as it did with me. But the more you consider it, the more the objections will fade. It is the right tool for the right job. Nothing else is.
I'll write more about it later. For now, just the audio.
When I wrote up my experiment to live with my apartment off the grid in Manhattan for a month, I looked up what I did the morning I started. My library records show I borrowed and listened to Sebastian's book Tribe, then my browser history shows I watched a ton of videos featuring him. Soon after I read Freedom, watched Restrepo and The Last Patrol.
His work makes you question your values, the values of our culture, and what you do about it. In my case, his exploration to why in a culture of material plenty, that according to, say, Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now or The Better Angels of Our Nature, which say life is the best its ever been, in head-to-head competition, people who know civilization choose to live in other places. His books and our conversation clarify and refine the conditions, but the main appeal of not-civilization is feelings of mutual dependence and feeling needed. Our culture isolates. With affluence has come anxiety, depression, and suicide.
His research and writing helped me understand why I enjoy each step of polluting less. People from the outside read me as extreme, but America pollutes extremely much. I've reduced over 90 percent, but I still pollute. I'm finding myself not extreme but traditional.
Sebastian shares the main points of his books on community, mutual support, feeling needed, war, love, and more versus isolation and anxiety. At the end we talk about how to restore what we've lost and the prospect of changing culture to sustainability, which looks promising.
In this sixth conversation between an Extinction Rebellion Rebel and a home-grown sustainability leadership (I hope) leader, we explore more of the life of someone who has devoted himself to solving our environmental problems.
We continue comparing and contrasting the approaches, learning from each other, developing friendship, sharing the challenges, and sharing why we do it.
If you, listener, haven't yet decided to make sustainability your priority, I think you'll find everyone needs your help. I hope this conversation helps influence you. Whatever else you're working on, clean air, land, food, and water will help.
I hope Etienne and my conversations help reveal it's a deeply rewarding life.
And hearing from an Olympic gold medalist who sees this work as the most valuable he can do is pretty engaging.
Here are the notes I read from:
Having just started month three of living off the electric grid in Manhattan, technical issues led me to stop the experiment. I'm not sure the problem, but connecting the solar panels to the power station, it doesn't charge. I don't know how to diagnose it without another power station or solar panel I know works to find the problem.
Here are the notes I read from: