Are you immobilized by fear or incapacitated by overwhelm?

Or do you find yourself charting the same ole course only to achieve the same ole outcomes on your brief path through life?

Navigating now requires unprecedented change. We can either dig our heels in and resist like heck or open to the vast array of possibilities that riding this sea wave of change might open up for us.

When we sense something might be required of us it’s normal to hunker down and try to stay the familiar course. But what is that course exactly? Is it the one of your choosing? Does it align with who you are and what you came here to do?

Are you living your best life? Fulfilling your soul purpose? Or do you find yourself ticking off the weekdays hoping the weekend offers a reprieve from the monotony of a life you didn’t create with intention?

COVID gifted us with a slower pace and fewer choices. Did you make the kind of shifts you imagined you would if ever given the gift of a slowed down clock?

Or have you returned to the prior pace by default because you didn’t have a clear enough new vision with a mapped out plan to get you there?

As difficult as now can feel, we were made for this time. Like a birthing mum, we have unlimited power within us to meet the challenge of this moment to birth our planet anew.

Surely we are meant to do more than just survive. We are here to shine like the lights that we are and THRIVE! And in our thriving, our planet has the best chance of thriving too!

None of us know how much time we have left on the proverbial clock of our lives. The best time to live full out is right now. If we don’t do what we came here to do, who will do it for us? Who will be our best self if we won’t?

Gandhi, MLK, Mother Theresa, Thich Nhat Hanh and many others encountered impossible odds and overcame them. They were fully human like the rest of us. But they each raised their hand to say yes to doing their part no matter what. Their vision and purpose were crystal clear. They knew what was theirs to do and they persevered. We remember them as some of the ‘greats’ but during much of their lives they were ordinary people who persisted toward their vision for a better world in extraordinary ways regardless of who was or wasn’t taking notice.

What is your vision for a better world? What is your vision for a thriving planet? Who do you feel called to be and what do you feel called to do to make your vision a reality?

By the time you finish reading this post precious time to act will have passed. Contemplation and reflection precedes powerful focused action. What are you contemplating and reflecting on in the gift of idle moments you might have? Or are you filling the void with mindless stimulation? Are you making every moment count…because it matters a whole lot that you do. It matters for our youth and for the most vulnerable among us who will be impacted most by the slow moving freight train that is climate change. But first and foremost, it matters for you!

I cannot be you nor do the work you came here to do. You cannot be me nor do the work that I came here to do. But we both THRIVE when we do the work we came here to do…and when we support one another in doing it!

If these questions inspire you to take a deeper dive into what it might look like for you to thrive while supporting our planet in thriving too, I’m happy to support you in going there.

If you have a vague sense for the work you feel called to do in support of a thriving planet, I can help you get more clear and map out an action plan with a thriving you at the heart of it.

If you know what lights you up and energizes you from the inside out and want to get clear on how to align that with a thriving planet, I can help with that too!

Got questions or just wanna know more? DM me today!

Thriving Planet THRIVING YOU, a 6 week climate action intensive for women, starts April 23. Pay What It’s Worth Pricing. Inquire now!

ReplyForward

In midst of a chaotic life with competing priorities, selling someone on the idea of climate action is like trying to sell a new mama the latest brand of geriatric incontinence depends when she is struggling to figure out which brand of diapers on an overcrowded supermarket shelf will do the trick for her precious baby's bum without destroying the planet!

I’m certain this isn’t novel news for anyone considering the millions of viewers who watched “Don’t Look Up” over the winter holidays. In a world designed for super convenience, Netflix binging, online shopping to your heart’s content, and a global pandemic, responding to what still might seem like a distant but looming climate crisis might be the hardest of sells.

I could sugar coat it and fluff it up but you’d see right through it. So I'm gonna give it to you straight.

Activism, overcoming inertia and getting your body moving in the direction of the positive change you wish to see on the planet, requires effort. Sometimes a whole freaking lot of effort.

With full awareness that I'm saying all the wrong stuff to lure you in closer, I dare continue.

Activism requires discipline. It requires stepping well beyond your comfort zone and doing sh*t you’d never dream of doing for yourself alone.

Activism requires sticking your neck out there over and over again and using your voice ad nauseam for something you believe in until either you die, throw in the towel and give up, or convert that dream into reality!

It requires putting one foot in front of the other even if you aren’t sure there will be firm ground beneath your feet upon taking your next step.

If I haven’t lost you yet, here is where my tune shifts.

We have been conditioned to believe that activism requires foregoing pleasure for pain. While that's true for some forms of activism, I have found another way to ‘get active’ that feels pleasure-filled because it's aligned with who you are, with what you value, and with how you enjoy spending your time the most. It is called 'Regenerative Activism' and it begins with a THRIVING YOU at the heart of it.

If you love that feeling you get after a long stretch of binge watching, that gnawing realization that you just traded precious gifted moments of life on this planet to be passively entertained requiring only of you to sit on your bum for hours on end, then you can stop right here.

If you are the type to do that and walk away feeling mildly nauseated or a slight sinking in your gut knowing that perhaps you missed your life’s calling in those precious lost moments, or you realize you are numbing out because it feels hard to stay present to the hard sh*t going on on our planet, then activism might just be the medicine you need.

Activism is a need vs. a want. Nobody really wants to do the work of climate action. If you were to take a poll, most activists are eager to see the day when the cause they are fighting for ceases to exist.

I can tell you that personally, I’d love to be able to binge watch ‘Reign’ every night with my 13 year old daughter because the joy it gives her to do that with me is more than enough reward. And the show itself is pretty entertaining too.

But I don’t. At least not as often as she would love for me too. We’ve agreed upon set times with limits around how long we watch. We’ve talked openly and candidly about what I’m doing with my time instead. We’ve watched educational films together and I’ve explored and shared openly my WHY in this work and why my decision to engage in climate action and health matters for her too.

This doesn’t feel like deprivation or pain (the opposite of pleasure) to me. In the list of should's, ought to's and want to’s, knowing my WHY brings me back to the work I feel called to do, and therefore need to do, right now.

Knowing my WHY anchors me in a deep sense of possibility, passion and purpose. Knowing my WHY gives me reason for being on a planet that is struggling to thrive.

When I am not doing this work in the times it is right for me to be doing it, I feel uneasy, restless, anxious, sometimes even angry and nauseous. Those are the moments when the fear and worry seeps in. It’s in these moments that I lose hope because if I know that I am ignoring that internal nudge to do something, the things that are MINE to do, then I realize just how easy it is for others to ignore that nudge too.

But here's the truth. We don’t have time to ignore the nudges. For every second we ignore, the climate situation worsens. The overwhelming majority of scientists, like in the vicinity of 99%, have made it crystal clear in exponential ways that the climate crisis is a result of human activity, OUR activity. We live in a system of built in checks and balances and when the balance is thrown off, the system fails. We are seeing this in our governments, in our social structures, and on our planet as a whole. It is the same for our planet as it is for the communities who dwell on it and the people who inhabit it.

If your trusted healthcare provider (I am one of those) tells you that you have a 99% chance of surviving if you pursue a recommended treatment, you’re gonna do that treatment! Or if you heard that if your kid eats a certain food, there is a 99% chance they will grow unsightly horns out of their head, you’d promptly stop feeding it to them.

Well this is where we are with climate change. And much of the change has already been set in motion with dire consequences already playing out. I know that you see those changes but are you allowing yourself to FEEL them and to FEEL the truth of what it means for us if we don't act? Even more, the truth of what it means for the children we have been tasked with passing the keeping of this planet on to next?

But here is the good news, the inspiring news, the hopeful news. Scientists have also informed us that if we all act boldly now, we have a reasonable chance at saving the planet. By 'saving' I mean ensuring that it will remain inhabitable, viable, and sustainable for human life for generations to come. So by saving the planet what I really mean is saving ourselves. Don't kid yourself. Don't keep mincing words. Climate Action is FOR US. It is for the preservation of human life on planet earth. Period.

Our planet will bounce back in time. She’s hard wired for resilience in spite of our best efforts to throw her way the heck off balance. But she can out pace us all of us when it comes to patience and endurance. Rest assured, in time she will heal.

So if you were to get on board with this activism stuff, who would it be for?

In our world of immediate gratification, doing it for future generations can feel a bit too far out in front to motivate us to turn off the TV or give up our other taken-for-granted mind-numbing distractions and conveniences.

But what if I told you that engaging in climate work is first and foremost FOR YOU and the people you love?

Don't know what I am talking about?

Let’s revisit that gnawing realization that you might have missed your calling or that sickening feeling in your gut that you just wasted precious moments of your life that you will never get back. You can only do that so often before you wind up feeling anxious, depressed, withdrawn and eventually in some alternate state of reality far removed from real connection with your fellow humans who are living smack dab in the middle of a changing climate on planet earth and suffering every day because of it.

We are hard wired to need one another as is evidenced by how we come into the world and the long duration of time we are dependent upon our mothers for survival. The pandemic has shown us that by it's correlating pandemic of social isolation.

But this pandemic of social isolation started long before COVID hit. COVID just made us painfully aware of our dependence on and need for one another. It also made us aware of the value we get from giving to and serving one another.

Being on the front lines of this pandemic certainly has it's stressors. But feeling like you have no other option but to socially isolate with no opportunity for mutual give and take with those in your community can leave one questioning one's purpose for existing at all.

We are communal creatures by nature and we thrive best in a mutual exchange of give and take. But looking to nature teaches us that as earth-beings, we are each designed to give and take in a specific sort of way. An apple tree takes just the nutrients it needs to grow and when it bears fruit it bears APPLES! It doesn't try to bear anything else.

To THRIVE we must all be about the work of figuring out what is OUR own fruit to bear. What fruits are OURS to give to our world in need? What nutrients do we need to take in to give those fruits best?

When we are about the work of discerning what is OURS TO GIVE we come in to right relationship with ourselves, our communities and our planet as a whole. We THRIVE.

And what do we get in return when we give what is ours to give?

1. Peace.
2. Inner calm.
3. A good night’s rest. Even if it was a short night of sleep.
4. We get to look our children in the eye and assure them we are doing everything we can to ensure they will inherit a thriving planet when it is our time to leave.​
5. ​We get to have deeply powerful, rich, and meaningful conversations about the matters we care about most...the health of our planet, the physical, emotional and spiritual wealth of our children, and about what it really looks like and means to THRIVE in a time like now.
   

Wanna talk 'Activism' and what a personal Climate Action Plan might look like for you? Schedule a free Discovery Call with me today!

Registration for my 12 Week Climate Action Intensive for Women is open through January 25th. If you are a woman remotely concerned about the climate crisis and eager to do more about it, I would love to help you get started! Got a group or gathering you would like for me to speak to? I have personally dedicated myself to speaking on whatever platform I am given about this topic because doing so assures me a better night's rest!

Godspeed in pursuing the work you are here to do and plentiful peace to you and yours.

ReplyForward

Nope.

It’s far more subtle and personal than that. You won’t see me wear it on the outside.  But it’s there when I hit a button and then wait.

It’s not the terror that accompanies a deep wanting to be liked or crippling fear of rejection.

Trust me. I’m human. I know that fear well. But this fear is different. It feels far more justified somehow.

This terror I feel right now is that I won’t figure out how to play the game ‘right’ in order to win.

What is “winning” you might ask?

Winning for me is somehow magically, perhaps miraculously is the better word, finding my way through the dense fog and mind numbing monotony of the thousands of social media posts people scroll through each day.

Winning is discerning that exact right combination of words, tone, and energy that will inspire and motivate a scroller to pause, ponder, and prioritize something that feels so important to me I’d sacrifice my life for it.

Winning looks like a woman looking up from the swirl of her crazy busy life and, in the midst of it all, seeing a light bulb go on.

Winning looks like this woman realizing for herself that she might just be sitting on a goldmine of opportunity to be a catalyst for climate action if she only knew how.

Winning looks like this woman doing something profoundly crazy in the midst of that crazy busy life and opting to surrender 12 precious Saturday mornings to devote her attention to something most would rather turn away from.

Winning looks like this woman saying "YES!" I want to become a catalyst for climate action and I’m ready to learn how.  Now!

I don’t know how to fix all the woes on the planet.

I do know how to do hard things and how to help others do hard things too...sometimes seemingly impossible things given the obstacles that might appear to stand in one's way.  

I also know how to make doing hard things feel purposeful and fun!

I’d LOVE to mince words here but I can’t.

YOU are the change you’ve been waiting for when it comes to creating a better world for generations to come.

We’ve got kids on the streets marching for a better future. We’ve got parents fleeing homes, countries, and livelihoods in search of edible food, clean water, and non-toxic air for their children to breathe.

Not to sound cliché but there really is no planet B. Nor is there any better person in your life to take the kind of action that will relieve your climate anxiety BUT YOU!

We are living in a time when we’ve all gotta sacrifice something. To sacrifice means to surrender something of value to gain something of even greater value.

I can't think of anything more valuable than a viable planet.  Can you?

If you are still with me, I have an invitation for you.  Please read it all the way through.  

I invite YOU to sacrifice 12 Saturday mornings for our planet and for the people who will inhabit it for generations to come.

I invite you to make a powerful and deeply personal plan for a thriving planet that has you thriving at the heart of it. 

I invite you to land fully into your WHY and to all the ways you are already uniquely prepared to mobilize climate action.

This isn’t about you taking on more.

This is about you being willing to turn IN to your climate anxiety vs. away from it and learning how to harness that energy and transform it for good.

This is about you getting real with yourself about just how much eco-anxiety is stealing vital life force from you every single moment you choose not to acknowledge it.

This is about you learning to have powerful conversations about the things that matter most TO YOU!

This is about you learning to lead with your WHY on climate and mobilizing your personal spheres of influence.  

If you think we’ve got a whole lotta time to spare, then my course is probably not for you.

But if you find yourself sitting on the sidelines of the climate action movement eager to jump in and find your own stride in the midst of an already busy and full life, then my 12 Week Climate Action Intensive, Survive to THRIVE on a Planet in Crisis is just for you!

The intensive begins Saturday 1/29. Registration closes 1/25. Schedule a Discovery Call with me today!

​We are living in a time of great shedding, molting, letting go. Our systems are breaking down and our rigid ways are proving to be not so rigid after all.

We humans are capable of great change. We’ve got what it takes to become something we’ve never been before…since that first moment we were all breathed out in unison and then found our way into separateness.

We are returning. Our way forward is together. Back to our state of oneness. Wholeness. Holiness.

Not the kind that sits separate in a church pew or on a prayer mat alone in isolation. Although that’s fine for a time if that helps one to reconnect within and remember. But a holiness that recognizes that the hole at the center is there to be filled by something greater than the stuff of the world…the consumable stuff that is in short supply and finite.

Our wholeness is found in our emptiness. Within our emptiness we have space for each other and for divine spirit to come in and fill us to overflowing.

This energy is our birthright. It is the heartbeat of the best part of humanity and that which unites us to all that lives, has lived and will live in time to come.

Now is OUR time. Not my time or your time or any one of our individual times to shine…but our time to shine in ways we never dreamed possible.

We can and we must get over that which keeps us small, separate, and isolated in our comparisons.

I am only as good as you are. And we are only as good as the ground we walk on, the water we drink, and the air we breathe.

We are here for but a short while. Let us pull our heads out of our individualism and dare to see the best parts of each other and in our seeing call it forth for the healing of our planet to create a viable and thriving future for the next seven generations and beyond.

Our ancestors to come are counting on us to do this vital work now. We CAN do this. Together. Let’s.
 

Not only is COVID-19 wreaking havoc on our ability to perform our jobs in a less than perfect health care system, she is wreaking havoc on pretty much every system we had come to rely on in an economy we had come to take for granted. 

Unlike any other crisis we humans have faced on our shared planet, this one is impacting us all at the same time.  There is no escaping from it.  Even if we live in an area that is ‘beyond the peak’ we cannot rest on the laurels of our past efforts.  ‘Reopening’ the parts of our economy we once believed were ‘essential’, but COVID deemed were not, means reopening to risk of exposure to the same virus that caused this cataclysmic shift to our ‘life as usual’ in the first place.  Until a proven vaccination makes its way around our globe, the Coronavirus is here to stay and will continue to stretch us in unprecedented ways.     

Climate Change scientists have warned that social disruption from rising temperatures, unprecedented weather patterns, and pandemics like this will be part of our new norm if we do not change.  A career in healthcare and physical rehabilitation has taught me all too well that change doesn’t come easy for us humans.  We take comfort in the familiar, even if medical advice tells us we should be doing otherwise.  As gloom and doom as “if we do not change” sounds, I find great hope in the words IF and CHANGE because I have also witnessed that when the stakes are high enough, humans, irrespective of most anything, totally show up for the challenge.  IF the life or death of ourselves, or a way of living we love, is threatened, our superpowers awaken and catapult us into levels of grit, stamina and ability we never dreamed were possible allowing us to CHANGE in unprecedented ways!   

In addition to being passionate about healthy bodies, I am also passionate about the health of our shared home.  You might call me a tree-hugger.  But to me, it really just makes good common sense.  We rely on the earth’s vitality for every single thing we use, own and consume.  Clean air is essential to our next breath.  Vibrant trees serve as earth’s planetary lungs ensuring an ongoing supply of oxygenated air, and an infinite supply of ‘never again to be taken for granted’ precious toilet paper!  Public access to green spaces is essential to our physical and emotional well-being.  As we have learned from this pandemic, breathing, toilet paper, and access to our beloved outdoors are not to be taken for granted! 

According to climate change scientists, these luxuries that were recently just a given in an ordinary day, are all at risk if we continue with life-as-usual.  COVID-19 is giving us a collective opportunity to open our eyes, appreciate, and act, to ensure ongoing access to the simplest of ‘luxuries’ for generations to come. 

Until COVID-19, I wondered what it would take to energize a more urgent response to the needs of our shared home.  Earth can hardly speak up on her own behalf so it usually requires some type of humanitarian crisis to get our attention.  The amount of change needed seemed insurmountable in the midst of life-as-usual and our eternal striving to ‘keep up with the Jones’.  COVID has blessed us with a tremendous opportunity to stop comparing and competing and start cooperating on an unprecedented scale.  She has stopped the proverbial clock from ticking so that we can take stock of what is going on around and in front of us.  COVID has required each and every one of us to change in unprecedented ways and has shown us that we are capable of massive communal change in ways none of us ever imagined was possible!  
Since COVID-19 arrived in our lives and our communities, we have begun living and achieving the impossible!  If we change is a language of our past.  Because we are changing there is hope for our future.  Because we are changing there is the possibility we can avert future pandemics such as this one.  Because we are changing future generations have a better chance of living on a planet that ensures their next breath, an abundance of toilet paper, and access to thriving green spaces! 

Challenging times are ripe with opportunity for change!  During these unprecedented times, I commit to doing all that I can to uncover and make full use of my superpowers to meet the challenges of now and to ride the waves of change before us.  I envision a world filled with fresh air, bountiful toilet paper and easy access to abundant green spaces teaming with life and merriment for our children and for many generations to come. 

Thank you for rising to meet this challenge!  Will you hold this vision for our future too? 

We are in this together and together we are better! 

nothing to you.

You have blown our schedules and plans apart and called our entire way of living into question. You have stopped us in our tracks in ways nothing else has been able to do...not threat of war nor warning of mass extinction, even to our own kind.

You, dear Corona, have stopped the clock. You have shut down our factories, closed our schools, halted mass production and performances of all kinds. You have managed the unthinkable. World class athletes around the globe, and the fans that worship them, are on their knees in reverence of your unmatched strength and power.

You have forced the hand of biological clocks, irrespective of creed or citizenship. You have tanked the almighty stock market. You have awakened world leaders everywhere to the vital fact that our only way forward is together. The very survival of our elders and most vulnerable across this globe depend on a kind of collaboration this world has never managed before.

You, dear Corona, are little but mighty...fiercely mighty at that!

Our clocks were ticking faster and faster in all realms of life. We raced hither and yon to keep up with the Jones’.  Corporate marketers and mongers convinced us that was the right thing to do...that racing fast enough, far enough, for long enough would eventually lead us to the happiness that always seemed just out of reach. We cried out to be let off that dizzying merry go round while continuing to zoom ahead at our usual clip. We collectively created a world that made it nearly impossible to do otherwise. You rushed in with a speed that has left our heads spinning and our feet glued in our tracks by lock down and quarantine.

While you are wreaking havoc upon and testing every man-made system in existence, you are giving us something we have long been crying out for. You are gifting us with the biggest timeout humanity has ever experienced before. You are giving us an exclusive opportunity to break from everything we have become dependent upon to examine if there is a different way, a more humane or ecologically friendly way, to go about the great task of living. You are gifting us with insight about human connection and how much it matters to us in spite of all of our technological advances. You are teaching us what a precious gift it is to walk, stand or sit elbow to elbow with another beloved human being, even if we don’t know them by name. You are teaching us that in spite of all marketing efforts to sell us the elixir of youth, nothing can replace the lost life of any of our elders.

You are forcing us to slow down, to look at ourselves, our patterns, our habits, our values, everything about who we are individually, as a family, as a community, a nation, a species at large. You are giving us an opportunity to think, pray, talk, contemplate, consider. Must we go on living at the speed we have grown to call normal, even though most of us would wholeheartedly agree that it is not? Must we go on using up all that Mother Nature has left to give, because we failed to listen to her repeated “enough's” that have come in the form of a plethora of unforeseen natural disasters and now in the form of a tiny microbe that has managed to strong arm us all?

Dear Corona, the wildfire of all virus’ that have left carnage in your wake, you have gotten our attention. We beseech you to stop your lethal spread across our shared home. But are you saving us from an even bigger calamity if we do not heed your call to action now?

May we act swiftly, powerfully and unilaterally across this globe to curb your impact. May we seize this unprecedented opportunity to change our ways once and for all for the least of our brethren that stand to gain the most from our willingness to change.