How to transform this planet as a collective
Lately I have been watching the manifesto, as I would call it, from David Attenborough “A life on this planet” which again encouraged me to engage and speak up for recreating the wilderness on this planet, to rebalance its natural system. In this blog I want to focus on HOW we can get there as a collective, starting as individuum, by redefining our way of thinking and doing.
There are concrete things that we can do, each of us in order to cultivate a mindset of self-efficacy and creation rather than complaining or becoming desperate. Yes, there are many facts and reasons for becoming desperate, but there is still hope for recreating the paradise we have been living in, as a new and transformed version.
As a framework for giving you and me a structure to act within I chose Transformative Scenario Planning by Adam Kahane, enriching it with thoughts and tools out of “Becoming Supernatural” by Dr. Joe Dispenza, “Die Kraft der Stille” and “liebeswerk” by Veit Lindau and my own experience out of my daily work and life.
Mindset first!
First of all we have to agree on the fact, that we have a problem as a collective. We are exploiting nature for free (yes, for free!) to sustain an endless growth which by definition is not possible as we use ending ressources.
Having agreed on that, we will adapt our ways of living, as we will be 11 billion people on this planet by the end of this century (being almost 8 by today): especially the Northern and Western parts of this world have to transform to a sustainable way of living, eating, producing, travelling… to redefine the narrative for “a good life”. Why? Because it simply will not be possible to live the standards of today (everybody going by car, eating meat, living in big flats as DINKs, travelling by airplane several times a year…), as we become more of us.
As I want to focus on HOW to get there, I invite you to get in touch with yourself. I feel humbled for all of us, who are already meditating, breathing or exploring cold water (as Wim Hof does), fasting, channeling or using whatever technique in order to become aware of ourselves.
I started my journey many years ago, but am exploring the real power of meditation since 2020, learning to do less of what harms myself and my surrounding and cultivating what empowers me to impact this planet with my best self.
Being connected with ourselves, we can start the dialogue about our future.
Let´s get together on one big table and talk
Having agreed on that we have a problem where there is no way out if we try to address the topics as individuums, countries or continents — we will sit together as diverse collective, on one (virtual?) table in order to run through a cocreating process to collect facts, create scenarios for the future we can imagine to live in and finally coevolve the future. On this table will literally sit all kinds of minds and creators — those who are against climate policies and those who created them, those who see the world in seperation and those who think the world as one big collective, people who fight for protecting nature and those who love travelling by plane as often as possible… as many perspectives as possible, connected by system thinking and the will of changing the status quo.
It all starts with observing…
Being aware of our “collective problem” and ourselves we are ready for the first step of transformative scenario planning: observing and collecting facts about our problem.
There are already many sources out there about the hard facts. As we talk about a behaviour change I am convinced that we should start to collect the soft facts (to be completed)…
- Which changes in our environmental system impact our social, mental and physical health?
- What does happiness mean to people and even animals all over the planet?
- What kind of impact do humans want to leave on this planet?
- What are the visions and wishes of young and old people for our future?
- ...
Observing with the clear goal of deeper understanding the dynamics and drivers of our existing system, which we agreed upon to change. Fact based and beyond signals.
The Story of our Future
As humans we started to develop from the moment, that we shared our stories. The key of transformative scenario planning will be the creation of attractive but still reachable scenarios for the future, keeping in mind the whole planet: all humans and beings (animals included). Based on the facts collected in the first phase of course.
This process will be intense and drive all parties out of their comfort zones. As we have to change our behaviours, beliefs and rituals we have become fond of — even our definition of growth, that mainly drives our system today. And as there will be a handful of different scenarios that want to be verified and clarified profoundly. One of them will be “the story” to activley create a new version of our future. There will be the one story that we will start telling to our friends, colleagues, competitors and kids.
As a collectice we will create the world we want our children to live in!
CoCreating and CoEvolving
For doing so, we will change our way of thinking and working from competition to cooperation. We will join forces with former competitors and make things possible, such as wide spread renewable energy systems and new ways of mobility — resigning from what we call comfort today. Motivated by our common story and vision for a sustainable future on this planet! As measure we could take the one out of “My life on this planet”, the wilderness factor which declined to (sad) 35% by now.
As compensation we will be able to rely again on nature and its rythm, in order to sustain 11 billions of people healthy, well-fed and happy.
The good news: you can start now!
I do not want to end this article with bullshit bingo.. that´s why I want to share my concrete rituals that I integrated into my life in order to START the change:
- I stopped eating meat almost 4 years ago — enjoying vegetables as never before, e.g. thanks to Yotam Ottolenghi.
- I drive my bike to the office every day, since summer — and guess what? I do enjoy this kind of “me-time” and “freedom” especially during lockdowns. And I do this every day, no matter if it´s sunny, rainy or snowy. A good opportunity to train decisiveness ;-)
- I try new things that drive me out of my comfort zone, in order to prepare myself for unexpected situations: I played the piano publicly without knowing how to play the piano, I went to a thai box training without having tahiboxed ever before, I joined the grape harvest in stead of sitting in my office, I went swimming at one degree celsius and snowfall outside, … great experiences, all in one year.
- I train my body, in order to have a solid base for my mind and my experiences: started running on an regular basis in the first lockdown in March, practicing Yoga and climbing.
- In order to train my consciousness and my focus, I practice meditation and mindfullness.
- I started my new business to inspire people´s lives and support them in reliefing their full potential in order to impact this planet.
- I train myself in new ways of working and designing experiences in order to have tools to make this big change a playful experience!
Are you in?
If you can relate to what drives me and how I want to change this planet, let´s get in contact in order to get this thing started — in small or on a large scale. I am open for everything!
