Sara Rickard’s 5 thoughts for living well on a post lock down planet

by Joel Hanna, big little brush founder

I had big stokey fun catching up with Sara Rickards from Futuregiving and Reunion. She’s a hugely experienced and inspiring person when it comes to living well. Sara’s constantly assessing the way she lives and always aims to achieve the maximum possible impact with how she spends her time. In her words she constantly “composts” her life, by breaking things down and starting again with newness and freshness.

We talked about so many things and I thought I’d summarise Sara’s 5 tips for living well once we’re all out of this lockdown sitch.

№1 — Acknowledge the country you’re on

I was really inspired by one of Sara’s regular practices. Every day, she meets with a close knit group of friends and collaborators, to start their day by acknowledging the country they live on and to observe how they feel on and as a part of it. It goes without saying that big little brush absolutely acknowledges that all of Australia is indeed stolen land and we pay our respects to the elders of all First Nations people groups, past, present and future. To keep this acknowledgement as part of a daily practice like this is really living and breathing it.

When we spoke, Sara was in Newcastle (easily one of my favourite cities in the world 🌊☀️) which is on Awabakal land in New South Wales, while I was on Bunarong country on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Both stunning, coastal, salt water places brimming with life and colour. We talked about how lucky we were to live in places where we can be close to family but also the great beauty that Australia has to offer.

As the tragic and most recent bushfire season on the east coast of Australia taught us, the First Peoples of Australia know a lot about cleaning out old things and starting again fresh. I’m looking forward to applying some of those practices to everyday life.

№2 — Think like a good ancestor

Sara used this phrase super casually, “I’m often thinking about how I can be a worthy ancestor and leave this place better than how I found it.” That saying’s really stuck with me:

I love how life sometimes brings you reminders of the basics. We’re definitely not inheriting the planet from our parents, we’re borrowing it from our children. Making good choices is so important, now more than ever as we open up our planet.

№3 — Get back to those good environmental habits

I made a silly comment about how weird it feels only being able to get take away coffee in a paper cup, and how my reusable coffee cup is gathering dust up on the shelf. We both acknowledged that weird tension between wanting to support our super important local cafes (shout out to my local fave Ol’ Mate in Franga), but also not wanting to increase our garbage footprint.

While we’ve still got a long way to go, the momentum and attention being paid to single use waste has never been stronger. We’ll all be stoked to crack out our KeepCups at our locals when this shimozle is over

The other thing we talked about was our transport footprint. And although I’m missing my daily commute (I’m way behind on all the podcasts), we now know the planet is benefitting hugely so that makes it well worth it. Now’s a great time to enjoy the extra sleep in and leave the car in the driveway for a while.

№4 — If you can, keep living slowly

On that idea of reducing our daily commute and reducing our overall footprint on the world, we talked about the idea of life design and choosing how we spend our days. I loved Sara’s challenge to me to think about the number of hours I have in a day, to put them on paper and assess whether I’m spending them in ways I’m most proud of. How many hours are spent rushing? How many are spent doing things because I have to? And how many are spent doing things because I feel like I have to. I know I’ve got some progress to make in the slow living department, which lead us nicely onto the next point:

№5 — When it comes to making changes, there’s no time like now

Amongst the many amazing things she’s been involved in over the years, Sara’s spent time researching human-behaviour. Turns out times of major life-change are great for forming new habits.

For students leaving high-school and moving on to university, the transition period is perfect for them to form new habits and to learn new skills. The same opportunity applies for us as we come out of lockdown. In Sara’s words, this is the perfect time to “compost” our lives, like moving to a new city or starting a new job. We get to reset our thinking and and restart our routines with a clean slate. Whether it’s baking and eating loaves of sourdough or pouring that extra tumbler of wine on a Tuesday night, we can reset as things get back to “normal”. Let’s bloody enjoy it now while we can.

Sara’s recently kicked off a new thing called Reunion which facilitates beautiful, restorative and immersive education experiences for anyone who’s trying to make sense of everything happening around us right. That’s probably most of us and definitely me!