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Emotions, Power, Money, Time: The shared challenges we face working towards sustainable lifestyle change

Boundless Roots is an open community of sustainable living practitioners convening around shared inquiries to increase their impact with more radical and ambitious actions. In June, our 37 members, calling from 12 countries, kicked off a new cycle of inquiries. We asked them what they are currently struggling with when it comes to their work. You’ll probably find yourself in their answers.

Our members span diverse fields of practice from NGOs, environmental movements, decentralised communities and foundations to consumer goods, UN organisations, corporates, major news agencies, educational institutions and faith-based organisations. To get a sense of where we are as a community before entering our new cycle of inquiry, we created a survey. Using this, we invited our members to reflect about the topics they would like to explore together and the challenges they are facing, both on a personal and collective level. The results showed that some of our challenges were similar and clustered around specific topics.

Time & Urgency

One of the common topics was the issue of time. We seem to share a feeling of lacking time and urgency in the face of the ecosystemic collapse we are addressing. Keeping track of the rapidly unfolding changes, staying on top of research and navigating the complexity of what we are dealing with while aiming to actively achieve impact and getting enough rest to recharge is challenging. Simultaenously, there is a recognition of the time that is needed, both for the deep learning and unlearning that is a basis for achieving the profound changes we are working towards.

Money

Another recurring topic related to time is money. A number of our members shared that they are struggling to balance their personal financial sustainability with the work that they feel called to do. Being stuck between wanting to do impactful work and earning a living, means we question whether we are holding on to old expectations that no longer fit our values, how effective we are and whether our energy is going the right way.

Burnout

In their combination, the topics of time and money carry the danger of burnout that some of our group’s members are acutely aware of, having experienced it themselves or in others. Questions on how to best invest our limited resources seem central on an individual and systemic level: how can we prioritise values over financial sustainability? Can we balance impact with rest?

Not feeling radical enough

For many of us, this sense of urgency seems to translate into the feeling that we are not doing enough. We ask whether we are pushing ourselves enough and whether we are radical enough in our own lives.

“I am also feeling tensions around what I expect to be a “good life” (nice home with nice things in it, the money to support a certain lifestyle), and the level of disruption and change that I talk about on a day to day basis. Whilst I obviously try my best to live sustainably myself, I wonder whether I have really digested what it really means for my own lifestyle in the long run, and how I engage my family in that reflection.” — Jeremy Mathieu

This leads to internal conflicts as well as the question about our legitimacy in asking others to change their lifestyles while not feeling radical enough ourselves.

“At a personal level, a concern that if I’m struggling to be more sustainable in my living, how can I expect others to try, when they are less engaged?” — Peter Emery

Climate Emotions

Another topic that kept being mentioned, was the need to process difficult emotions. Our members identified a need to deal with complex emotions of loss, grief, stress, anxiety, anger and insecurity both on a collective and individual level and shared questions about creating the time and spaces to do so.

Communication & Outreach

While the facts around our human impact on climate change are relatively clear, they don’t translate into an ecocentric worldview; a more sustainable culture and lifestyle on a societal level yet. A number of our members spoke to the immensely difficult challenge of scaling, reaching out and communicating about climate and sustainability issues to audiences that are not yet willing to implement changes in their lives and without putting them on defence.

“Also, even if these principles, frameworks, tools, practices, resources and trainings can be developed, the next challenge is being able to make them appealing and accessible to a wider audience outside our normal sphere of influence. There seems to be a window of disruption and opportunity now to design something better for our communities — but how do we find the space, time, resources and contacts/networks to do this well when we are so busy and lacking in capacity? “ — Deborah Benham

Navigating Power

Besides the inner conflicts, our members spoke of the tensions between practitioners, their different approaches, to topics like decision making and governance, as well as conflicts within organisations and movements. These often coincide and are amplified by issues such as systemic injustice, oppression and colonial power dynamics, both inside our communities, organisations and the wider societies. The work of deep reflection, decolonisation and healing is time intensive and runs counter to the felt need of creating rapid impact, which can cause tensions in itself.

“It is difficult even amongst ‘like minded people’, or those with shared goals, to navigate through the tensions between approaches, sometimes even language, cultural differences or the ways in which people express themselves. This creates an extra layer of difficulty for collective power and to effect change, where sometimes competition (for whatever conscious or unconscious reason) or communication differences/tensions can be the biggest barrier to sustain people’s wellbeing or to getting things done.” — Fernanda Balata

Covid-19

Another topic that naturally came up were the opportunities and challenges in relation to the current Covid-19 pandemic. Our members shared their concerns around being able to recognise emerging opportunities without being opportunistic or tone deaf, and working through their own complex emotions and reactions to reach a place of clarity. They ask themselves about how to host meaningful spaces in a time when most people can’t meet physically, as well as personal struggles with the feeling of isolation and the need to provide communities with PPE.

“I’ve been trying to figure out the potential momentum triggered by Covid-19 and found that they are not easy to grasp. I have learned that I was very much guided by my own, narrow perspective/observation/emotions.” — Ulrike Ehgartner

Shared Challenges, Shared Inquiries

Across our organisational backgrounds and theories of change, we are struggling with shared challenges. If you work on sustainable lifestyle change, you probably encountered some of these struggles. With this snapshot of where we are at, we readied ourselves to dive into our inquiry work with 4 topics:

• Healthy power — How are we moving away from dominance and power over in the work we’re doing? How are we contributing to healthy power, becoming more aware of power so that we can work with it more fluidly?
• Meaningful life — How are we inviting people into an open, evolving conversation about what gives our lives meaning?
• Cultural waves — How can we work with the momentum of what’s changing culture now and operationalise that in new ways? How do we frame the new narratives?
• Working with contradictions — How do we work skillfully across polarities? Us as practitioners and the communities we serve. How do we create spaces to connect with what people need in the moment with collective exploration of the potential?

We’ll make sure to share some of our insights with you in our upcoming articles!

While moving through our next inquiry cycle, we are exploring the future of Boundless Roots as a community. We are thinking about our next steps and the role we can play in the Climate movements and the Systems Change ecosystem. Are you working on related themes? Do you have ideas about what our value or contribution could be? Are you interested in tapping into our knowledge and experiences? Could we contribute to the work you are doing?

If you are interested in collaborating or exchanging ideas with us, please reach out!

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Boundless Roots — Radically Transforming the Way we Live

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