Week 4: The personal sphere

Dear Climate Justice Ambassadors,

In this last week we are visiting the personal sphere. The sphere of beliefs, worldviews, values, and qualities like courage. Although these are not often talked about when we think about solving sustainability challenges, these aspects are very important, because they influence attitudes and actions. They shape individual and collective “views” of systems and cultures, which can often explain the preferred strategies for practical transformations that emerge.

Shifts in perspectives in this sphere (or a-ha moments, as we like to call them at cCHANGE) can be powerful because they often lead to new perspectives on human-environment relationships. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said: “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” And that is what we hope to generate in these 30-days; some shifts in perspective around your role and your ability to create and contribute to solutions.

In the check in on Thursday, we touched on the topic of courage (see also the Day 21 coaching post). We reflected on our own relationship to courage, how it may be needed in «everyday» contexts where we want to shift patterns. And it is not only about protesting or activism necessarily. We talked about how courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in spite of fear. When we are making changes in our lives and want to scale up change, courage is a quality we may need to tap into. Doing things differently can push us out of our comfort zones.

The conversation also touched on worldviews; coherent sets of values that persist across multiple generations. These large-scale value systems frame reality and provide identity. Unfortunately, many of the conflicts and polarisation we see in the world today, stem from clashing worldviews. Here is a link if you would like to know a bit more about worldviews.

Universal values are qualities that I want for myself and for all others on Earth, for example, equity, love, creativity, agency, etc. They can be a unifying and transcending force, when we activate them in the way we work and design strategies.

Finally, we looked at how limiting beliefs – patterns in the way we talk to ourselves – may hold us back and reduce our sense of agency sometimes and our ability to connect with our universal values. Each of us tried to identified limiting beliefs that we tend to use a lot in our own lives. (Visit the Day 24 coaching post to read more.)

It was a very inspiring session, thank you for your sharing and commitment!

We look forward to seeing what the final days of the challenge bring. If you didn’t make it to last week’s check in and are interested in viewing the recording, ask Alf for a copy.