Publication History:
The Ecologist, July 2009 [as part of the feature 'Inner Revolution' by Nick Kettles]
“If we’re going to engage with the big problems of the world, we have to engage with our own big problems. If we can’t change ourselves, we can’t change the world”. Dr David Ellis is one of the founding members of Transition Cambridge. He left his high-powered parliamentary lobbying work when he realised the burn-out he felt was antithetical to the sustainable society he wanted to create. “I knew I had to engage in a way that nourished me”. David is one of many who believes that how we engage with environmental issues is just as critical as what we do. The premise is that we can not ask governments to adopt clean, renewable energy if we are still fuelling ourselves with resentment, anger and exhaustion; we cannot expect to create a world we want to live in until we also become the kind of people others want to live with.
As coaches and other psychology of change experts, we are supporting individuals with these internal shifts. My work centres on alerting individuals to their own significance in these significant times and helping them find and act upon what I call our unique ‘contribution footprint’. Fundamentally, this approach holds that the self is the solution.
When Penny Askew started having coaching, environmental issues weren’t on her agenda. She simply knew that she was stuck in a safe zone, unhappy and unfulfilled, and that something needed to change. “I wasn’t engaging with anything. Then I had someone who helped me believe that I was capable of doing the things I dreamt of and that if I did follow my passion, it could and would make a difference.” She says it was crucial that the other person didn’t judge or criticise her existing choices, but encouraged her to see her own potential. This emboldened her to connect with Transition Cambridge and with her local carbon-reduction group, becoming involved with their awareness-raising activities. “I’ve discovered there are loads of other people who also want to make a difference so I don’t feel “what’s the point?” I’ve gone from feeling alone and full of hopelessness to being confident that I can give absolutely anything a go – and I do!”
When individuals are encouraged that their gifts are of benefit to their community, they tentatively step forward; in return, their action and engagement bolster self-esteem. The local format of a Transition Town supports individuals in finding and following their contribution footprint because it repositions us as one in a few thousand, not one in six billion. It depends on each person bringing forward a unique response as one part of a collective jigsaw. It also enables us to literally, physically experience our contribution making a difference which quietens those internal demons which tell us that we are not important and can not effect change. It becomes an antidote to low self-esteem and its bedfellow, depression, as Nicky Smith found. “I was circling round in my own little world, feeling boxed in. My focus was on what I could take from life that would make me better. My experience shifted when I changed my perspective and adopted new questions: What purpose can I be? What can I do, what can I give? What talents and strengths do I have that enable something bigger than myself to take place? The more I did that, the better I felt; it was an escape from the narrow parameters I’d set”. With that new focus, Nicky started reaching out, connecting with people, and doing voluntary work in her community – including with an organic vegetable market and with Transition Cambridge.
There are, of course, great challenges when we put the self so squarely in the equation. We are more visible and in many ways we are more vulnerable. We run the risk of offering our skills and ideas and having them be rejected, questioned or laughed at, and we risk our initiatives failing. This is where specialist support such as coaching can make the difference between taking the contribution footprint path or not. It helped Jacky Sutton-Adam to clearly articulate that she was developing her wild food foraging venture, WildFoodie, as a means of following her passion, not merely achieving a particular outcome. “This perspective means I can continuously try out new ideas and when things don’t go to plan, I don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Instead, I re-group, re-prioritise based on what I know is most important to me, and remember that this is about offering something which nourishes me and others”. Jacky also now offers her skills through the Transition Cambridge food group.
This, then, is the contribution footprint journey we each can take. If we do, we are asked to confront our deep fear: that we don’t matter, and our great longing: that we do. This inner transition requires us to be braver yet there is less of a fight. We are no longer trying to change the outside by shouting about it; we are not scrubbing at the mirror in order to create a different reflection. Our enemies are those inside us which swallow our self-esteem and paralyse us from taking action. It takes strength to dismantle self-imposed limitations and it takes courage to say: “I matter”. Here in Cambridge, as elsewhere, individuals are finding both and are having a meaningful impact on the world as a result.
© Corrina Gordon-Barnes, 2009
