This Sustainable Life

I'm in my second month since I unplugged my fridge. Why unplug it?Not because I think its power makes anything more than a negligible difference. This episode describes why.Here are my notes I read from:The other two reasons I unplug the fridge. The first was after reading Vietnam and much of the world ferments, I was curious to learn fermentation. Second is reading how much backup power a grid needs to maintain perfect uptime. Resilience. Each bit after 99% costs a lot more. Alternatively, 95% requires almost no backup. Third is to learn and grow myself. Neediness and entitlement, especially to things that hurt others and nobody needed for hundreds of thousands of years, doesn't make me better person. Do you know anyone spoiled? Do you describe them as "You know what I love about Kate? She's spoiled and acts entitled."Low Tech Magazine's two articles I mentioned, plus a third on how resilience increases security tooVietnam's Low-tech Food System Takes Advantage of DecayHow (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power AloneKeeping Some of the Lights On: Redefining Energy Security Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kip Ward is a retired General who, among other things, was the first leader of the Africa Command. He shares his background so you can hear it from him. It's extensive, having served at every level of the army. I met him through previous guest Frances Hesselbein and watched a few videos in which he spoke of leadership, which I linked to below.He spoke of things I don't see in sustainability and environmental stewardship but work. I took away from those talksAddressing the conditions that led to a situationGood, effective governance through sustained efforts, which he contrasts with technology or authorityAuthority and force being the last option, despite it being what he was trained in to reach that levelUnderstanding the society and people you want to lead. Their interests and views drive all you do. You have to know your team and goals, but theirs drive strategy.Get to know people and what matters to them.Listen.Do yourself what you expect them to do.I particularly like his commitment for reasons you'll understand when you hear it. Kip is choosing deliberately. I believe action by leaders helps others to follow.Combating Terrorism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, on C-SpanEffective Leadership and Team-building In Complex Technical Environments at the Black Engineer of the Year AwardsFootprints: The Legacy We Leave at TEDxPentagon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you haven't listened to Brent and my first two episodes, I recommend listening to them first. Also, I recommend reading Milwaukee Brewers’ Brent Suter Sharing Love and Joy.I haven't approached the environment from a religious view and Brent and I spoke about plenty of interesting things the first two times, so we didn't get to it. Lately listeners have probably heard how much William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and their peers have become role models. I wrote Brent to see if he knew more about them and could share.He said he was happy to. I'm not used to talking about religion in public, but he was and was happy to record. I reread the story about his Christianity and was pleasantly surprised to see words he connects with his work that I do---joy, light, love faith, kindness, service, mission---that are the opposite most environmentalists seem to. They look at stewardship like chore, obligation, burden, sacrifice.I've started saying "I don't have to steward. I get to." Taking responsibility for how my acts affect others and changing my behavior to avoid hurting them doesn't hold me back from flying. It connects me with humanity.If you asked if I expected my work would overlap this much with someone based in Jesus relative to nearly any scientist or environmentalist, nearly all of whom tell me they don't want to do more, I wouldn't have believed. As much as science determines the problem, the solution will not come from science but creating purpose and meaning.If you consider yourself religious and religion motivates you to act in stewardship and I sound like I'm missing more than Brent and I covered, contact me. I'd love to learn more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We correct two big misunderstandings.First, most people associate acting on the environment with obligation, chore, deprivation, and sacrifice. We lead them to feel that way when we tell them what to do. We may think we're right because the science says so, but leadership depends not on how right you are but how the person you want to motivate feels.Second, people don't know Deming, or associate him, to the extent they know him, with statistics and how they felt about math problems in school. When you get Deming, you see understanding patterns reveals effective leadership, which is liberating, even fun.Kelly shares how digging dirt and planting plants became fun when led effectively. Since everyone cares about the environment in some way---after all we all breathe, eat, and drink---we can all feel this way.As I speak to more people in the Deming community, I sense we are forming a strategy to apply Deming's work to sustainability. As he turned around Japan in a few years to lead the world, so can we lead our communities.Kelly being on the Deming Institute board, before and after recording this conversation, we talked about involving people who practiced and mastered Deming's approach. Something is going to happen with this community. We are going to contribute to lead people, companies, and industries to embrace sustainability with passion and joy, stopping wrongly expecting burden, chore, deprivation, and sacrifice. Our culture has disconnected us from what brings reward and joy. Great leadership will restore it.If you're into improving your leadership, especially in the style of Deming, you sense we're on the ground floor of a change on the scale of Japan's transformation in 1950, and you want in, contact me. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My second Behind the Mic conversation with Dan McPherson gets to why I've talked about race lately. Why on a podcast about sustainability, leadership, and the environment, do I take the risk as to talk about a topic that straight white men get canceled for?If it didn't further my mission of helping restore Earth's ability to sustain life and society, I wouldn't let another topic divert attention. Whatever problems people struggle over, if anything ties us together, we breathe air, drink water, and eat food that we are sleepwalking as a nation, culture, and species into poisoning.This episode presents a topic connected to race I've talked a lot about with friends and family to figure out how to treat publicly but that I consider too important an approach to sustainability to leave aside, whatever the personal risk. The personal risk doesn't come from this view nor from anyone who understands me, only from people who misunderstand.Listen on and hear the view. I hinted at it in my conversation with Eric Metaxas. This episode with Dan goes into more depth. I'll talk about it more, so consider this episode a sneak preview. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I started this podcast November 30, 2017. In this episode I reflect on before starting the podcast, the fears and hopes driving it, the friends it brought me, some challenges, some joys, accomplishments, and such.I also share how it changed me and how if you want to change the world and love doing it, you can too. I've trained a few new hosts starting their versions.Between my personal growth, the guests, the hosts starting their branches, and feedback from listeners, I can't tell what part I love most.Here's to another three years!Here's to another thirty years! . . . though I hope we will have changed course enough before then not to need it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's talk fatherhood and sustainability."Josh, you don't understand since you don't have kids, it's impossible to avoid producing waste," people keep saying. Since they say other things I've done is impossible before learning I've done them, I expect they're making excuses and that I could solve parenthood problems too. Without kids I haven't solved their problems (though guest Bea Johnson has in her family of four that produces less landfill waste than I do), but I expect I could.Balint became a father since he was a guest. We decided to record a new challenge for him as a father. The first episode we just spontaneously started recording, so we didn't set up microphones. I decided to trade catching the moment for sound quality. In the second half we recorded with our good microphones.Since some podcast guests have stopped their challenge shortly after their second episode, I'm gratified to hear a guest continuing it forever and building on it. You could say maybe he's continuing it because it fits with minimalist values he already developed. I contend that sustainability resonates with some values in everyone. He didn't start with an advantage. He found one anybody could. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Global Top 30 Gurus named Chester the world's number 4 best leadership speaker, trainer, and thought leader, as I happened to find while researching before our conversation. I had to ask him about it, which led to him sharing about it. Naturally, he spoke humbly about it, but we get some inside views of his rarified level of the corporate and government leadership world. (The list named two other podcast guests and one who hosted me).When I asked about his path, he shared so many wonderful and helpful stories, I kept asking him for more. I wanted to hear about his bottle commitment, but our conversation became a master class in more than becoming a leadership guru, but also to manifest any passion. You'll hear that his passion wasn't to do what it looks like he's doing when you just look at his behavior. That's what you see.He shares what motivated him to start and what kept him going through failure, working for no pay, fear, anxiety, and the things you don't see if you just see bestselling author. He shares about his experience decreasing pollution. I've had several guests who contacted me midway and said they couldn't figure out how to do their commitment. In all cases, with a little reflection and support from me they've surpassed their expectations.I confess I thought Chester might come back with not knowing what to do. On the contrary, he did it and shared the results. I meant to ask him if he felt "I could have done this a long time ago" because it felt like in the end, after he got past what he described we build up in our heads, he found the action simple and easy.He sounds like he'll find other things too so I hope he takes me up on the future invitation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Between asking about recovering from a heart attack in your 40s and about water bottles, where do you start? As it turns out, they're more closely related than you think. We started talking about recovering from the heart attack. Dan has faced his mortality several times before, so fear of death didn't hit him most. We talked more about changes to his lifestyle, particularly diet, which connected with sustainability.As a leadership community leader, Dan noticed and shared about his emotional experiences. Since we're friends who talk a lot, I think you'll find the conversation more friendly than most, so I think you'll hear more intimacy than with many podcast conversations.Dan seemed to reach a greater ratio of change to effort than many guests. He sounds like he's just starting, maybe because he's changing a lot of things in his life now, maybe because he's changed before. I love that he's made the term doof a part of his vocabulary and that it's taken root with his family. Man, it clarifies and simplifies choosing what to buy and put in our mouths.His experience to me reinforces how much we do on autopilot that hurts others and instead of facing we put out of our minds because it superficially makes us feel bad. We don't see the life improvement after the transition. Dan has experienced it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.