This Sustainable Life

George and I talked about three big topicsGeorge Floyd demonstrations and riots from the view of a man watching his businesses and his communities' businesses vandalized and destroyed. You'll also hear him reflect as a man who dismissed Colin Kaepernick---in his view disrespecting the flag.Why did he have that view? For supporting veterans, especially veteran suicide, through incredible runs---ultramarathons, 100-mile-plus runs, and longer. The more he ran for others, the more rewarding it became, to where he ran across the country through injury.We talked about finding your limits, serving others, and how much each helps your life.My key takeaway: that he got more out of his challenges than he put into them, for serving others. He explained better than I why I act on leadership and the environment, probably because he's done so much moreTell me if what he says doesn't make you feel that whatever you're doing, no matter how much people tell you it won't make a difference or is more than you have to, that you want to do more. A few years of not flying and avoiding eating unhealthy products that end up not tasting good anyway feel so small, partly because I can do so much more, but because I've barely scratched the surface of what I could get back.George said what I've tried to but haven't succeeded in doing---communicating how much serving others brings to your life, expanding it, filling it with joy, community, connection, and emotions at the pinnacle of what humans experience.I didn't want to say it to him, but knowing that he'll find more than he expects from acting on his environmental values, I bet he'll end up doing a lot more.While some might think it could detract from his supporting veterans, I predict it will augment it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here are the notes I read from on recounting the potential I saw for the Spartan Race community and its founder, Joe De Sena, if they chose to prioritize environmental stewardship. Context: Joe: carries chain up 1,000-foot hill, brings others with him, invites people to climb hill for 24 hours, leads to Spartan Run.Brings people up to carry boulders up steep hill, which they pay to do.Community: Integrity, personal motivation, fun, supportiveTasks: Learn about yourself, great joy, striving, constantly improving They understand the mental and physical side, learning, growing, deeper satisfaction and reward than cookies and ice cream.Got me to go to Vermont and run up and down hill seven times.Environment: abysmal: trash, doof, little fruits and vegetables, bottles, ignoring well water, no natural fibersTexts from kidsBut huge potential. 7 million members. They know you have to go through uncertainty, pain, struggle, mostly self-doubt, your mind telling you reasons to stop, working through them.I've spoken with world-class leaders. Joe and his community see what to do and have lived doing it in other areas.Competitors included blind, one foot, 61-year-old, black, white, hispanic, carrying 100-pound load, loads of kids.I proposed one trash bag per event that all have to use and only fillone, maybe one recycling container, but keep it empty too.No single-rider cars. Joe said needed big fine. Given their integrity, Iproposed internal motivation. After speaking I thought instead give them cash and time off their finishing time so the'll go on record as having beaten people they didn't deserve to.If Joe and his team act on my ideas, could become first main community to lead. They'll enjoy the process -- eating healthier, saving money, carpooling -- they'll enjoy discovering nature too.Everything they get now in mind and body, they'll re-create in theirrelationship with nature.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what problem they want to solve.”Jaime explains what his title of Google's "Education Evangelist" means, how he got it, and how it results in him advancing education globally. We talk about education when student-driven, how that paradigm differs from what nearly all schools now do. Also how it is everywhere in life.He gives an insider's view of Google, how it reacted and transitioned from the pandemic, physically on the inside of its buildings.The most exciting part of the conversation comes at the end, when our conflicting views on the environment, the future, and technology build to a crescendo of disagreement, but also curiosity, but not checkmating each other.It's difficult to stop a conversation in the middle, so sorry you'll have to wait for our next conversation, but we've scheduled it.Disagreement happens any time two people's values differ, which means between any two people. I loved that we knew points of disagreement but instead of trying to defeat each other, we learned.I talk to a lot of people with similar views to what he expressed, but my experience so far has been that they are closed to other views. I suspect they see that resistance in me, I can't tell. With Jaime I felt we were looking for understanding the other's view, which I value. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Here are the notes I read this episode from:People keep acting like I'm different, that they have to balance things that I don't when acting on the environment.So I'll share a recent decision I made. People I tell have sounded intrigued and delighted to hear it so I'll share with you.First sensed hairline retreating at 19.Not much for maybe a decade following, I don't remember.Maybe 10 years ago started using minoxidil.Don't know if works or not, but used as insurance. Not insanely expensive.Tested on thinning in back, so even less sure if it works.Over the past few years noticed it becoming my greatest plastic consumption.Thought more about stopping.Even stopping flying was reversible. Never decided to stop forever, just kept finding that it improved my life not to fly. Constraints breed creativity.Stopping minoxidil not reversible. Might not do anything. Might go bald. I don't want to go bald. I like my hair.But I'm pitting purely my vanity against reducing plastic pollution.Last bottle of last 3 month supply was running low. Kept thinking about it. Risk balding, but maybe no difference.Last American president elected bald was Eisenhower. Have to beat Hitler to get elected. Women complain they get judged by appearance, but men do too.Felt helpless, yet also recognize the alternative is simply to live with my genes. What chemical shitstorm is in that stuff anyway?But the bottom line was every time I've chosen to live by my environmental values, it's improved my life. I used to have faith, but faith is belief without evidence. Between avoiding packaged food, avoiding flying, picking up garbage daily, plogging, all of which I thought would worsen my life, they've all improved it.So I made a deal with myself to flip a coin. Heads I'd keep it. If every 3 months I flipped, eventually I'd have to end.I started making deals with myself -- just get to 50 years old. It's so little plastic compared to everyone else. Just one more time. I found out you can buy the raw ingredients on Alibaba. What if I found a great price? Rite Aid had almost half off online. Another place even lower prices, but then more packaging.So I flipped the coin. Tails on the first try. I made a rule only flip a coin when I can't decide any other way, then never reverse that decision or it undoes the value of coin toss's decisiveness. Still I started bargaining with myself.Are you getting how hard I found this decision? I was deciding in the moment a choice to affect me possibly for the remaining several decades of my life.I didn't refill. I still went to Rite Aid intending to buy another box, against the coin toss, but the low price was only online. I was going to break my rule, but didn't because of circumstance.Within a day I could feel new breeze on my forehead. Maybe coincidence, but maybe I'll end up bald in a few months. Maybe it will recede a bit and stop. Who knows?I don't see a path to this choice improving my life, but I'm going with it. Talk about your first-world problems, right? But everyone goes through similar decisions too. Should I buy the coffee on the way to work in the disposable cup? Should I take a subway or shared ride?We all do mental gymnastics to rationalize behavior we know is against our principles. I do. My difference today versus me years ago is that I've moved my balance toward stewardship. Each time I do, I find it improves my life. Before long I find role models beyond where I am. I learn from them, for example Bea Johnson, whose family of four produces collectively less trash than I do.The world will see the results.Some relevant posts of mine:Choose easier by visualizing choices, part IChoose easier by visualizing choices, part IIWhy are decisions hard?How to ChooseHow to decide among close options Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steven Pressfield's War of Art is a perennial bestseller. If you haven't read it, I recommend reading it, even if you delay listening to this podcast. Well, listen to this episode since it will prepare you.Before I read it, I could not have imagined someone writing it. I can't think of another book like it. It's helped countless people start acting on passions.Steven shares how the book emerged---things you won't get from just reading it. After we finished recording, he told me how he shared new things in this episode and he's appeared on many podcasts.I also commented on how the resistance he described to the individual on the verge of creating translates almost perfectly to two places, the individual acting on his or her environmental values as well as us in our communities, as a nation, as a species. Listen to hear his comments on that observation, and why his response made me feel so honored, flattered, and motivated to follow up.He's friendly. We spoke a bit after stopping recording. I asked him about an op-ed piece I'm working on that I feel expresses myself well and will serve the world but many people will object to. It feels great to hear from someone who has inspired so many to weather those risks to be true to yourself. Resistance looms large nonetheless.Anyway, I don't recommend that many books, but I recommend War of Art. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

 While I was jogging (actually plogging) along the Hudson River around 7:30am, a person not wearing a mask stepped into my path, blocking me, saying the person's shoes had been stolen. The person seemed to let me pass, but then threatened me and threw a bottle that shattered at my feet as I ran past. I kept running, the hair on the back of my neck standing up and my adrenaline high. I don't know if the person had a weapon.I describe more and some of how it affected me in the audio.I was first going to say I was threatened since he didn't touch me. I'm not a lawyer so I looked up the definition. According to FindLaw.com's page on Assault Torts and Injury Law:legal scholars define assault as an intentional attempt or threat to inflict injury upon a person, coupled with an apparent, present ability to cause the harm, which creates a reasonable apprehension of bodily harm or offensive contact in another.Notice the words “attempt” and “threat” above. In tort law, assault does not require actual touching or violence to the victim. We use another term for the touching or contact: “battery.”Here are the notes I read from:The story from this morning runningHappens all the time, not daily but throughout my lifeI don't think he did it because black, but I suspect were I not white it may not have happened. Can't say this time.When I stayed in AtlantaFriends say, you can say to us but careful with othersShared about mugged childhood, but still happeningMaybe there is a secret white suburban life I don't know aboutRecently white friends have started sharing how they've been muggedConsistent with Dov's saying how sharing stories will lead to others feeling they can share tooThat's all background. Here is my point: every time I bring up suffering or being threatened, while I may get some listening, the other person always says, remember others have it worse---not that person, not even someone with their skin colorSo they don't know from experience but they're telling me as if I haven't heard before, and they're presuming to know my experienceI don't know anyone's experience but mine, but everyone absolutely everyone dismisses it without asking, presuming it's the caricature in the mainstream.When I hear white people talking about BLM, George Floyd, there's always this mea culpa. Maybe they are guilty, I don't know. I never hear them speak about their problems. Maybe they have no problems, maybe I'm unique, but that people open up with me when I share and they hear I'm not white supremacist or racist---though in today's world white people even mentioning race without saying how they are allies or something making up for guilt or things like that---then they tell me about their experiences, but they insist on my respecting their confidence, which of course I do.So much of what I hear from white people sounds so similar andinauthentic, I don't think they're being open, honest, or candid. Maybemany are as privileged as they say, but people have told me about being attacked, their lives threatened with weapons, and so on.I think about risks maybe not every day, but all the time. And when Idon't, some guy walks into my path, throws a bottle at me, and threatens me.For a while I feared sharing messages like this because people mightsuspect I'm turning into a white supremacist. I came to terms that ifpeople think that about the opposite, I can't let their preconceivednotions hold me from acting for equality. "White Like Me," Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live sketch I referred to Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People constantly suggest they have to balance different values as if I didn't. It came up in a recent conversation so I shared about it today.An element I factor in is how my pollution affects others---not just what I know about or wish I contributed, but what I actually contribute. Yet people think I factor in nothing else.It's weird to learn people see you as one-dimensional. If they felt others viewed them as they see me, they'd be insulted. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you've followed sensible, expert advice on the pandemic, you've probably read or seen Ashish Jha in the New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN, Washington Post, and everywhere. On Tuesday he testified to the US Senate.He's Harvard's Global Health Institute's Director. Over 200,000 people have taken his online Harvard courses, which you can for free. Over 80,000 took Ebola, Preventing the Next Pandemic and over 120,000 took Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety. As it turns out, we were college teammates on the ultimate frisbee team.I'll link to a few top articles by him. With so many interfaces between the pandemic and us---health, government, research, policy, etc---you can read a lot of his views and experiences from different sources.I wanted to bring the personal side of leading on the front lines and top levels of a pandemic---how do doctors and public health experts feel about people not following advice, facing triage decisions, how to be heard, and what affects a doctor personally. We talk about leadership, the intersection between the pandemic and the environment, which overlaps with his directorship and courses, and more.By the way, he created his Ebola course five years before this pandemic and predicted much of it, as did many. If predicting what's happened so far isn't enough reason to follow his advice, I don't know what is. Let's wear those masksAshish's faculty profileCoronavirus Testing Needs to Triple Before the U.S. Can Reopen, Experts Say, NY Times article quoting AshishIn the W.H.O.’s Coronavirus Stumbles, Some Scientists See a Pattern, NY Times article quoting Ashish Pandemic Expert Dr. Ashish K. Jha ’92: “We Will Get Through This.”How We Beat Coronavirus, The AtlanticHere's the reason we are still shut down right now, CNN video Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think I've accidentally led people astray, sharing how much I enjoy acting in stewardship. I would prefer doing anything I wanted whenever and wherever, on my terms---that is, if I didn't have to consider how my behavior affected others, especially those powerless to stop my effects from hurting them.Today's episode shares how I'm doing on the personal level what science suggests---no magic, nothing personal, just following the advice that makes the most sense. On the social level, I'm leading other people, corporations, institutions, and government. I'm not making things up or denying. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I loved Steven Pressfield's book The War of Art. I found it inspiring. It had a property that qualifies for me that something qualifies as a work of art: it said something I always knew was true but that I'd never seen expressed that way."I mention it for two reasons. One, I recorded a podcast episode with Steven the other day, which led me to reread the book. Two, I found the book applies to acting in stewardship. Substitute a few words and new meaning emerges, mainly changing art to stewardship. Most of the rest follows.I describe the analogy in this episode's recording. I share a few examples. I hope it helps motivate.I recommend The War of Art to nearly anyone. I recommend it especially to people who want to work on the environment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.