The Great Turning Times on inspiration

Just wanted to plug the new format Great Turning Times - nearly two thousand subscribers - produced by Chris Johnson. I've always found it full of inspiration - and indeed the recent issue is about inspiration - and follows on nicely from my blog on Saturday about the series Survivors. Read Chris' editorial below - you can also find links on how to subscribe free yourself.

Photo: Christmas decorations down today

One of the purposes of this newsletter is to support empowered responses to global issues. When facing problems like climate change, peak oil, mass human starvation and the vast destruction of eco-systems, why is it that people sometimes rise to the challenge and other times look the other way? What makes the difference? A few weeks ago, I explored this topic in a talk I gave at Transition Bristol's Big Event. I introduced five principles for cultivating inspired responses to global issues and I'd like to share these with you now.

The starting point is to look at where inspiration begins. Can you remember when you first became interested in tackling an issue? Were there "motivational spark" moments that roused you to action? Such sparking events might include watching documentaries that alerted you to a problem, reading books or magazine articles that introduced a new perspective, or conversations with friends that reinforced something you'd been feeling already. Often it takes a series of these motivating moments before we feel moved to do something. But while some sparks ignite enthusiasm, others get put out quickly. A common way this happens is when someone views uncomfortable feelings as unhelpful, and so seeks to avoid them. Blocking out bad news might bring temporary peace of mind, but it can also suppress the spark. The first principle, of inspirational dissatisfaction, involves harnessing the motivational energy of distressing emotions. If you feel disturbed or uncomfortable when you encounter disturbing information, view this as a healthy and appropriate response. Allow yourself to dwell on the negative long enough to be roused by it. But if you find this too overwhelming, then the next principle may help.

Have you noticed how many great adventure stories begin from a place of gloom? Early on in these tales, things usually seem hopeless. But what makes the story is the way the central characters defy the odds and rise to the challenge. The second principle is to draw inspiration from adventure stories. Embedded in these tales are lessons that can help us when facing difficult challenges. For example, the central character may initially appear under-powered for their task. Have you ever felt this? Have you thought, "who am I to do something about this?" A recurring theme in adventure stories is of people finding strengths they didn't know they had, when they engaged in situations where these strengths were needed.

There are often crucial threshold moments in the story where the main character encounters an obstacle that seems impossible to get through. It is at times like these that the third principle is needed: What comes before How. First decide what you'd like to happen, then look for ways to make this more likely. Don't be put off if your task seems impossible; history has many examples of things that initially seemed impossible, but which later happened anyway. Have you had experiences of doing things you'd previously thought you couldn't do? Or seen other people go through this sequence? What comes before How is an important principle of creativity as it recognises that searching for a way generally comes before finding one. If you can't see how to do something, think of yourself as being in a preparation stage, where you seek out skills, information, allies and other resources that can help you move forward. I think of this as a training phase that involves both practical steps (on the outside) and psychological steps (within our hearts and minds). One type of psychological step is a shift in perspective, where looking at the same thing from a different angle can open up new possibilities. In The Work That Reconnects workshops developed by Joanna Macy and colleagues, this is often referred to as "seeing with new eyes". The next principle for cultivating inspired action is based on this.

When you look at a newsprint photograph under a magnifying glass, all you see are tiny dots. The picture only emerges when you step back and see the dots acting together as a whole. In a similar way, each of our own lives and life choices are like tiny dots in a larger picture. There's something bigger going on, and we may not see the full picture when looking only at the pieces. The fourth principle is to allow a larger story to act through us. This principle is based on the holistic science concept of emergence - that new properties and capacities emerge when parts act together as a larger whole. You can't predict these properties when looking only at the parts. For example, termite colonies regulate their internal temperature and humidity in ways you wouldn't think possible if you only studied individual termites. What new properties might emerge if more and more people started to act for the recovery of our world?

It is easy to look at individual actions and dismiss these as unlikely to lead to much. But if you look at something you do and ask "what could this be part of? What could it contribute to?" you start to look in a different way. You look upwards, at a bigger story. The self-regulation of termite colonies acts through the individual termites. Could our world have self-healing potentials far beyond what we could imagine from studying separate pieces of our planet? Could such a larger story of earth recovery act through us? This concept of emergence is important because it challenges the limiting view that says we can't do much. We can take this idea further though, bringing science and spirituality together in a way I find more deeply inspiring.

Team spirit acts through team members. If we reconnected with the sense that we are part of the larger team of life on this planet, could some vastly magnified form of team spirit act through us? Systems act through their parts. We are part of the living earth system, so it isn't far fetched to think of the earth as acting through us. In chapter 11 of my book Find Your Power, I've written about this as Power-through, which I've described as a power of larger processes emerging out of and through the actions of smaller parts. The big acts through the small; when we have a sense that we're contributing to, and receiving from, some vaster process, this opens possibilities in a way that can be inspiring. Maybe it is possible that we could wake up and succeed in bringing about the changes needed in our time. If so, future generations might look back on the early twenty-first century and talk of it as the time of The Great Turning. Ask yourself "if that is a story I am part of, what might my contribution be? How could the Great Turning act through me?"

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell describes the process by which ideas and behaviours that are initially on the fringe can become as contagious as viruses, spreading rapidly through communities. I think something like this is already happening with the Transition movement, which has grown in just over a year from an initiative in one or two small towns to over 400 projects around the world. What makes an idea or behaviour contagious? Gladwell identifies one of the factors as 'stickiness': the degree to which something is memorable enough to stick in our minds. The fifth principle for cultivating inspiration relates to stickiness. It is this: make it enjoyable. We are more likely to stick at something if we enjoy doing it. And if people see us enjoying what we do, they're more likely to become interested too. How do we make acting for our world more enjoyable? Perhaps the question is more important than the answer, as it leads us to reflect on how we feel about what we do and consider making changes if needed. Some types of activism are associated with high burnout rates. Is it possible to design ways of being active that we want to stick at for longer? The study action groups used by Joanna Macy and others, and the community building that is integral to the Transition approach, are steps in this direction.

Of course there are many more than five principles for cultivating inspiration. If you have an approach that works well, please tell me about it and I may include that in future editions of this mailing. The core point is that inspiration can be cultivated. It is a renewable resource. And we need to become more skilled at promoting it. The purpose of this newsletter, and our website at http://www.GreatTurningTimes.org , is to bring you news of insights, events and resources that help in this direction.

With you, in this adventure of earth recovery, Chris Johnstone
Editor, The Great Turning Times - email: chris@chrisjohnstone.info
http://www.chrisjohnstone.info