How Will You Live in the 2020's?

Transitions & Change
Written By Nicola Holmes
The earth from outer space view.

This past New Year’s Eve, I lay awake in my parent-in-laws’ home, beside my sleeping children, unable to settle. I waited for my partner, Dan, to come to bed, then told him I was feeling existential angst (Happy New Year’s, honey!) ;) and asked if we could talk, so that I could (hopefully) soothe my rattled nervous system.

I launched into my fears and contemplations on the very cusp of 2020: 

  • are enough people paying attention to what scientists say we MUST achieve in the decade ahead to protect life and determining how they will dedicate themselves to those efforts?

  • will we humans collectively pull off the near miraculous: bend the curve of carbon outputs down (quickly!) and begin to unhook our economy from fossil fuels - or not?

  • and what will we do - individually and as a couple - to contribute to the problem or solution?

At the stroke of midnight, we were still up, pondering - and in the darkness, we held hands over the curled body of our five year old and offered our blessings for the world out into the quiet.

Do you resonate with this?

Are you sitting with these kinds of questions, too?

Amidst the daily joys and tangles of your life, are you experiencing undercurrents - or tidal waves - of fear, grief or despair about the state of our world? 

At moments, I feel heartbroken and desperate that, almost everywhere I turn, there seems to be mounting evidence of environmental destabilization of our planet’s ‘life support’ systems:

  • micro-plastics infiltrating waters and bodies (including our own)

  • alarming levels of extinction and endangerment 

  • destructive weather patterns and (overall) rising global temperatures

  • ocean acidification, toxification, and overfishing 

  • carbon emissions continuing to climb UP rather than down

All this for the physical systems of our planet, while ongoing dominant economic and social systems oppress and discriminate against far too many people and trends implicate the weakening of liberal Western democracies.

When people see inadequate indication of societal transformation - nor perceive agency to effect substantive change themselves - then fear, despair, and grief seem to me understandable reactions.

However, I’ve spent much of the last decade coaching - and this often involves helping people to:

  • discover possibilities where they currently see none

  • shift perspectives (sometimes radically so)

  • not let fear hold them back or direct their choices and commitments

  • connect more deeply with their strengths, wisdom, values, and instincts

  • dare to articulate inspired visions and author empowering personal narratives for their lives

  • free themselves to think, speak, and act in new ways

I’ve seen people get unstuck, make courageous decisions and start trekking in beautifully ambitious or empowered new directions or start making little exploratory tweaks that result in gorgeous transformation -  I KNOW that creating radical change is possible for individuals.

So: can we do this collectively, at a historical moment when we need it most?

You know how people say that people struggling with substance addictions often have to ‘hit bottom’ before finding the resolve and determination to do the hard work of recovery?

Or that the night is darkest before dawn?

Well, I want to believe that the urgent and complex social and ecological conditions we find ourselves in may be humanity’s ‘tipping point’ - and that we can use our suffering to catalyze positive evolution.

Our Home is On Fire

As Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein both succinctly put it, our home is on fire.

It seems to me that the call to each and every one of us is to keep our eyes open, take responsibility, and execute aligned action to help put it out.

I wish political leadership was adequate, shaping impactful policy shifts while elevating public understanding about climate stabilization as an important and urgent priority.

Likewise, I wish that a critical mass of corporate leaders were working hard to overhaul industry regulations and business models and effect radical change through a Climate Justice lens.

If these two groups of formal-power-holders were moving wisely and swiftly in coordinated efforts to reduce carbon outputs while also sequestering it through nature’s capacities, perhaps we could relax, trusting that adequate resources were being harnessed to put out the fire.

But while there are some pockets of hope, positive rhetoric - even groundbreaking global collaborative efforts, such as the Paris Agreement - I’d say we can’t count on our formal nation-state leaders to put out the fire nor on the market to ‘correct itself’ and do the job.

We humans seem vulnerable to the (conscious or unconscious) belief that ‘someone else’ is in charge who’s going to take care of things - and by extension, us - and this tends to render us passive.

Alternatively, some people perceive that leaders are not adequately in charge or aptly handling challenges - and may even be implicated in causing them - and adopt a stance of cynicism or blame.

In both of these orientations to authority, we absolve ourselves of personal responsibility to create change. 

But if too many of us continue to live in passivity or blame others rather than step up to take greater responsibility in our own lives, communities and countries, I don’t think we’ll pull off a livable future.

So, What Can We Do?

Let me start by saying that I don’t really know. I’m learning as I go. My perception is limited.

But here’s my best understanding for the moment:

1. The Game in Your Mind:

Notice and challenge the thought that someone else is responsible to or must solve this crisis.

Know that YOU matter in contributing to the solution. You really do - because we all do.

Work hard to not get stuck in despair or futility - as Eric Liu titles his book on how citizens can effect change, you’re more powerful than you think.

Start focusing on not IF humanity will create the future we want but instead on HOW we will do it.

Take care of your emotions.

2. Learn More:

There's so much information out there when it comes to Climate Justice, but here are a few current sources that I recommend:

3. Take Action:

When it comes to individual life and habit change, I have heard a lot of people lately use the ‘one-degree turn metaphor’ - which is that, in aviation, you can see how powerfully pathways can be deviated or course-corrected through the power of making just ONE-DEGREE turns - to encourage us to likewise not underestimate the power of creating significant change through making very small behavioral tweaks.

It also tends to be easier for humans to sustain change through implementing a series of teeny, incremental changes than navigating sudden, radical leaping moves.

So, I wonder about the power of aiming to be part of collective solutions this decade with this same one-degree turn approach and the potential efficacy of millions - or billions! - of us making small, steady changes over the coming years, such as:

  • Reducing air travel and/or committing to offsetting flights (I have it from a trusted source that this is a highly reputable company) - and if your work involves travel, see if you can help shift company policy to build this kind of ‘compensatory’ investment into the budget.

  • Taking a day a week away from our screens. Turning off our computers and phones: lightening the digital electricity load AND freeing up time for rest, pleasure, or nature.

  • Choosing (at least) 1 night a week to have a meat-free meal and/or to not eat oceanic fish.

  • Increasing civic engagement: you could connect regularly with your political representative on an issue that matters to you or join a community group that is taking related action.

  • I don’t know what it might be for you: what could you stop or start doing that seems small but might matter?

I’m not trying to let some of the big players off the hook - subsidized fossil fuel companies recklessly extracting resources from our Mama Earth or the governments squandering our precious forests or waters.

But I don’t want us to have a race to the bottom, where most of us point fingers and do nothing.

If we continue to live our lives as though our home is not on fire then we are part of the problem.

In many ways, what gives me hope is that I wonder if there is a critical mass of enough people who are aware of the stakes at hand and who care deeply and have capacity to be part of life-affirming change.

A decade ago, while I often connected with clients who valued social and environmental justice, none were making this their TOP, driving mission in life. In the last year, I’ve observed that a good handful of my clients do feel this way: both really frightened about the climate crisis and committed to making a difference.

On a walk this past week, I saw homemade signs about Climate Crisis posted on numerous telephone poles - some by adults, with calls to action, and one that broke my heart a little, created by a grade three kid. This eight-year-old girl, Bea, drew pictures of the bush fires in Australia and wrote about the link between disrupted weather patterns and climate change. She asked her readers to recycle more and stop using plastic.

What has struck me is that even just a few years ago, I don’t think I would have been seeing and sensing so much attention to this issue - and so, in my albeit little social sphere, I’m seeing evidence and feeling more hope that we really could pull off the decade we need to.

It seems to me that the most dangerous thing we can do is to believe that our actions don’t matter, don’t hold enough weight - and so do nothing. Just go on with the status quo, as though our home is not on fire.

But if we all do that, there is no doubt that the ‘fire’ - with its exacerbating conditions - will escalate.

So, I think back to that moment of holding hands with Dan, with my kids beside me in the dark night - thinking of my two and all the billions of younger ones who will inherit the future - and I reach my hand out to you, too.

We’ll have to create this change together.

There’s no other way.

We can at least try to make one-degree turns towards the future we want.

What could your first one be?

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P.S. If you want support with your life and the difference you want to make, I would be honored to help. Many of my 1:1 clients seem to be responding to the calls of our times and I would love to be of service. If you’re interested to learn more about working together, please set up a free 60-minute consult chat with me.

Smiling white woman with ash-coloured hair sitting on cement steps.

Nicola Holmes is a Life Coach who helps people turn their potent questions, dream and longings into inspired action. With warmth and wisdom, she’ll guide you to untangle constraints and cultivate courage to create a more aligned and joyful life. She has a BASc in Human Development, an MEd in Adult Learning and spent two decades working in the non-profit sector. Along with coaching for the past 14 years, she’s mama to two young spirited kids and dedicated to Buddhism. Having experienced long Covid and a move over the past two years, she brings deep empathy to others who are exploring how they’ve changed and who they’re becoming in turbulent times. Check out Nicola @nicolaholmescoach or join the email party for inspiration and resources to fuel the changes you want. 

Nicola Holmes
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