There are three parts to forever transforming your relationship with being a joyful climate advocate. You need to:

1. embrace doing less, changing narratives

   Maybe you’ve described your job as ‘spinning too many plates.’

   How does that image of all these things that can come crashing down make you feel?
   
   It's stressful.
   
   Because, you know, if you stop the spinning, if you're not always on it, those plates are gonna fall and they're gonna shatter and they're gonna break.
   
   In my experience that phrase creates a lot of anxiety.
   
   What if instead, all your different projects are little islands that you visit by ferry. They're quietly waiting for you to come by. They might be expanding and growing and changing and in their own beautiful way. Maybe there's different beasties and birds that move through during the seasons, trees and flowers that are coming up.
   
   When your projects are islands you can trust that you don't have to be active on all of them all at once. Things are okay, even thriving when you're doing other things.
   
   Metaphors are powerful. Don't stress yourself out needlessly, let go of those plates and book some ferry tickets instead. This doing less, accepting that we all need rest, and learning to care for yourself so you can care for others is the first P of Catalyst: PATIENCE.

   Showing up and continuing to push forward a climate agenda in your community becomes exponentially easier when you get curious about, and then intentionally shift how you think and feel about:

   ⛱️ your goals and whether you’re trying to do ‘everything for everyone’

   ☀️how you think and feel about the urgency and scale of challenges, and

   🌈 how you think and feel about your own agency and responsibility to ‘walk the talk’

2. find resonance with your goals, doing more that excites you

Up until now, you’ve probably muscled through deadlines, organising committees, finishing reports and putting in overtime to get. everything. done. that. is. so. vital.

But there’s a different way.

Instead of doing whatever it takes, you’ve practiced slowing down in Step 1 and now you have the space to align your decisions with your values and what you most love doing.

Aligning your natural talents with what gets you most excited is the best way to live as a joyful sustainability professional. You cannot do all the things. Being a superhuman takes a toll on your health and that means you’ll not be able to keep showing up at work.

So what did you love doing as a kid?

Did you have a secret dream, maybe you’ve not even admitted it to yourself?

It took me 25 years to realise that I’ve known my calling, what makes me feel the most-like-me, my happiest, most in the moment self. This came from a coach asking over and over ‘What do you want to do?’

In this second step, you’ll lean into the second P - your Passion - by:

🧭 Clarifying your values and how to use these as a roadmap for decision making

🧭 Create a clear brief for what you want from your work and impact to make it easier to find and spot the “fork yes” opportunities.

🧭 Take small steps to add more fun and play into your daily routine

3. practice failing and leaning into uncomfortable conversations

When you’re taking care of yourself and filling up your day with projects and people that excite and inspire you, being the badass climate advocate in boardrooms or on the street becomes possible.

Feeling confident speaking to senior managers, or anyone you’re trying to inform about climate action, is not all about knowing the most persuasive statistics or proving you are a sustainability expert. 

Often it’s being able to feel grounded, so when you come up against others asking questions (which will happen in most situations) you don’t assume the other person doesn’t value the work you're doing. 

I’m not going to say it’s ever going to be as easy as binge watching Ted Lasso, or that you won’t feel anger, anxiety, sadness, grief, disappointment or embarrassment.

The work we do together in Catalyst isn’t about creating a life that’s perfect, it’s about being able to inhabit all the parts of you.
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By that, I mean that when you're willing to feel any emotion, that's when you're going to be willing to take any action because you won't be afraid of the emotion that might accompany it.

Maybe you’ve wanted to speak up in a meeting with senior managers but fear or anger paralysed you.

What if the worst thing that could happen is that you experience feeling embarrassment or disappointment?

Being emotional is a great skill to master.

It makes us more unstoppable.

If you weren’t afraid to feel any emotion, what would you do?

This is our third P - step three is about how you become more Persuasive - by strengthening muscles like:

💪🏼 being willing to get it wrong, and trying to have a conversation with someone who you believe disagrees with you anyway

💪🏼 being able to experience discomfort without rushing to try and cheer up, noticing if other’s words make you feel angry or small, and not losing your voice

💪🏼 cheerleading other proactive people in our community, and in so doing, finding others that also keep you accountable to taking action and being the empowered sustainability professional you want to be