ReGenerative - Episode #12: Take-ways

So I want to thank everyone for this insightful conversation, and I'd like to end this conversation the way it began, with a tour de table. One of the premises of this podcast is that there's not enough— there's too much talking and not enough doing. So let's pass the mic, and I would usually tell people to share what they've heard today that will inspire them to do something differently than the way they did it prior to this conversation. And if you did, feel free to share. But I'm also tempted to ask you to share how in your daily life you are in alignment with regenerative practices and what it means to you truly, individually. You don't have to take my word for it. You can share any thought, but I'm going to start by sharing my own takeaways to give you guys a moment to collect your thoughts. First of all, I heard so many insightful that I'm a little bit overwhelmed. We're going to write a blog post because it helps me digest this conversation. I'm definitely going to have to listen to it again, but I really loved the fact that Danielle, you talked about and I have some notes here. This crisis for me personally is a great reset. It's a time of reflection, and I love the fact that you said to forgive while sitting in the mess and slowing down. And I now realize how much I had some anger towards, you know, the true capitalists, even to this day, people who don't— who want to go back to business. There's that anger, and that's not helpful. And there's also a little bit of anger towards environmentalists who since the '60s have, you know, said and talked about that type of crisis, and here we are, and we've not listened. And I think if I give myself permission to forgive while I'm in that mess, it actually— something positive might come out. In that reset, I am actually doing, I've realized that there's two things that I will never, ever, ever do. One is I will never, ever, ever have a coffee on the go. It might be tiny, right, but going to Starbucks and taking a cup, that's it, I'm done. And it took, you know, it's little, but I'm thinking if there's millions of people who may have the same idea. Same thing, eating strawberries in December, living in New York, that's it, I'm done. Now, I can't control what my daughters buy, but I can certainly control what I do. And I think giving myself permission to step outside this narrative of who I think I am and my behavior is also a wonderful opportunity to make different decisions. So using food, buying my fruit and vegetable from my local places, which I've tried, but it was just easier to go to the supermarket and get all those wonderful, beautiful products. And then the last thing that I'm hearing over and over again is that we are as individuals looking for leaders to tell us what to do. And as to me, you guys have some answers, but I'm also realizing that I can't wait for you to tell me exactly what to do because you're not in my shoes. So I have to step up, I have to decide to to follow my own heart. And as someone said about the leaders, the grass tops, I think changes will come from leaders leading from their heart, but also individuals. And that's my own takeaway, is that it's on me, it's on my shoulders to change. So thank you so much for sharing those perspectives. It was really revealing. So why don't we continue the tour de table and unmute yourself. And Danielle, you'll be the last one to close this discussion. But Mei, do you want to share your last thoughts, any idea, or how you personally— oh, and then you are muted. You have to unmute yourself. Yes.

Many sites, but one is related to— I'm not sure even if I can still so fresh that I'm not sure if I can consolidate in coherent thinking, but I'll try. So there was something around this insight that I have, the regeneration contains, the disruption contains the seed for regeneration, was an insight that I had, I didn't have before. So that was a good one that we co-created together. The other one is about staying awake. And staying awake from a transpersonal perspective, staying awake within the crisis, embedded in the crisis, and outside, looking at the crisis from outside, but also in between. I like to see if the in between is possible, which is not looking at the crisis from an observer or being side of the crisis, but I'd like to see how is to be in between the changes. So that's something that I want to explore from this conversation here. And in terms of concrete steps, I think I mentioned to you before we start the conversation, in UK, daily exercise allotments are considered daily exercise. So I've been going every day around this time, 5, 6 o'clock, I go to my allotment, which is about 12 minutes walking from my home. And I am very much, you know, always in awe when you put one little seed of beetroot and then 7 days later you see it sprouting from the soil. So I'll keep doing my food growing and celebrating every sprout that comes in. That will turn in nourishment so I can continue to serve the world.

Beautiful, thank you very much. Gregory, do you want to share your last thoughts or idea?

Sure, well, I'm— some things that moved and emerged for me were, yeah, I mean, I think this conversation about How do you— how are we the seeds that may be sprouting at this moment? And at the same time, how do you— sort of Nora's invitation around how do you be real, be present with the context that is, instead of bringing a whole sort of set of assumptions from maybe worlds that don't exist at the moment anymore. So I was thinking about, you know, as a tech startup, as a bit, you know, our business right now, we're building software essentially. How do we bring into our process the moments of non-solutioning? How do we bring in Daniel's invitation to just sort of sit in the, in the mess for a moment so that everyone who's on the team just has the invitation and the opportunity to just be with that? And also shift back into, you know, our rhythm and our coordination and the ways that we get things done. So that's something I'm going to be thinking about moving forward. As far as the reflection about how I, my family and I are or are not sort of coherent with sort of the regenerative imperative at the moment. I mean, I think there's one thing that's been really powerful and useful for me over the last couple of weeks is attending Carol Sanford's open— she's been doing an open sort of regenerative life 30 minutes every morning, which is really powerful, and I would totally encourage folks to tune into that. I can, if And it's just reflection, right? Rigorous reflection and using living system frameworks. So that's one thing that, you know, I really value from a sort of a personal, how am I living into the moment and creating spaciousness to reflect and understand and engage? Other reflections for me is just the way in which this shock to our supply chain, it feels like it's exacerbated, you know, I'm sort of a reluctant Amazon Prime subscriber, right? And so it's sort of exacerbated my reliance and my gratitude and my understanding of that, of the role of the sort of coordination potential and, you know, of that sort of thing. And at the same time, it sort of like jostled me into a much— the relationships were already there, but a much firmer sort of relationship with CSAs and local farms and very tight supply systems. So it's sort of like made me go opposite directions in our purchasing behaviors and the way that we, we sort of are managing our household. And I'm just holding that tension and I'm wondering what that informs us about the sort of cosmo-local world, you know, in an ideal way, how we achieve global coordination and interconnectivity while sort of having tight mutually regenerative relationships with our landscape and our communities. So that's just something that I'm holding right now and an admission of my guilt of, being an Amazon Prime member. With that, I'll pass it over to Nora.

Very nice.

Thank you very much. Lots of to impact. Nora?

Love your confession, Gregory. I mean, I think we've all got some of those, and I was thinking it would be really fun to make this list of like, it took a pandemic before I— dot, dot, dot, right? And There's been so many of those, those huge shifts that could have happened, so many things that could have happened 6 weeks ago, but they didn't. It took a pandemic. Like my garden. I could have been working on that, but I didn't until it was, you know, nick of time. I'm making the nick of time farm here. But in reflecting on our conversation, I just want to say, I guess what I feel so deeply right now is the importance of these kind of conversations being a place where there is insight that is generated between us. And I've been sad because I felt that somehow even in the whatever we want to call it, the changemaker world, the eco-activism world, the systems and complexity world, there's been a lot of rivalry and ambition that has leveraged You know, how many likes did you get? Which one of your Medium articles got the most viral? Like, this nonsense. And really, you know, like, Gregory, what you were saying resonated so deeply with me that we've been working on this a long time. These things that— these seeds that we're carrying, they're not throwaways. At the same time, we have never really been able to— it's like we've been in a flight simulator and now we're in the air, and there's this opportunity to embody and engage with a completely different kind of generosity of ideas and and being present with each other, not knowing together, confessing together. You know, there's no need in this time to be looking for those leverages, and so I just wanted to reflect all the way around in the whole regenerative conversation here how important that is. Because that's so last system, right? It's so last system, and I don't wanna do last system anymore. I don't wanna do that. I really want to be in the vitality that we can generate together and that goes from this conversation out into the world, that other people sense that and can, you know, send us random emails that we don't have time to answer, but we will anyway. And, you know, that's good. That's the good stuff. So, um, it gives opportunity to see things we haven't seen before, and when you see things you haven't seen before, the first thing that I know about that is that they're very difficult to recognize, and, um, or to name, or to find a place for, or— and so that makes the importance of having friends and having relationships to bring those insights alive through, just absolutely vital to find the edges and to play with those edges like you were talking about, Mei. And so that's, I think, what I'm resonating with. And then in my own life, there's so much happening that it's very difficult to pinpoint one thing, but, but I will say this, that I have found— we were talking about this before we turned the record button on, and, and I think I want to come back to it— that I have found that I have been really angry, and then I've been so full of love and inspiration for humanity, and in the next moment I have been absolutely heartbroken. And then within that same heartbrokenness, there is this incredible fear for what's happening to people that I love. And then boom comes the rage of, I just want to, you know, I cannot believe which of these numbers are real. Why doesn't anyone tell the truth? Where is the truth? And what is the truth? And this kind of movement through and simultaneous, like you were saying, Gregory, that there's a tension, there's this simultaneous multi-emotional response going on, and I just want to bring that into the notion of soil. And how those different pieces coming together form the capacities to actually sense and perceive in new ways. And in order to sense and perceive in new ways, we have to be willing to feel the things that are coming up there, not to indulge them, not to, you know, billboard them. It's not a pity party, it's not that. It's about what is this feeling and how does it tie to the other experiences of life, as I haven't known them, right? So anyway, that's what I want to bring in.

Thank you very much, Noha. It makes— what you say is making me think that we are almost like people with addiction and this crisis, this confinement is bringing all our addiction to life and we're in rehab really and that's why maybe it's painful. So anyway, Daniel, would you leave us with your last thoughts, comment and reflection?

Yeah, I mean living here in Spain for 33 days not allowed out of the apartment and having police patrolling the streets and fining you if you take a long route back from the shop or something. I've realized I have a severe addiction to forests and oceans and mountains, and I'm on cold turkey. And as much as I try to tell myself nature is everywhere, and I have my few seeds up on the planter on my roof terrace that also, like Nora, I wasn't doing before— it took a pandemic for me to have my Huerto Urbano on my roof again. But it's also like this, the Amazon confession made me think of how the local farmers cooperative here on Mallorca announced shortly after the pandemic, like the curfew was pronounced, that they were gonna be the Amazon of fruit and vegetables on the island. And everybody is suddenly buying local. I've been getting a local organic veg box for years, but now people are actually beginning to be aware of what is local and what is not. The local milk factory that used to sell 60% of its milk to the tourism industry is saying, we've got far too much milk, don't buy the milk coming in from France, buy the Mallorcan milk, and people are responding. And so partially of these seeds that we were talking about, like I've always seen my role not as the guy who knows about regeneration. I listen, I look at, I map, I listen with all the emotions, all the dimensions of my being that Nora was expressing, with my rage, my fear, my anger, my enthusiasm, my hope, to what somehow resonates as being aligned with life-creating conditions conducive to life. And then I try to help people see each other in that. And there's that— some people say it's a Hopi prophecy of a time of like, we are the ones we've been waiting for. You've heard it. And in that prophecy, it also mentions, look around and see who's in there with you and keep your head above water. And I feel like this is the opportunity, and this is also part of the work we need to do. We need to make the system visible to itself and see how Everywhere in the crisis, there's already the new life springing up, all the shoots that we've got in our gardens coming up right now. And in many ways, it's trusting that we are just part of life's evolutionary, like, immune response to the current crisis, as Paul Hawken suggested many years ago. To do our bit, and for me, my bit there is that I've, for about 2 or 3 years now, I've felt a very strong, almost like a dilemma or a tension of at what scale of this nested complexity to really put my energy. How much do I weave global networks and make the global players on the different continents visible to each other as being part of a larger regenerative impulse that really wants to be brought and manifested in this world? And how much do I really practice what I preach or connect to my local community again? And actually use, why I came here to Mallorca was 10 years ago, was because as an island, I saw it as a great place to experiment with bioregional, that kind of scale transition towards a more regenerative system. And I've been doing social acupuncture for 10 years and building deep relationships. And now I feel my commitment now is, is to really watch where I put my energy in the future as soon as I come out of this lockdown situation and to really serve my local community. And then if there's any lessons to be learned from that process, communicate that with the wider communities of people doing that elsewhere. And that brings it really back to why in designing regenerative cultures, there's a plural. It's really vital, that plural. For me, it's because there isn't one person who can give you the answer. There's a set of questions that if we all live them with our communities in our region, with sensitivity to our history, honoring some of the seeds and those who have come before us, picking up the babies that we've thrown out with the bathwater of ancient wisdom and place-based wisdom that we've ignored for 200 years or longer. And at the same time, combining it with everything that this 250 years of fossil fuel binge and technological extravaganza have given us and somehow find a new normal. It's too soon to know the new normal with what's happening right now, and that's why I keep coming back that regenerative cultures is about living the questions together and seeing each other and celebrating that we are the ones we've been waiting for.

Absolutely, that was beautiful. I love the fact that you're really inviting everyone to find their own voice, and that's really maybe the ultimate opportunity during this crisis, whether it's to connect with other people on this topic of regenerative practices or any others, but finding your own voice, that's really about going deep. So I'd like to end by asking viewers and listeners to explore the other episodes that we had on philosophy, on ethical leadership, on improvisation, and then to also let us know how do you see the impact and the power of regenerative practices in in your own life? You can leave the answers in the comment section. Thank you again for making up time and for your really insightful experience and insight. Thank you.

Thank you.