Hello, 2025! Challenges for the new year!
We’ve entered 2025! This means it’s time to set some new goals for the year.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d like to do this year in regards to living happier, healthier, and more environmentally conscious, and how I reflect that on the internet (blog, podcast, videos, etc.).
Mindset
When people think about sustainability and responsibility, we generally like to put the responsibility into one of two buckets: individual sustainability and government/corporate sustainability. People think in terms of “what I have to do to make my own life sustainable” and “what the government/companies have to do to become sustainable.” Often, we use that way of thinking to avoid responsibility: “Well MY environmental footprint is tiny compared to corporations so what I do doesn’t really matter.” But I think there’s little point in worrying about things you can’t control, like the behavior of governments or corporations.
Worrying about others’ behavior leads to feeling powerless, but I think there’s another framing that allows you to feel powerful and empowers you to take action: the amount of action you can take is proportional to how much you pollute. This allows you to recognize that yes, Amazon has a HUGE environmental footprint compared to you and they could take a proportionally large amount of action to reduce their footprint. Your footprint is smaller, so there’s less impact you can have, but that’s OK – the impact you can have is proportional to how much you pollute. Your “small-relative-to-Amazon” actions are enough for YOU. I’ll say it again: your actions are enough for you. This framing has really helped me to feel more empowered and like I’m in control of what I can.
This way of thinking got me to where I am today: I drive less, I fly less, I eat only a small fraction of meat and dairy compared to what I used to, my garbage has reduced drastically, and I buy a lot less material goods. I also do what is within my control to change governments and corporations by sending daily emails to my local politicians and to major corporations demanding action. (For those interested, I use the ClimateActionNow app, which writes the letters and provides the email addresses to recipients so that you can just pick the causes you want to support, and within a few clicks the email is sent!) Is this everything possible for me to do? Absolutely not! There is always more to do, but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made.
More Community
I’ve made large gains but there’s a point at which, to me personally, individual action starts to feel like “not enough.” I’ve developed skills in living more sustainably that have lead to more happiness, health, and connection in my life, but now it feels like I need to do something with those skills. What’s the point in spending years learning to play piano if you never play for anyone? Playing for yourself is great, but you could do so much more! Teaching, performing, playing with groups, etc.
With that in mind, within the past year, I’ve started to think a lot more seriously about “How can I influence or lead others to want to search for the happiness, health, and connection that I’ve discovered?” and this has brought me to ponder relationships, community, and leadership. If you’re here on my blog, you know that I am currently in the process of taking a leadership workshop with Joshua Spodek where I am learning the skills to lead others. I’ve also spent the last few months doing some self-learning on empathy, diving deeper into understanding my own emotion, and assertiveness, all are which I feel are skills necessary in leading others. These skills are very important, but just having these skills aren’t enough to lead people. You need to have people to lead.
This is where I’ve started to realize that a next step for me is to start to build community around myself and start to build relationships so I can utilize my skills in helping others. I have some different ideas for things that I can do, some of which include:
-Starting The Campfire sessions (the concept I fleshed out through method Initiative last year)
-Volunteering at local community centers/churches/in my neighborhood.
-Creating other kinds of social groups focused on helping people create connection to the community
-Any other ideas/suggestions? I’d love to hear them!
So one of my goals for this year is to act on one of these things to start to build a community that will help lead others to a happier, healthier, and more connected lifestyle.
More Internet Presence (I don’t mean social media)
Next, I would love to get my message out more: produce some video content, blog more often, and release more podcast episodes with guests I’m really excited about.
To this effect, I’m challenging myself to:
Blog
- Blog at least once a week – This will help me not only have more content online, which leads to more eyes on my ideas and a closer feeling of connection with readers, but also because writing is such a good way to practice conscious thought. I really want to be able to think deeply and be able to articulate my ideas well, and I think that starts with writing.
Produce Videos
- Produce some kind of video once a month. I’m not sure exactly what kind of video I want to make yet, but I think that will come with doing. Some of my ideas include:
- Recording and posting conversations with friends and family on sustainable living – I feel like these kinds of videos allow me to test my skills at presenting my ideas with others and seeing how I can influence/lead in real time.
- Same as prior, but with people I don’t know (college campuses maybe?) – Same as prior, but with a bigger challenge since I don’t know the other person!
- Video essays that show some aspect of my life, presented in a way that edited artistically and stylized. (I love the style of videos on Life of Riza (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IkUu4DNyTw)) – This would just be so fun. I would really enjoy the process of making these videos and feel like I’m expressing my creative side along with sustainability.
- Probably in order to complete this, I may have to start by just doing a few simple “talking to the camera” videos to start…
- Again, open to suggestions!
Solve For Nature Podcast
For my podcast, rather than doing something new, I’m really interested in just improving on what I already have:
- I would like to be uploading a minimum of one episode every 2 weeks on a fixed schedule.
- Invite on more guests that I deliberately seek out and want on my podcast.
- Automate the system, make use of the talent of others who are better than me at editing and managing the podcast.
Conclusion
Wow, I didn’t mean for this blog post to get so long, but here we are.
There are still more things I want to challenge myself to do this year, but I think I might have to save them for another blog post. That shouldn’t be a problem, since I’ll now be blogging once a week!
As always, I’d really appreciate your feedback! If you have suggestions to improve my blog, podcast, or anything else, I always love to hear them! Comment down below or email me at RealVerdantGrowth@gmail.com.
If you’re interested in reading more about my thoughts on health, happiness, and connection, please be sure to subscribe, as starting this year, that’s exactly what you will be getting a lot of, as well as updates every time a new podcast episode goes live!
