What is a story? What is a Sustaining Story?

This morning, I took part in a survey about storytelling research being conducted by Northwestern University.  The first question on the survey was to define your definition of story.

While I had been running a consulting company with the word Stories in its name, I hadn't really allowed myself to articulate my own view of what a story is and why it's so important to making change happen.

The definition that I wrote in the survey is:

A story is a series of mental constructs, emotional narratives and images that allow human beings to make sense of the past, present and future AND communicate that understanding with others or ourselves.  A story is how we connect together the internal and external experiences of our lives.  Necessarily due to the large amount of accurate and inaccurate information that we collect in our minds, the creation of a story is how we create structure out of the experience of our lives.  These stories can either be beneficial or harmful depending upon how we use stories to make choices of action in our lives, businesses, and communities.

This sounds a bit intellectual.  A simpler definition is that a story is the way in which our human minds create meaning out of our experiences. 

My concern is that we get so caught up in our stories that we lose touch with how our lives fit into the bigger scheme of life. This is why I created the idea of a sustaining story to move beyond a narrow view of what is possible.

A sustaining story is a way of making choices and creating meaning that sustains not only our life but life on earth for generations beyond our own. I whole-heartedly believe that we can live out new sustaining stories that make our lives mean something different than what we have been taught to believe that we can achieve.

I know of no stronger tool for change in the world than the stories that we tell ourselves and others. 

That is why all great religions tell stories, and that anyone who wants to be a leader in the world needs to understand how stories create reality for themselves and others. 

There are many great books about stories that I will be discussing in the next few days and weeks, as I prepare for my next Sustaining Stories series of workshops.

Can the world be flat and curvy?

The power of social networking stil amazes me.  I am someone who doesn't always know what to make of this new world of communication and connection, yet am learning how to share my ideas and finding that extremely exciting. 

Yesterday, I took the chance to request a connection with someone on Linked In that I hadn't spoken to in 20 years.  My friend Horatio, now living in California, called me from Taiwan to touch base again.  It felt like time hadn't passed at all talking to me.  It gave me pause to think that 20 years passes so quickly and back in 1990, I was still working at IBM and the internet was unknown to most people.

The world has become so small and interconnected since then.  And depending on your view, these changes are making the world flat and/or curved.  I read Friedman's Hot Flat and Crowded a few years ago at the height of optimism in the Green movement, back when I was running a green business network for the City of Chicago called the Waste to Profit Network.  It was easier to believe its message then.

In the last two years, I have been watching big shifts in the U.S. around public opinion about climate change.  Interestingly, folks like Bill Gates have been changing their minds and are seeing the importance of the real global significance of the changes that are happening now.  However, the average American questions in these times of tough economic impacts whether we can afford to worry about climate change.  I know because my mother routinely talks to me about Climategate.  Yet, my mother also is the person who taught me to compost and avoid wasting anything.

I have been wondering how much the real environmental changes are going to be ignored, because the real impact on middle class America's standard of living is being impacted by another type of globalization -- the leveling of incomes that was bound to impact most Americans. 

No book has been more impressive to me on explaining what has been happening from a global economy standpoint than David M. Smick's book The World is Curved, Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy.  I get the sense that he is right about what is likely to happen in terms of the rising costs of global shipping and where that might lead.

The one source of optimism that I have for sustainable development and clilmate change mitigation is the growth of wind power globally and in the U.S.  I have been pleased to see how Texas is pragmatically embracing wind power.  My very Republican mother in San Antonio is proud of this too.  There are solutions that are bi-partisan -- I wish there were more of them.

My lament is that all of our global and U.S. focus on renewable energy takes away the focus on the deeper problem  -- wide-scale global ecosystem destruction. Whether the world is flat or curved, I am wondering if there is a way to monetize ecosystem restoration so that we solve two problems at once. I am convinced the only way we will restore ecosystems is if idealistic, environmental capitalists lead the way.

Moving ahead without a Map

This week, I find myself drawn to travel metaphors.  So, please bear with me.

One of the challenges and opportunities that individuals and businesses face is when they find themselves on the right road, but don't know where it's leading. 

I just wrote an email to Martha Beck letting her know how much the book, Findng Your Own North Star meant to me seven years ago when I first read it. I still find it to be a useful book for myself and others.  To me, the most brilliant aspect of that book is her description of the change cycle. I particularly love the mantras she gives to describe different phases of our transformational journey.

From my experience as a human being and a sustainability consultant to business, I have seen this cycle play out again and again.   She defines four cycles.

1. Death and Rebirth
2. Dreaming and Scheming
3. The Hero's Saga
4. The Promised Land

Most sustainability consultants try to jump to stage three of the cycle of change, and get individuals and companies to take action.  This works well when an organization or person is ready to act.  It doesn't work so well when a company is in a death and rebirth phase.

The truth is that not everyone is ready to go into the flow of action that comes naturally in stage three.  That's why in the Green Leader's program that I manage, we don't follow a strictly linear schedule of transformation.  We collaborate together coming from different energetic levels.  Part of what I do is assess where in the change cycle someone is working from.

The truth is we are all always in a change cycle, and you have to understand energetically where you are in that cycle, to be able to nurture yourself through whatever stage you are at.

If you find yourself on a road without a map in your life, I heartily recommend taking a look at Martha Beck's, Finding Your Own North Star. 

Taking the Right Road in the Wrong Direction

Last night I went to an inspiring women's networking event called WOW. 

It was my first real networking event in over two years.   I had made an intentional choice to spend more time with my children.  I also was lucky enough to work on finding myself with an amazing life coach out of California and attemptig to finish my first novel during that time.  Over the last two years,I led a small but exciting program at the Chicago Center for Green Technonology called the Green Leaders program.  From my point of view, my commitment to sustainability has been modest compared to the time when I was program director for a City of Chicago green business program. 

For the last several months, my friend Falise had invited and challenged me to start twittering and blogging.  So, thus, this first blog in a while. 

Last night, I was very impressed with Jenniffer Weigel.  My favorite quote came from Therese Rowley, a local transformation consultant and intuitive healer.  She said that the Dalai Lama had said that western women would change the world.  I honestly had shivers go up my spine when I heard her say this.

I was surprised to have the feeling again.  It's been a while since I dared to believe that I could change the world, despite the publication of my book It's Time to be an Idealistic, Environmental Capitalist with my co-author Marvin Klein.

I had come to this event ready to give up on my passion for sustainability because this seems like such a hard time to care, when I have two children to feed and bills to pay.

I have been sorely disappointed that the Obama administration hasn't made greening the country a priority.  I feel he has let some of his supporters like myself down. Instead under his watch, it seems that the green movement has been discredited more than anything else. 

As a sustainability consultant, I have watched and wondered what could I do as only one person.  The non-profit where I had worked to create the Chicago Waste to Profit Network is closing its doors.  These are tough times for social entrepreneurs who like lost causes.

Last night after the event, I found myself driving home in the dark and lost.  I couldn't tell where I was going.  It slowly dawned on me that I was on the right road to get home, but I was driving in the wrong direction.

To me, that is where we are in America now.  We are on the right road, but driving in the wrong direction.  Jeffrey Sachs in the latest Scientific American leads to these same conclusions.  Never before have humans lived longer, more prosperous lives on the whole.  Yet, around the world natural systems are in decline at alarming rates.   The decline is not overnight, it is taking decades.  So, most of us can't see it.

In a sense, the brilliance of our technology and knowledge has put the planet on the "right" road.  Unfortunately, we don't realize that we are driving in the wrong direction in the dark.  It's time to turn around and take care of our home.