Episode 50: Building and Sustaining Good Habits with Alex Pearson

Webinar Summary: Sustainable Living and Mindful Habits

by Dalida Turkovic & Alex Pearson 

In our recent webinar, two inspiring speakers shared their personal journeys of transitioning to more sustainable and mindful ways of living. Drawing from their experiences of moving from China and starting from scratch in new environments, they offered practical advice and reflections on how small changes can lead to big impacts.

One of our speakers, Alex, highlighted her work in helping both individuals and organizations on the path to sustainability. From designing learning programs for small businesses to consulting with large corporations on reaching net zero, Alex’s approach shows how powerful mindful living can be. She shared everyday practices like making her own cleaning products, reducing plastic usage, and even crafting plant-based milk and tofu at home—all as examples of how sustainable habits can be simple, fun, and rewarding.

The conversation touched on the challenges we face when trying to break old habits and form new, more sustainable ones. Both speakers reflected on the importance of slowing down, being mindful, and appreciating local resources. They emphasized that sustainability isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress, small steps, and finding joy in the process.

An important theme of the webinar was the role that community and coaching can play in supporting individuals through these transitions. As our speakers pointed out, sustainable movements often start at the grassroots level, where collective efforts can spark significant societal change. Coaches, in particular, can be instrumental in helping people navigate these changes with compassion and mindfulness.

The webinar was filled with practical tips and heartfelt stories that encourage us all to reflect on our habits, make intentional choices, and build a more sustainable future—both for ourselves and our communities.

We look forward to continuing this journey together. Stay tuned for our next session, where we will dive deeper into creating sustainable movements and building stronger communities.

Next session:
How to Create a Movement: Lessons from Climate Change Practitioners Date: October 10, 2024 Time: 12PM - 1PM London | 1PM - 2PM Belgrade | 7PM - 8PM Beijing

Explore strategies used by climate change practitioners to create and sustain powerful movements. Learn how to apply these insights to any cause you’re passionate about and become a catalyst for positive change in your community.

Produced by BMC Academy, www.bmcacademy.com. Mindfulness-Based Coach training with ICF certification.

Transcript

Is it happening? It's happening. All right. So fantastic.

I am really, excited to be here.

We got our idea for sharing a series of webinars, Alex and I, really old friends, I think one of my first friends when I moved to China, and we've done a lot of projects together and our life has taken us for a spin on various occasions. But mainly leaving China, I think that that was something that we really hold in common.

Two years ago, I connected with Alex and I said, Alex, give me some wisdom. How does one transition from China? And Alex said, you have to be ready to start from the scratch. And I am in the middle, starting from the scratch and that wisdom is really resonating for me. 

And thank you so much for being here, and also sharing your part of your transition. Because from moving, we worked on projects with corporate sector and we were doing a lot of management training together. And, climbing on the great Wall and working with Fortune 500 companies so, without me introducing much more about you, can you share a little bit about where your path has taken you now and then we'll go from there.

Yeah, sure. really nice to be with you all. Thank you for attending. Yes.

I never remember what I say when I talk to people, but now that you reminded me about that starting from scratch, I think that's what I realized that I just had to do.

Because if you come to a country, I moved to England, which is, of course, where I'm from, but I've been away for 25 years, and everyone wants to put you in a box, so that they can understand you. And I'm not very good at boxes, and I don't really belong in boxes. And what I found was that people were seeing me as this China expert and were wanting me to go off to China to help them build this or build that. But they're basically projects I would never have said yes to when I was living in China.

That was the big shift. And that's when I realized, okay, don't tell anyone you know anything about China, don´t tell anyone you can speak Chinese. Just start again and see what happens.

That’s what I did. But when you get to our age, you never really start again.

You bring in all the stuff that you've done before, all your experiences. I spent a lot of time sitting on the beach working out which bits that I enjoy. Which bits did I not enjoy? And it was from that that I started to decide what I was going to do with myself now that I was back in England.

And not all of it worked. In fact, a lot of it didn't work. There was a lot of starting from scratch, but the common thread has been how you and I met Dlida, and that was through facilitation and design of learning journeys, and the training of people both in corporations, but also small to medium enterprises and micro enterprises. So that's been the thread that's kept me on a journey with one path with lots of bits off it.

What I find myself doing now is designing learning journeys, facilitating and teaching learning,

around sustainability on two main levels. One is, well, three really, the bottom level is people in the community. How do you understand what climate change is? How do you understand how you can get on that journey to net zero?

This is for people who might know a little bit or might know a lot, but they want to be part of that journey. The next level up is the SME's, the small to medium enterprises, and work out how they can get on that journey to net zero. And then the most exciting level, or most terrifying level is the strategic leadership of very large organizations who have only thought about money for the last x amount of decades and trying to get them to become more human in the creation of their strategies so that their organizations become more human.

And once you can make that shift in the mindset, then you can help them on a journey towards net zero. So that's where I've ended up.

Yeah, wonderful.

So maybe I can share a little bit of where I ended up. I don't think that people know as well. In this session that we are talking about is really about creating habits, on a personal level. And,

Alex and I will share our experiences on those habits, for sustainability and where we can reduce carbon footprint. 

So, a little background.

I tried to do something similar in 2010. I went to Mexico and I was also in Oaxaca in a village planting corn and cutting bananas. And I was really confused. It was, at that time, that first economic crisis, so that was after 2008. And I really, my business was really not working. And,

I said, okay, off I go to the village. But on the first sign of the economy coming back, I started to receive emails from different corporations about coaching projects. 

And I said, yeah, I work online. And they said, no, only if you're here in China. Otherwise, we are not going to work with you. And of course, I got scared. I really needed money, and I really thought, what will I do otherwise?

And I packed my bags, left for a couple of months, but I actually never went back to Mexico. I think they threw away my stuff by that time. So this is my second try. I am now in rural Serbia, so I changed the country, and you can't really see, but I have my working trousers on still, and my hands are quite dirty from placing some roof tiles on some cabins and so on.

I am learning about permaculture, and I'm also supporting organization that is working on preservation of Serbian arts and crafts. They make traditional costumes, and they're gathering all crafts people, who are still working manually. And the organization is called our hands. I am just like in Mexico, equally nervous, and excited.

I really don't know anything.

I'm preparing, but I have someone who is mentoring me here, and I'm here only for five days. I just arrived. And, this anxiety of city life and then coming to nature where part of me is so excited, I dropped my phone. I didn't have a connection for the first three days,

but I can see how the coaching me and the person that really wants to continue to manage that,

old lifestyle and connecting with the financial aspect of livelihood is headbutting. My other part  that is saying I'm getting my hands dirty and I really love it. And I can go and pick up herbs and make tea straight by the fence there and or, oh, we have mice. Okay, let's get a little cat. And this is how we sort things. There's no poison. Nobody's thinking about poisons.

So this is my current situation, and I will just briefly introduce the model from Prochaska. Some of you have been part of the program where we talked about that, actually, I think majority. And I was probably mentioning that before, there are certain cycles of change with habit creation that if we are aware of that, we can notice these emotional aspects that follow and the resistance to change based on readiness. So this model is used in psychology, and it's used for people who want to kick off bad habits primarily. But today we are going to talk a little bit more about good habits, which is equally applicable. 

And let me just see. I'm going to try to share my screen. Can I do that there?

Just so that we can revise or not revise, but kind of revisit. Yes. Thank you. Can you see it? Not yet.

There it is. So it's the model of Prochaska and DiClemente and in the precontemplation part people don´t have any intention on changing the behavior. Now, this is my life in China. I was hearing a lot about plastic free, no ordering and all of that. There were a lot of people that were really aware, I was even attending some programs. But the habit was not sticking at all. It was, I was going for convenience, really. So, contemplation is becoming aware of problems. So this is somewhere in between that I even tried to go plastic free again. The habit was just going back. It was the work, packaging, and ordering food from a farm. But then the food would arrive in, wrapped up in plastic. A lot of food, a lot of vegetables. It's just I didn't know how to use, for one household with two people, how to use all the vegetables. So in the end, we basically began, we were just throwing food away. So there was a habit in a way that seemingly there was a try. So this is the preparation, there is an intent, there is an action as well. And there was this attempt, to bring these habits because I really believe that it was something that was good, but I really didn't know how to go about it. And then I was going in and out and then guilt, shame, hiding.

Like, it's like, having Beijing mindfulness center, mindful living, but actually really not following, not allowing that to really go into my core and to live sustainably because this is also part of my

mindful living. Absolutely. And the other part, this is the part that is a weak link for me now between action and maintenance. So maintenance means really following the steps and sticking to it. So I now need to immerse myself in the environment where I can stick to it so that someone who is already living that lifestyle, that they can support me.

And when I go and I want to buy something, they can say, but hold on, we can make it. You know, it's like why? Why buy?

Or I'm like, just this morning, Daniel, my mentor at the moment, he was using plums and I'm like, you're not washing them. And he's like, why wash? They are organic. So these are really tiny rules also about how we go about it. And of course when we are kicking off a bad habit, there's often a relapse.

So falling back into the old pattern of behavior. I assume if I go to the city, I will go straight back into the old lifestyle and I'm going to be getting the plastic and I will not be strong. Even thinking now to go and be with my parents for a couple of days, I know I will not have enough for me to be the mover and shaker, the one who is going to support that change.

It went from our parents' generation where it was definitely scarcity. You had to look after everything. If I think about my mother, to this day, not one baked bean is allowed to be left on a plate, right? Everything must be used. And then what happened was the world changed and it all became about marketing, it all became about money, it all became about selling, it all became about creating products that nobody needs. And what happened, I think, in the kind of general mindset of human beings is that we started to think of abundance, of everything being in abundance rather than the scarcity. 

And with that level of abundance, then we don't think about waste and we don't think about all of the consumption that we are taking on board. But it's a very, very short period of time. It's only 50 years. And that short period of time can have an absolute catastrophic change in the mindsets of human beings is a very positive thing because it means we can change it back,

but we have to have a movement in order to change it back. So you can't have a movement unless you start thinking about stuff yourself. So that's really where I was coming from, and I was also coming from the point of view, of you can't do everything, so try to work out what is most important to you. So, as you've mentioned, plastic, this is a real issue. So plastic's always been a big thing in my life.

And then the other thing is chemicals. And this is something we didn't have to think that much about in our early time in China, but we did have to think a lot about in our later years in China. And we have to think a lot about in the developed world because they are used in everything,

from fertilizer to products in the kitchen to make up all of that stuff. 

So I honed in on those two things, plastic and chemical. Can my house be plastic and chemical free? So then you embark on a journey, and again, I couldn't do it all at the same time because you can't. It's very difficult. But you can do it bit by bit, step by step. Your lovely thing, Dalida, always comes back to me, give me faith that it can all be done. 

So the chemical thing was just saying, right, well, where are the chemicals? Okay, the chemicals are in makeup. Well, I haven't used makeup for years, so that's easy. Then they're in products in the house. So what products do I need? And then I realized you need absolutely nothing.

You just need a little bit of white vinegar. You need some lemons, and if you can get some bicarbonate soda, that will do you well. That's it. Right? So all the products have gone.

And then you think about shampoo and stuff like that. There are excellent organizations,

there's such a movement now to make money, to be a purposeful business that is making money, but with purpose. And they are making shampoos and they're making conditioners and all of that sort of stuff out of natural ingredients. Many, many of them exist. So many that they are now competitive.

So this is good news for us. So then you work out which ones are going to suit you. And then, of course, you have to work out how you're going to have your dispensers, because you're not buying anything in bottles anymore, right? You're buying things in containers that arrive at your house, but then they arrive with a bag that you can, then when it's finished, put it back in and send back to them. They wash it, put more in and send it back to you. 

So you have to work out your systems, but I now have systems. So basically, I probably have the most boring bathroom in the world. I've got three dispensers. One is toothpaste, one is shampoo, and one is conditioner, and there's a bar of soap and that's it, that's all we need.

That was that journey, and it was such a fun journey to go on because I had to work out, where can I get this stuff from? I don't even want the packaging. So where can I go locally to buy things, from people doing things? And luckily here in Brighton we've got quite a lot of people thinking about the stuff. So there's places I can go.

Now with the, that was a kind of plastic and chemical to a certain point of view, but one of the big things for me was milk. I love my milk. I love my milk and coffee, I like it and everything else. And so I tried to go and buy oat milk and other milk and try it, it just didn't work for me.

So I thought, well, let's try and make my own. So then I went on that lovely big rabbit hole of working out how to make almond milk. You're joking?! Almond and water. It's that simple. You know, that was just, like, eye opening. And then I realized, oh, so if you put half a teaspoon of vanilla essence in there, it really absolutely neutralizes the milk. Well, how do you make vanilla essence?

You're joking? A vanilla pod and vodka.

So having gone done that, I thought, okay, well, almond milk's pretty good, but what if I want to make bechamel sauces and that kind of thing? So then I thought, let's try some other milk. Soya milk. Absolutely the best, in my opinion, for bechamel sauces and things like that. Well, if I can make soya milk, how do you make tofu?

You're joking? Add lemon juice. So all the time my head is being blown because I'm like, I have been totally bamboozled by the marketing that all of this stuff needs to be bought, and I can make bean curd with two ingredients and water.

So that was the journey. It wasn't the journey of becoming righteous and a vegan, and I'm not. I eat meat, it's not about that. It was a journey of opening my mind to how easy it is to be mindful about how you live. But you have to purposefully take that first step and fall into a rabbit hole. And then once you've fallen into one, in my experience, I then began to fall into more and more and more.

And of course, the pleasure of making your own tofu is just mind blowing. It's just absolutely wonderful. Then you go off and see. Do you remember lovely Tim Clissold? I went to see him in North Yorkshire, and told him about this, and he said, -oh,you got to teach me! and then I taught him how to make it. And now, of course, he's teaching the whole of Richmond because it's fun to make tofu. That's sort of the journey I'm on with all of that.

To stick with this just for a couple more other things that came up was, well, how do you make cream? Cashew nuts and lemon juice.

That's sour cream.

This stuff is so simple. You just have to go on that journey. And then that led me to go on a journey of looking at scraps.

What do you do with the scraps? Because when you make your almond milk, you have the almond pulp. While the almond pulp makes delicious hummus, it also makes amazingly good biscuits.

There's no waste on the pulp either, because that's now being made into biscuits, which means I don't buy biscuits anymore either.

Bit by bit, you're getting rid of all of these other bits of plastic that appear in your house,

because suddenly everything has just been made from scratch.

The multi solving kind of results that come from it are not just the plastic and the chemicals. They're the health, they're the waste. There's all this other stuff that is so interlinked because it is all interlinked. All of this mindful living is interlinked.

So thank you for sharing, Alex. I would just like to maybe bring anyone who would like to ask

any question or share a personal story, about anything that has been shared.

So let's see, you can unmute yourself, put yourself on the chat, write, whatever.

Has anyone here tried any of these ways of adjusting? And what kind of resistance or obstacles are you having?

Can see Qilin coming on the camera. I don't know if you have anything to say. No, you're just showing up, and it's okay if you haven't.

Maybe out of curiosity, is anybody... Bridget, you have. Would you like to share?

Well, the only thing I did, because I have a registered kitchen, you know, and I run retreats from my house, is that I decided I wouldn't buy cling film, or aluminium foil anymore. So I do buy paper, the gooseberries paper. And it's great. And my son, who's a chef, you know, chefs are terrible. Deli's are terrible with cling film. He was like, where's the cling film? I was like, there isn't any. And it took a while to get used to it using containers and other things and different lids and reusable stuff. But, for me, that was a big commitment. And obviously, sometimes you buy bread, it's in a bag or whatever, then trying to reuse those. And so, you know, they do get into the house, plastic, but trying not to bring it in on a roll from a factory was a big step for me.

So a little step.

That's fantastic. Bridget, can you share just a little bit? When you were making that initial step,  were there any hesitations and going back and going, oh, no, I really missed it. I really need it or was it just clean cut?

If you go into professional kitchens, they have these massive rolls of cling film. I just kept thinking, why aren't they making more effort? So I decided to make it. On my little level. But,

I cook with my guests and they often say - Oh, you don't have cling film. 

But, no, I just wanted to do it. And then, as Alex said, it's down the rabbit hole. How do you figure out how to use paper? You can basically use that for a lot of things.

So, I've kept it up, and I'm pleased with that. It's good. 

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Matt, can I bring in another little one? Oh, sorry.

I'm enjoying the conversation because it is so easy when you break it down and you've got the right equipment. Because I've done almond oat. I'm really. We eat a lot of tofu in our house because we're vegetarians. And I, of course, I'm looking at it now. It's two ingredients.

How simple can it be?

The challenge I think we all have is convenience and habit. I'm going to talk about habit forming in a minute. When I was in a really good habit of every night after dinner, I would make up my other batch of oat milk for the next morning. It flows really, really well.

I'm now out of that habit, and I now have to go through that momentum shift, that shift in inertia to get back into it. And I think that's the challenge which many people have to overcome, is that convenience factor. And I'm very proud when I take out my, my little tiny bag of waste,

Every, every week we get to put a red wheelie bin on the ground.

I take my bag and go and put it in somebody else's because I've got no, very limited ways to composting. But there are still those extra elements that don't come about because you're not in the habit.

Yeah. Speed of life. Yeah. Alex, go ahead. You wanted to. Thanks.

Yeah. A couple of things come to mind, with habits. I think when we think about habits, we quite often think about breaking habits.

I think what's more useful for me is to create habits, and it's a very different way of looking at things. So we're not breaking the habit of convenience. We're making the habit of being self reliant. And by doing change in that mindset, we're actually, really giving ourselves a reward. And, our minds rewards. So we're not rewarding ourselves for changing a bad habit. We're rewarding ourselves for creating a new habit. So that, I think, does have a positive effect on our health.

And just to tell you, another rabbit hole I went down because Bridget mentioned this earlier -

why buy bread?

It is flour and yeast and a little bit of oil. You need something fat, a tiny bit of honey, I haven't bought a loaf of bread for years and years and years. And once you can make a loaf of bread, you can make eta, you can make tortillas, you could make naam. You can make absolutely everything. And then of course you fall down another rabbit hole and realize you can make noodles, and you can make dumplings and you can make chowder. And because it's all, it's flour and water. That's it. Yeah. And then you realize, oh, pasta. Well, pour an egg into the flour and water and then you have egg pasta. So for me, it's absolutely about understanding that these are not complicated things that the world is trying to tell us that we need to buy.

Because of the convenience of it, because it's really difficult to make your own and everything is so convenient to buy your own. But you can make Ed pasta in about two minutes. So it's just going against what everyone is kind of telling us in a way.

I used to work for the world's largest food company for ten years. And I can tell you, there ain't no secret, it's so basic. But again, we have to learn. I'd love your tofu recipe.

It's just simple ingredients. You're right.

Yeah, I think everything has been over for a reason. And it's exactly the same with climate change.

The oil companies, the fossil fuel companies are spending, and I kid you not, millions to confuse people. That's all they're doing. They have huge campaigns to confuse people. Why? They want people to put their head in the sand and not change. Because that way they can continue to make a lot of money.

But if you simplify things and say, look how easy it is to change climate back to the way it was, then lot of very rich people are going to go out of business. But it is 1% of the planet that will go out of business.

Mhm.

And this is also just to mention that also Jelena mentioned that she made her own shampoo.

and that is, yeah, these are, so this cycle that these companies, they have created one mission and that is to focus on creating jobs and supporting a lot of people to have that financial

safety, and then from that to go and earn their living and then go for retirement and then we are all safe. But at times like this, where we are at when these corporations can not really provide all of that, realize that perhaps we have been just part of single minded mission that is no longer serving us. And that indeed there is another way of living.

So I also remember this story about the German woman who panicked when her son left home and she was so scared about not being able to stay alone and have enough money to provide for herself. And she just packed one bag and went off and said, I'm going to leave without money. So all these examples, I think they are out there, but just like virtual reality and all of that, when we go into social media and people say, yeah, you just post a couple of posts and then you suddenly have million likes, then that means that you're successful and you're going to be able to be safe. These examples, I think, and Matt, you mentioned something about that, the convenience, the speed, the speed of the information travels, the speed of how we go from input to outcome, this interconnection.

We are expecting that if I just make this one step, everything will just fall into.

It's not really, we are in reality, learning how to live slower and that pace within that pace, how to continue to hold that sense of safety based on our capacity to survive. Our survival mechanism is constantly kicking in, and we now need to shift from one mental processing to another that we actually can be safe and that life can be an adventure. Not easy when we have regular jobs,

not easy when there are children, when we need to think about education and all of that. 

And Alex, you were mentioning about many companies being there and really providing all that infrastructure where you can, but there are still countries where none of that exists. And when it's not available, because I was thinking - where do I get cashew nuts here?

I need to pay a lot of money here in order, in Serbia in order to maintain that kind of lifestyle. So it also depends from country to country, from local environment as well. And we really need to, I think, get familiar on what are the resources and how can we use resources. And what I'm getting from your story, Alex, is that in that case, we need to really go into our own radar. 

So, even though we are sharing all this information, it doesn't mean that all of this is applicable to where everyone is, we are calling in from different countries. I know some of you are moving to Romania, and so on. Some may be still in China and so on. So can you share a little bit about that? How does one begin to build these resources? Because I believe community is really, really important part of this.

And in our next webinar, we will be talking about creating the movement and how does that go as well. But in terms of the individual and the community, any experience you could share? 

Yeah. I think for me here, there's a connection between this idea I talked about earlier of abundance and scarcity, and that we have begun to think that there is an abundance of everything. So there is an abundance of cashew nuts in Serbia. There is an abundance of olives in England. Now we can grow olive trees, because of climate change. Historically, we can't.

But then there's also another shift, and that is the concept that we are very focused on outcomes rather than journeys. And the consuming. The consumers are all about the outcomes.

You will be happy if you've got this new dress, you will be happy if you've got your cashew nuts, you will be happy if you've…it's all about the outcome, but the journey is the bit that actually is fulfilling, in my opinion.

But we have forgotten how to focus on the journey. So if you think about people going on holidays, this is everyone. Where have you been? It's not - how did you get there? It's all about that instagram shots of the person on top of the mountain looking at, it's about the arrival. It's not about the journey of getting there. So, yes, I'm with you on that. I think that there needs to be a return to an appreciation of the slow way. And that slow is good, and that journey is the experience, and that's what it's about. It's not about the arrival. It's not about the destination. So that's not just for holidays, that's for living.

And with that comes the journey of localization, of tapping into your local community. So you

work out well what is around here, because there's so much fulfillment to be had from,

getting your hands dirty, working out who's growing, what, where, what help do they need?

Can I support them? Can I buy from them? And if you're doing that, then you begin to think seasonally. And so we go back to the scarcity.

I'm sick of asparagus by the end of spring, and I'm absolutely desperate to get beans. And I'm sick of beans by the end of autumn, and I'm really desperate to get my button up. And that's the seasonality, really, when everything is in abundance, because it's been grown in that season, you enjoy it, and then when it's not there, you miss it, but you're going to enjoy it again next year.

And then, of course, what we can do with that is prolong seasons.

Most of us have got a freezer, so you can blanch, freeze. And a lot of people nowadays have the dehydrators, so you can do that for your fruits and stuff like that. I've got a lovely friend who lives locally, and he is mad about fruit. And so when the fruit is in, he puts it into jars. He's got about 120 jars of fruits in his kitchen, and it means he can eat his. The fruit of his choice all year round. That's his way of dealing with it. But the fruit was bought and jarred seasonally.

I think is what's key to me is to work out, if you can grow it, great. But if you can't, then get it from the local, whoever, farmers and freeze it.

Yeah, right.

And I'm hearing also it's just focusing on personal curiosity. It's like, if it is about,

film or, you know, shampoo or whatever, that's where we can find the pleasure. So there is something or that reward, is journey.

But also there are these small steps. The reward is in the small steps during the journey where we can pause and feel satisfaction and then, I guess observing how is that creating a bigger impact as well. You know, there are many coaches on this call. I think most of us are coaches. So there are people who want to know how to make these changes as well. And I think all of this goes also into educating coaches on how these changes are happening on the individual level.

Also curious, you've worked with, you work with small businesses, you also work with big corporations when it comes into, do you touch the topic of this individual habit when you do that consulting work and facilitation? And could you give some insights on, what kind of trends have you observed, what needs to happen for an organization to have that readiness and perhaps how people even accept all of that?

Yeah, I think one of our roles as a coach in the case of most of you, or a trainer facilitator in my case is to lead by example. The more we can do that, the better.

Because it means that when an anecdote falls out of our mouth, it is probably going to be quite useful.

I think that leading by example is important. And no, I don't explicitly talk about the kind of stuff I'm doing with mindful living in my sessions, but it might anecdotally come out and then people go - you make your own tofu? And then there's a laugh about it. And there might be an impact from that. I think from that point of view, it doesn't need to be explicit, but having said that, with the work, I'm work on two different levels.

When I'm working with SME's, they quite often don't know an awful lot about how to get to net zero. I do bring up a lot of examples then. I take examples.

I've got a charger for my phone that is made by two local lads who take old bicycle batteries and convert it into phone batteries and the outside of it is made of plastic.

I take that because I'm showcasing innovation in the sustainable space, and that's what I'm about. We want people to be able to make money from being sustainable. Not oodles of money, but enough money to build a business and to have some growth.

By taking those examples, I always go over by bicycle, and my bike is now my bike, but,

it's got the switch converter, so it's got a battery that can be put onto the bike and convert the bike into an, electric bike when I want it.

I take that along and I showcase that.

And again, that's a couple of local people from London who have done that. And there are excellent examples all over the world. Every country has got great examples of innovation that is happening that is truly transformational.

For the SME's, for the small to medium enterprises, definitely I take what I know and,

share anecdotes and collect anecdotes, because I'll be working with organizations and I'll ask them, what are you doing? And then take note of what they're doing, and then share that in the next session with the next person. Well, these chaps in Eastbourne are doing this, this and this.

There's a lot of sharing on that.

At the leadership level, the key thing that I'm really learning and experiencing is that there must be an overlap of the personal and the professional. If you don't have that overlap, change cannot happen.

You need to be able to tap into the human that is in front of you in order to. If you imagine a jar full of things, if you shake it a bit, so there's space for movement. That's what's required. But if there's no space for movement, there is no space for change.

So by tapping into the human that is in that room and allowing them to be vulnerable and allowing them to think about the future and allowing them to be longer visionary, longer vision with how they're thinking about the world, then you allow for that space for change. And then once you've done that, then you can get back and say, right, organizationally, how are we going to go about creating a new strategy that is going to be more mindful of the future generations? 

So it's on different levels, I think.

So your work is really about creating that shaking effect where it's really about expanding the vision and awareness which, on that model, would be contemplation, is initiating the action from the space of contemplation. And if you touch two people out of ten, that's already an impact because they will move it further. Yeah.

Yeah, I like that.

Fascinating work. What work to be done.

Yeah, I like that idea of contemplation because what doesn't work is finger wagging. You can't say you should do this. And secondly, we're all different, so you can only do what you can do and you need to be motivated to do what you want to do. Right? So it's about putting out ideas, promoting some level of curiosity, and then allowing people to contemplate how they can make a change in their life. 

And, I can guarantee that there will be healthy benefits from it, in terms of mental health, because creating new good habits is good for the brain. It's just good.

Absolutely. I'm the witness of it. And this is exactly, my making has been really following my mental health primarily. And, this is exactly where I believe that coaches can have a very important part because we engage in contemplative, reflective dialogues with our clients and it's at that moment that we can bring and support. So this, there is also echo coaching and sustainability coaching. It's a specific branch, and under development, and I'm really throwing in some way some ideas also for this coaching pool to bring that into, the portfolio of what kind of clients could be there to be supported, because this is the people who would really want to make the change but unsure how to go about it. 

And also, being singled out. A lot of times there is that space and an effect of loneliness and then convincing the family members or the community will often go with that - what are doing? And then the moment we go into, you should be vegan, you should be like this. We are actually creating another religion and we know where all of that takes us. In the end, it becomes an organization. 

And behind that organization, we are back into the same trap of scarcity and idea on how life should be. So this is definitely another part of where we can be more engaged and how can we support people to become more hopeful? When we are hopeful, we have that motivation. It can be rewarding. If we are making our change from that space of fear, it's not going to be sustainable. And this is exactly what we are shifting. 

One of my initial parts that I have done is to remove apps like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I removed from my phone, and of course I came here into rural China, and suddenly I can't log in back on my LinkedIn because my computer died and my connection, so it all goes.

Those who are attending the program know that I had to cancel on Tuesday. I couldn't show up and teach the class. But in the end, I grabbed a hammer and went and worked on the property,

okay, I really need some self-compassion here. And I know my life is changing, 100 km an hour, and yet everything is going really slow because the speed of action that I'm used to and the return of my input on going on social media has slowed down so much. 

And it's really having one foot in one life, one reality and another one in the other, and then observing the pool of the mass and people are saying, you should be like this, you should be like that. And then this is where, again, mindfulness helps to keep us centered and say, okay, what is really necessary for me at the moment? 

And I will share wisdom from my sister. And she said, Dalida, all you need to ask yourself, will I like myself if I do this? And at the beginning, I was, but, I have to do that. And then I spent three months with her, and then I came to Serbia and I came here and I said, I like myself. And she's like, you got it. Right.

So when our body begins to respond to inspiration of the change, of the journey that has been taken, that's when we know when we found it. That's when we know we are coming back to ourselves and getting the control, in a way, control or maybe capacity, to navigate. I don't like word control, but the capacity to navigate and saying, okay, do I live by the sea? Do I live in the hills? And the terrain is different everywhere. And that capacity to navigate helps us to know when to rest, when to move. This is another learning I'm getting here. So my habits, I notice, are still on the mental level, on the presence level. That's where my practice comes.

And I'm still waiting for my hands to show me. What am I really creating? And it's not related to digital media physically.

Yeah. You've reminded me that one of my big frustrations when I moved to England was everything here is seven times slower than China. It took me a while to get my head around that. And then I thought, great, I've got seven times more time to go off and do other things. And so I just charged it straight back into a positive, forward moving energy so that I could go off and learn more stuff and do things that please me. So that's what I do with that time, that bent when I moved to the UK, not get frustrated by it. It is just slower, so I have more time. Yippee. Right?

Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned one part as well. I think that is really important,

and that is learning. So we need to become curious of what do I really want to learn about right now and how can that enhance my quality of life. And this could be learning about shampoo or about almond milk or soya, or tofu. It can also be about learning about a specific, group of people that might be interested in making these kind of changes. And again, I think we need to step out of this, of only our life and what we know is possible and really begin to educate ourselves, what is possible in the world. 

And this is where I think this, interconnectivity, with Zoom and everything can support us to learn from each other. Again, this is something a little bit more that we will be talking in the next session. Alex will share her experience of joining communities and different, maybe values of how sustainable communities can really approach climate change, but primarily how are different communities ensuring that the communities living according to the values. 

And that's from the moment how you talk, how you organize and so on. And I think this exchange is really, really important at the moment because we can never…

Just to give you a taster of that, two members of one of my communities have just come back from the Paralympics with one silver and two bronze medals.

 Wow. 

Big celebration. 

Yeah. All right. Wow, that's absolutely amazing. I'm really looking forward to hearing more about that. Yeah, it's fascinating what is possible. Again, I think we need to be a little bit careful, or not careful. Aware. And thank you, Alex, for mentioning that, that often we are hearing these success stories at the very end, we have no idea about the journey. And even if people say, you told me, you have to start from the scratch. 

But I didn't know what it meant, what it means to start from scratch until I experienced my scratch. And it's painful, no matter how much I knew, And I tried to start from the scratch in Thailand, it absolutely didn't work. So I've been kind of like when you throw,

the stone on the surface of water. I don't know how to say it in English. I know, in Serbian zabice.

-Skim.

 There you go. Skim. And, you know, my Thailand was this big, big rock, I thought, and then it just fell without anything, right? So I packed my bags and came here. Then I spent three months in Switzerland and it was, again, maybe there were two schemes and nothing. And self regulation in that process is really important. And the community is absolutely gold after all of that. I think for us to know that we belong and that we are together is really, really, really important.

On that note, I would like to open an invitation again for anyone who would like to share anything, or maybe even some takeaways you have. I'm just observing the time. We would like to end on the top of the hour and then maybe have a little closing, Alex, from you, if you could share, anything as a wrap up.

So any thoughts, any curiosities from those who are on the call? Matt?

I've always got something to say.

This morning I had a conversation with somebody and he mentioned to me that the speed of communication and the speed of computing is speeding up. And I had this realization when I was exploring this with him, and I said, I wonder if humans have reached our limit because we are trying to stay at this speed of communication that the computers are doing.

And the moment I had was, how do we as humans, just agree that we can't go as fast as computers and we need to step back and use our time in a more considered, slow, more present, presencing time role? Because I think lots of us are trying to keep up with this speed and it's too fast for us now as a culture. So how do we? But then the question is one step in, 1ft in, 1ft out. So I had that today. Listening, Alex. Thank you. I've been listening to this today.

Spinning with that insight, as well as how to encourage or help people see that there's another way that we can be more effective, potentially more slowly.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing the insight, Matt. I also believe that's the key step. Yeah.

I would like to share something while living in China as well. Although, just buying some delivery online will give me a lot of plastic bag. But, I find very inspiring this Chinese saying. It's kind of like the world is made by theater troupe. It's like amateurs is building the world. It's like the other companies building something, but we actually can build something by ourselves. And remember, there's a book talking about how to make your fermented food. It's really just taking the time to wait for the food to make some food for yourself and also to wait for the food to become something amazing.

Iit just kind of really reminds me of that book of slowing down the lifestyle. Maybe in China, there's no way buying a lot of raw ingredients for making food will be so expensive. But if I were using some local things, too. We also have fermented food, recipes for local food. And even I still need to buy something on top of that, create, a plastic bag. But there will be ways that to really kind of shift to the mindset, how to take the power back to myself instead of just collecting money or, living, so called decent, good life, convenient life, but to really love life, I think it's more like.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

This aspect of loving life, is also part of the whole process. Thank you for bringing that.

Thanks. Qilin. Yeah. Any other thoughts? Maybe, Alex, you have two minutes to wrap up with any invitation.

Well, I'm just going to really comment on both Matt and Qilin talking there because, Matt, what I heard in my mind when you were talking is back to what we're here for, which is thinking about being mindful. Why? Why are you doing anything? Why are you trying to compete with the speed? Why are you putting that social media thing out there? Is it just to catch up with the neighbors? Or is it bringing genuine, deep, mindful benefits to what you're trying to achieve? So it's that, that is mindfulness at its best, questioning the why.

And with Qilin, we're going to talk about this in another session. But the grassroot movement is what changes the world. It absolutely is. And there's so often we think of ourselves as so little that we can't do anything. But I lived in Beijing. If you spent a night with a mosquito, you know that little things have a lot of power, right?

And that's exactly the same with the grassroots movement. The moment we collaborate and get together, then that grassroots movement becomes a big movement. And we've seen it throughout history. It's why women have got the vote. It's why the Paralympics are now so enormous. That's all grassroots. It's people getting together and saying, actually, we need a change in society.

Let's get together and change society. It's taken 50 years to brainwash us into using things like Taobao, Amazon, and buying everything. It can very easily take us ten years to undo all of that, but it requires the grassroot movement to do it. Look at that. On the dot.

Yes. Absolutely amazing. This is the, enjoying the journey and taking small steps. And now let's rejoice and gather everything that we are taking from this session. On 10 October, we are going to have  another event. I now don't have the exact title, but it's going to be about how to create movement. It's one part of the title.

So, Alex, thank you so much for sharing your experience and for giving.

And for those who are here and those who are listening, this will be posted on the podcast,

as well. I invite you just to find yourself on the cycle of change and be compassionate. Bring self compassion to yourself. If you're in pre contemplation, hopefully this webinar is going to support you in making a small step towards change. So, let's all enjoy the journey. That's all. And there I went, 1 minute over the time.

Thank you all very much. Thank you for showing up, and we'll be seeing you around very soon. All right, thank you,

Thank you. Bye.