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Lucy Ball is an executive coach, pairs coach and team coach.

Mar 2020

How are you feeling about the planet now?

A few months ago I posted about Climate Crisis and Ecological Breakdown. I said I’d been living alongside the facts for many years but not doing enough about them.

With the help of others, and not without some dark patches, I have been much more mobilised personally, professionally and politically in the last year. One thing I’ve done with fabulous colleagues Sue and Pauline, is run a session for a local group of coaches, consultants, leaders and community members on this issue. In it we explored feelings and responses to the climate crisis. I thought I’d say a little bit about that here.

Here are some of the insights that feel important from that session:

  • Everyone in the room already knew a lot of the facts. It was not education or awareness that was missing.
  • Most people are feeling challenging emotions – fear, anxiety, grief, rage. Some are also feeling mobilised and energised. But many are feeling stuck.
  • Talking about climate change and ecological crisis is not easy. Parents were worried about how to talk to their children. Consultants and coaches weren’t sure how to talk about this with their clients. Leaders weren’t sure how to raise the topic in their organisations. And even talking down the pub or over dinner with friends and family can get tricky!
  • Finding community, people to talk to about this and take action with seems like a huge unmet need for many.
  • Those who were already finding community and taking action together were feeling better in themselves, if still very concerned about the issue.
  • Frameworks for talking about this issue were useful. Some maps and models can help us make sense of our experiences.

It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the climate crisis. The changes that need to be made are huge and systemic and much of it feels out of our hands. But somehow, through the magic of talking openly with each other we found a few small ways through; an experiment to try, a new contact to talk to, a group to join or a new way of looking at the problem. Baby steps out of stuck-ness and hopelessness.

Let’s all try to support ourselves and each other to face the awful facts, get unstuck and together contribute our tiny tiny drops in the ocean.

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