The One You Feed - Colin Beavan

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

This week we talk to Colin Beavan about being happy ANDchanging the worldColin Beavan’s writing, speaking, consulting and activism haveencouraged tens of thousands of people to examine their lives todiscover what’s really important to them.He is among the world’s best-known spokespeople on environmentalissues, consumerism and human quality of life. He was called “oneof the ten most influential men” by MSN, an “eco-illuminator” byElle Magazine, a “best green ambassador” by Treehugger.com, and hisblog was selected as one of the top 15 environmental blogs by TimeMagazine.Colin has appeared on The Colbert Report, Good Morning America,Nightline and countless other TV and radio shows.Colin’s latest book is How to Be Alive: A Guide to the Kind of Happinessthat Helps the WorldIn This Interview, Colin Beavan and I Discuss:The One You Feed parableThe illusion that we are separate from this worldHow to give energy to what is true for youHow to give less energy to what is not true for youHis experience as "No Impact Man."The martyr, victim, scoundrel, and heroThe four psychological needs we need to satisfy to behappyIntrinsic vs Extrinsic goalsThe stories we tell ourselves about the world and ourlivesAnalogical ThinkingThe ukelele approach For more show notes visit ourwebsiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The question is not whether you're the type of person who can change the world. The question is whether you're the type of person who wants to know they tried. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year.

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Colin Bevan. Colin's writing, speaking, consulting, and activism have changed and encouraged tens of thousands of people to examine their lives to discover what's really important to them. Colin is among the world's best-known spokespeople on environmental issues, consumerism, and human quality of life. He was labeled one of the 10 most influential men on MSN and Eco Illuminator by Elle Magazine and a Best Green Ambassador by TreeHugger.com. His blog was selected as one of

the top 15 environmental blogs by Time Magazine. Colin has appeared on the Colbert Report, Good Morning America, Nightline, and countless other TV and radio shows. Here's the interview. Hi Colin, welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for having me. I'm excited to get you on. Your new book is called How to Be Alive, a guide to the kind of happiness that helps the world. And really the whole book is pretty much a focus on what it means to live a good life. And our subtitle for the show is Conversations About Creating a Life Worth Living.

So this should be a great discussion. I was first introduced to you like many, many people were when you were doing the No Impact Man project. And I started a solar energy company a very similar time to when you started the No Impact Man project. So we certainly were walking in some parallel directions back then. So I'm interested to get more into what you're doing now. Yeah, great. And thanks for doing some work in solar energy. That's definitely the good life right there. Yes, it was. Although doing solar energy in Ohio and the political structure in Ohio slowly made it not quite as much of a good life. But I understand. So let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,

in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you

what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You know, it's a lovely parable because it tells us that we have choices in how we live. And, and, and it's also kind of a gentle parable. It doesn't say, you know, you have to kill the parts of you that, um, feel unwholesome. It just, it just tells you to focus on the parts of you that feel wholesome. And I like that too. Um, focus on the parts of you that feel wholesome. And I like that too. And what interested me was that there's a part in my book where I say the entire underlying principle of this book is to

have the life that you want and to have a life that's not just good for you, but good for your community and good for the world. All you have to do is day by day, give more energy to that which is true for you and give less energy to that which is not true for you. And that presupposes that what's actually and deeply and most profoundly true for you is what makes you happier and what helps other people too. So the idea is that you don't have to change your whole life radically just at this moment, just day by day. Take energy away from what's not true, give more energy to what is true. And in many ways, that's feeding one wolf and not the other. Exactly. It's very similar. That was one of the things I was going to get to in the book is that I love that quote, which I

think you've said kind of sums up if you take a 400 and something page book and put it down into two lines, that was kind of what you said would be the biggest summary of the book. That's right. I mean, then what happens in the book is it talks about the different relationships that we have with the world. I say that our life, ourself, in fact, resides in our relationship with the world. It's a delusion, actually, that we're separate from the world. We're one thing. Both the world and ourselves reside in our relationship between the two. And we have lots of these relationships. We relate to the world through the food we eat, through the way we transport ourselves, through our civic engagement, through our friends, through our jobs. That's just four. There's hundreds of ways we

relate to the world. And so the book largely is about saying, how do I give energy to what is true in the various types of relationships we have? Because sometimes, even though it sounds so simple, give more energy to what's true for you, give less energy to what's not true for you, it takes a little sorting out to kind of figure out how to do that in the different ways that we relate. Early on in the book, you referenced No Impact Man. And No Impact Man, for people who aren't aware, was your attempt over the course of a year to have as little negative impact on the earth from environmental perspective as possible. And you say that the surprising result of No Impact Man is that I

learned that we don't have to deprive ourselves for the sake of the world. It is not about not wanting things. Instead, we simply have to learn to want the things that actually make us happy. What are those things? Can I just say that for me, this is so inspiring, this idea that what's truly giving up everything for the world and everybody else, or a scoundrel where we are actually only caring about ourselves and doing things for ourselves. But I actually have a schema where you can be a victim, which is somebody who doesn't do anything for themselves or the world because they feel, you know, they can't. A scoundrel who does everything for themselves and not the world. a martyr who does everything for the world and not themselves, or the hero who actually takes care of both at the same time. And all of us have that hero within us. So the research is very strong. My own layperson's way of saying it

is becoming yourself to help the world and helping the world to become yourself. You know, that could sound facile, like it's some sort of a new age saying or something, but the psychological research shows that it's true. We have more or less four psychological needs relating to our happiness. And when we fulfill these needs, we feel satisfied. One is obviously just the need for security and to have our physical needs met, shelter, food, sex, water, sleep. Then these other needs are, the first need is autonomy. We need to feel as though we're the authors of our own actions, that we're not compelled to behave by either reward or punishment, but we're happiest when we're actually behaving

from the root of our being. That's called autonomy. The second thing is competence. We need to feel as though we're effective in the world, that what we do matters, that we have agency. And the third thing is relatedness. We need to feel that that sense of agency that we have actually has an effect and a positive effect on our community. So if you take that together, that the need to be authentic, the need to be competent, and the need to be related, what that means is that we need to become ourselves and use our gifts. And so find the gifts and talents and the ways of being that we most enjoy and that we're actually good at and use them in service of our fellow being. That is actually what makes us happiest. And I would argue, what's the good life? And if

you think about it, that's self-actualization. It's the pinnacle of personal development when you get to the place where you are yourself in service to the rest of the world. You make a distinction in the book based on some research that's out there between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Could you share a little bit more about that? Sure. Most human behavior is motivated towards a set of between 11 and 15 goals, depending on the researcher. But all the research basically breaks down human behavior as directed between this number of goals. I happen to work with a body of research that says 11, but it doesn't matter because whether it's 11 or 15, they're pretty much the same set of goals.

And it turns out that these sets of goals are the same across culture, across economic background, across race, across religion. That isn't to say that everybody is chasing the same goals. It's just to say that all of our behavior breaks down to this same set of goals, but we prioritize each goal separately. On the one hand, we have what are called intrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals are goals that actually make us happy just by pursuing them. And the reason why they make us happy by pursuing them, by the way, is because the pursuit of them fulfills the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. So the goals that are intrinsic goals that satisfy them just by their pursuance of them are things like doing good for your

community, doing things that make you healthier, spending time with friends and family, pursuing your spiritual path. These are all intrinsic goals. On the other side, we have what are called the extrinsic goals. Extrinsic goals, when we pursue extrinsic goals, they only make us happier if we actually achieve them. The pursuit of them itself does not make us happier. And these are extrinsic goals are what we normally associate with as materialistic goals, fame, popularity, financial success. Turns out what's really interesting is that, first of all, if we emphasize extrinsic goals too much, the materialistic goals are less likely to be happy and to be satisfied

with our lives than if we emphasize the intrinsic goals. We kind of know that. If you're a materialist, you're less likely to be happy. And the reason for that, by the way, is partly because when you're pursuing extrinsic goals, it takes time away from pursuing intrinsic goals. Also, all sorts of things happen. If you're materially inclined and your friends are likely to be materially inclined too, you're birds of a feather flock together. And if your friends are materially inclined, they will invest less in their friendship with you because they care more about their material goals. So there's all sorts of reasons why the extrinsic or material goals don't make us as

happy. The intrinsic goals make us happier. One thing that's also interesting that it turns out that when we pursue intrinsic goals, we also feel more generous and benevolent towards the world. That is to say that if we're living in a life where we're pursuing these intrinsic goals, which make us happier anyway, we're also more likely to want to help other people and the planet that we live on. So we started a while back where I said that the inspiring thing to me is that the path forward is a place where we do what's both good for us and good for the world. Not being a victim, a scoundrel, or a martyr, but being a hero, being somebody who

becomes themselves for the sake of their community and the world. And that's what this research shows about our needs and also about intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Thank you. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love.

what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It could be something that you love.

All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that you talk about in the book, and it's a topic that we talk about on this show an awful lot, is that the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives have a real big impact on our lives. And you tell a story about friendly versus unfriendly dogs, or how we perceive dogs. And I think it's a really good metaphor for how the stories in our lives impact our view of the world. Could you share that one with us?

I wrote a book called No Impact Man and made a film called No Impact Man. And they were both about a year I spent living as environmentally as possible. But in some ways that it was environmental was besides the point. What really happened was that I found myself taking apart my entire life and putting it back together again. And so, yes, I learned about environmental living. But in many ways, what I really learned about was from scratch, put together a life that was actually good for me and good for the world. And so I got invited many, many places around the world to talk about this project. many, many places around the world to talk about this project. And what I found was that there was a real feeling of defeatism in the people that I was talking to, that lots of people felt they were powerless to change their own lives and also powerless to have influence and agency over the

world we live in, which is a really sad thing. It kind of means that those needs for autonomy, confidence, and relatedness that I just talked about aren't getting met if we feel that we're powerless and have no agency. So I asked, well, why is it that people feel they have no agency? And I realized that a lot of it had to do with the stories that they were telling themselves about the world and about their lives. What you're referring to in the book is how I explain that actually the stories we tell ourselves build the universe that we live in. And I explain that and kind of prove it more or less by this story about a dog. And so what I say is, so imagine that your mother, say, got bit by a dog when she was young. And she,

as you're growing up, is scared of dogs and always tells you, dogs are dangerous. Stay away from dogs. And so you have a dogs are dangerous story in your head, right? Other people might have a dogs are wonderful story in their head, but you happen to have a dogs are dangerous story. So whenever, and by the way, we have thousands of stories in our head. And when situations occur in life, our brain kind of goes through our story file and picks a story that we think tells us about the situation. And then we react according to the story. It's called analogical thinking. So your mom raised you telling you that dogs were dangerous.

And so when you encounter, when a dog comes running up to you, your brain goes through its story file. It remembers the story of how your mom got bitten by a dog. And it says, oh my God, that dog that's running up to me is dangerous. And so you start shooing it away. Now, the truth is that dogs run up to us both because they're friendly and want to play with us and because they're dangerous. But you are reacting to all dogs as though they're dangerous, right? So you're trying to shooing all the dogs away. The thing is, the only dogs that will go away when you shoo them away are the dogs that actually want to come and play with you. shoo them away are the dogs that actually want to come and play with you. The dogs that are mean and want to bite you will not be deterred by your asking them to go away. So what happens is that

because you're shooing away all the friendly dogs, you've now created a universe where all dogs are dangerous. The story that you told yourself about dogs being dangerous actually turns into a world where all dogs are dangerous. And I give this explanation because it tells us that when we say that we have no power over our own lives and over the world that we live in, we actually don't have any power over our own lives and over the world we live in. Because that story tells us not to bother making an effort. And obviously, if we don't make an effort, then we have no agency. Actually, that story is very relevant to me because I grew up as a person who was scared of dogs. And I did not like any dogs until Chris, who's in the room here, got a dog named Birdie, who was the sweetest thing that probably ever lived and i

finally started to say well this is a nice dog and um soon after chris found me a dog a lot like birdie and now i am nearly obsessed with how much i love dogs ah that's wonderful yeah i have three of them which is a bit much but they are wonderful so wait you have three dogs? I do. I absolutely do. Yep. Well, so that's really interesting because what you're saying is that you had a small interaction with a dog that went well and that small interaction started to change your story. So in other words, you never would have gone out and bought a dog or lived with someone with a dog. But that small interaction changed your story. And one of the big strategies that I talk about in the book, How to Be Alive, is, you know, normally when we talk about changing our lives, we tell ourselves we need to change our career, our romantic partnership or our home.

And what I say is, hey, let's slow down a little. Let's actually change something small here. And so what I suggest is that people, for example, change work on changing the way that they eat in line with their values or the way they transport themselves in line with their values or their relationship to the owner of things in line with their values to try experimenting in small ways. And the reason for that is, just like you with Chris's dog, is that it gives them a small, relatively unthreatening experience, which allows them to begin to change their stories about how they relate to the world. In other words, in a small relationship with the world, you get to feel as though you have agency and are capable of making it, bringing it in line with your values. And once you can do that in a small relationships, then eventually you can move on to career relationship and home. Yeah, that was one of the things I loved about

the book a lot, because we talk on the show all the time. And in the coaching work that I do is so much about start with really small steps, you know, start small and then build from there. And so I like a lot of what you talked about in the book. It really resonates with what we do here. And you've got an example in the book that you then turn into sort of an overall approach for starting small. You call it the ukulele approach. Can you explain that? Sure. The ukulele approach is about a guy named Jonathan. It starts with a story about a guy named Jonathan. And he's a New Yorker and he works his rear end off and he's very, very busy. But all his life, he wishes that he was a musician. And he has a guitar, but he kind of keeps looking at

his guitar and thinks to himself, what's the point? I don't have any time to get into learning this properly. And there's so many amazing guitar players in the world. And the last thing I want to do is be a bad guitar player. So what's the point? I'm not even going to start. It was too big for him. It was too big. And for years, he just never had music in his life, which is sad if you think about it, right? That your life can pass by and something that you feel passionate about is missing. Anyway, one time he was on business travel and he was changing flights in Atlanta, Georgia. He had a long layover and his friend came and picked him up at the airport

and it was a sunny day and they went to the park together and his friend happened to have a ukulele with her. And so she sat down and she started playing some songs on the ukulele and then she handed it to this guy, Jonathan, and taught him four chords. And suddenly he was playing music. And on the way back to this guy, Jonathan, and taught him four chords. And suddenly he was playing music.

And on the way back to the airport, they actually stopped at a music store and he bought himself the ukulele and he took it home. And he found that as busy as he was, he had the time to look at a YouTube video every so often with a lesson for the ukulele on it. And he would play. And before long, he just happened to meet somebody else who played the ukulele. And before long, he actually literally was a musician, what he always wanted. And the reason why he finally got there was he lowered his ambition and obstacle and started small. He had always thought about playing the guitar and it was too big a goal for him. And instead, he took what I call the ukulele approach, which really means start where you are, start with the small thing. And obviously this can be

applied in all sorts of areas. Can I tell you a story of how it applied to a woman who ended up actually working on and helping the world? Sure. So there's this woman named Anne also in the book. You know, all of us have something that niggles us about the world that we don't feel quite right about. And in her case, she always just kind of felt a little bummed out about the coffee trade. She knew that coffee has a big impact both on the environment and also the well-being of many people because of low wages and everything that happened in the coffee trade. And she always kind of knew she should be more careful about the coffee she bought. But she never, she just didn't know what to do. But one day she went to the grocery store and she just said, you know what, I'm just going to choose a coffee that has a label that seems like it's

ethical. And I'm going to, I'm just going to do that little thing. I know it won't count for much. And so she went in and she, she looked at all the coffees and each one had, you know, some of them had no labels at all of ethical production on them. But she found one copy that was kosher, forest service certified, green forest alliance certified, all of these certifications. She decided that's the one I'm going to buy. That's the ukulele approach right there. She kind of started with the small thing. Now, starting with the small thing does not change the world if you just stay there. The next day, you have to do something else too. And so what Ann did was when she got home, she started researching coffee and she found out that actually some of these

certifications are problematic because small coffee growers cannot afford the certification. And she found out about this thing called direct trade coffee, which is where the owner of a coffee house actually goes to, say, South America and meets a small coffee grower and looks at the way they do things and whether they pay their employees properly and whether they steward the land properly, and then just decides to forgo the certification process and buy straight from them. So Anne went to a coffee house like that and started buying her coffee there. So Anne would go to this coffee place in the mornings as well to get her coffee. And she became friends with the baristas. And the baristas happened to be part of

a community garden. And they invited her to go to the community garden. And then she became part of the community garden. And then the people in the community garden were climate activists and went out on the climate march. And they invited her to go out on the climate march. And so before you know it, Anne actually, she started just by taking the ukulele approach, just by doing something small, just by buying her coffee with the right labels on it. But because she kept taking more and more small ukulele steps every day, the next thing you know, she was really living a life in line with her

values. And she developed a whole community of friends of people who supported those values and shared those values too. And again, what we're talking about here is every day she just gave a little bit more energy to what was true for her and a little less energy to what was not true for her. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations. We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow.

I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves, and who we know ourselves to be, and who we can be. It's a little bit of past, present, and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

wherever you get your podcasts. There's some other stories in the book where you talk about this idea of limiting your concern to grow your influence. I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and that's a pretty core concept in there, this idea that we all have a circle of concern. It's the things that we care about. And then there's a smaller circle within there, which is what we can actually do something about. And you really talk about, you know, focusing kind of what Dr. Covey talked about, which is focusing on that circle of influence about what you can actually do. And you share two stories in relation to that. And I'll let you pick which of the two you want to tell. But one is the starfish story.

And the other is about a woman named Julia Butterfly Hill story. But I think they're both great stories about how this idea of starting with what we can actually do. And the more we do that, you know, focusing on what we can do, our influence grows. Let me say before I tell the story is that just something about Stephen Covey's, you know, this business about shrinking your sphere of concern to your sphere of influence. Sometimes it's misinterpreted. Sometimes people say, well, I can only influence what happens in my whole life. So I'm not concerned about the whole rest of the world. Right. Sometimes it can it can cause us to be really self-centered. But I don't think that that's what he meant at all. I think what he meant to say was, you can care about the whole world and everything that goes on in the whole world, but concern yourself with the areas of influence that you have over what goes on in the whole world. It's not about shrinking what you care about, but it's about picking and focusing on areas that you can start to have some influence instead of being overwhelmed and feeling

helpless. That's right. So in other words, let's, for the sake of argument, say that you're really concerned about the arms trade and that you really wish that weapons weren't traded so easily in the whole world. Now you could just pull your hair out out of concern about weapons trade throughout the whole world, or you could choose to get involved with an organization that works on the anti-arms trades issue and actually concern yourself with the workings of that organization. So yeah, exactly what you're saying. In terms of stories, I'm going to tell you the starfish story. I just really like it. And some people may have heard it before. It's apocryphal. But one day, a man goes down to the beach and discovers that across the beach, there's thousands of starfish that have been

left behind by the slack tide, by the really low tide. And they're on the sand, and the sun is baking, and they're slowly dying. And the man looks over, and he sees a little girl. And he watches her, and she picks up a starfish. And she takes it down to the water and she drops it in. And then she walks back up and she picks up another starfish and she drops it back in. He goes up to her and he says to her, he said, little girl, don't you realize you're not going to make any difference at all? There's thousands of starfish on this beach. There's that, you know, you just can't possibly make a difference. And she says, tell that to the starfish I just dropped in the water. Right. Which I think is for one thing, really cool. But, um, that's, that's where the story is. I was told it ends, but I extend the story because then I say, well, so, so she says,

tell that to the starfish you dropped in the water. And then he says, you know, the little girl has a point. And so suddenly he decides he's going to, he may not be able to save a thousand starfish himself, but he's going to walk a few starfish down to the water. And then, you know, within that, within the half an hour, a few other people have walked down and seen this little girl and this little man moving starfish down to the water, and they decide to participate too. And so what happens, you see, is that if you restrict your sphere of concern to your sphere of influence, that is like the little girl, she said, I'm just going to save this one starfish because I knew I can't. Your sphere of influence then actually grows. She says, I'm just going to save this one starfish. But by saving that one starfish, she inspired the man to save some starfish. And then he in turn inspired some other people to

save some starfish. So if we actually take our energy and put it into the relationships that we have with the world, it actually increases our influence over our own lives and over the world. I love that story too. And the other story that you tell in relation to that, and I'll tell it very quickly, is about a woman who is concerned about deforestation. So she goes up in a tree and lives up there. And ultimately, she only manages to save one tree as part of that. But the fact that she did that and got so much attention means that she is speaking all around the world to thousands of people year after year, influencing a great number of trees to be saved throughout the world. And I just thought that was another great example

of limiting your concern to your influence, but also taking a longer term view to and recognizing that we don't know exactly what impact what we do will have. We just keep doing it and, and things can take on a life of their own. And I think it's also as important as it is for us to feel that we're effective. Sometimes people say, how do I know whether I'm the type of person that can change the world? And I say to them, well, the question is not whether you're the type of person who can change the world. The question is whether you're the type of person who wants to know they tried. Because regardless of results, just the act of doing things in line with your values is satisfying. Remember when I said about intrinsic goals and we actually get satisfaction just from pursuing those goals. And it's the same. If you

live in line with your values, it actually makes you feel better. Another thing people sometimes say to me is, is there hope for this world? And I often say that that too is kind of a distraction because both of those questions am i the type of person who's able to change the world or is there hope for the the world in both cases those questions are questions designed to kind of let us off the hook like am i the type of person that can change the world well if you're not what are you going to do uh well i'm going to go watch tv right so and the same thing is there hope for the world well if i tell you no what are you going to go watch TV. Right. So, and the same thing, is there hope for the world? Well, if I tell you no, what are you going to do? I'm, you know, I'm going to go eat ice cream. So, in neither case are the questions that helpful. So, the real question is not, does the world have hope?

The real question is, are you willing to give the world hope? And again, I'm not saying that means we should murder ourselves. What I'm saying is that that means that if we work in that way, we're actually achieving the highest level of actualization for ourselves, and we'll have the highest quality of life. Exactly. There was just one last topic that I wanted to touch on because I thought it was very interesting. There's a lot of talk about community. There's a lot of talk about friendships, about being connected, which is all

great stuff. And it's something that I'm actually learning a lot more about as we do the show. And I'm beginning to learn more about the value of that and the health benefits of all that. But you take it one step further and you talk about something called social interconnectedness, which is a little bit beyond. Could you explain what that means? Sure. So it turns out that what I'm calling social interconnection is what people used to call community. But I'm careful of the word community because many of us grew up in communities that we couldn't wait to escape. And so we have a bad association with the word community. But what community really is? A personal community, which is a community that you choose for yourself. So not the kind of community you want to escape, but your own personal community is socially interconnected.

And what that means is that not just that I have 10 friends, but that those 10 friends all are friends with each other too. I'm not just connected to those 10 people, but those 10 people are connected to each other. So that's socially interconnected. And there's a lot of research that shows that that kind of interconnection contributes at least as much, if not more, to our quality of life and happiness than, for example, owning a house, even having a romantic partner. And if you think about it, there's some really interesting reasons why. So let's say that I'm friends with Joe and Sally, and Joe and Sally are also friends with each other. Now, if I do a good turn by Joe, because Joe knows Sally, Joe will tell Sally that I did a good turn by him. And then sometime in the

future when I'm in need, Sally will in turn do a good turn by me because she knows from Joe that I'm a good player. This is actually a phenomenon called generalized reciprocity. So we're used to the idea that when we're friends with just one other person, one hand washes the other. You do good by me, I'll do good by you. But when we're part of an interconnected group, that reciprocity generalizes through the group. And there's all sorts of research that shows that people that are interconnected live longer, they're healthier, they're happier. And guess what, they also help the world more. Yep. Well, Colin, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. I really enjoyed the book. We will have links to all your things on the website. We also

have a free download on the site of some of my favorite ideas from the book, which listeners can get at one you feed.net slash Colin. Oh, great. And can I mean, do you mind if I say my website? No, please go right ahead. So also, people are welcome to take a free sample chapter to the book website. It's at www.colinbevan.com. And I'll spell that. It's C-O-L-I-N-B-E-A-V-A-N.com. And then there's a tab where it says offerings. Just click that and you can get a free chapter of the book there. Excellent. And I'll make sure we link to that off our website too. So if people don't remember that, they can easily get to it all and I'll link up to all your various places online. Thanks, Eric. It was really great talking to you. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.

Bye. You can learn more about Colin Bevan and this podcast at oneufeed.net slash Colin.