A Plan for Nature with Eco Anxiety
The journey from being aware of my Eco anxiety or psychoterratic tendencies to being slightly comfortable in my skin as I move towards the planet’s future has been a short one. In no way or form have I reached where I want to; it is going to be a long process to get where I wanted even with myself before I could ask it of the world. I’m far from being done but I have tried and tested different strategies to help myself deal with the horrible cocktail I described earlier. Here’s what I’ve been doing (the ones that work) to curb my Eco anxiety. Acknowledge Gaps: I will tackle the big word called sustainability later, but befriending the planet goes a long way and no one expects anyone to have already reached its depths. Admitting that you’ve just started, allowing yourself to be humbled in front of those who have traveled further helps you borrow solutions for your gaps. It also lets you tackle one thing at a time so that you don’t stretch yourself thin and snap. The intent is simply the everyday milestone and not a glorified goal. Bite Small: Nowadays, when I generate a lot of vegetable waste, I plonk onto my scooter and feed cows hunting for food around the neighborhood. Urban cows often graze on garbage and their snouts push around muck instead of lush foliage. I watch their tails whisk happily as they munch on corn husks, spinach stems, pomegranate peels, whatever comes out of my bag. It makes me feel satisfied that I solved a problem. Seeing its impact helps me manifest more deeds or actions and gives me the boost to make a habit out of it. Ditch Excuses: It takes all of a minute to grab a cloth bag on your way out, to make a decision between wet and dry dustbins, to switch off lights, to just be more conscious. If you catch yourself in the middle of an excuse, pause, breathe, and go ahead and pick a friendlier path at the fork. It’s a kind of stubbornness that makes way for a habit so practice it intentionally and soon you’ve realistically integrated a lifestyle change. Consume Meaningfully: One of the most common triggers for Eco anxiety and its gang of emotions is a simple news article. Fires in the rain forest, sacred groves erased for flyovers, depleting reservoirs; the list is never ending. What you can do is set aside a weekly window of time to catch up on such news and limit the daily consumption of news to the positives. There are a lot of IG handles I follow purely to put positivity back into my feed. Some of them are: 1. @Sea Legacy 2. # Solarpunk
3. @Sam Bently
Connect with Nature:
You can’t expect to think of a solution for a subject you fully don’t grasp. My marketing mind told me that if I wanted to convince people from all walks of life on the ‘big why’, I have to see the problem like they do or don’t. I need to get broad, and then narrow just like a conversion funnel. With this thought in mind, I plunged head first into all kinds of media, materials, and experiences. I looked to Eco fiction and picked books to relate better with nature, people like me, and models that have worked in theory. I read a marine biologist’s view of the world and how a beekeeper believed the inter-connectedness of it all. Research papers, journals, essays, poetry - I devoured it because it closed up the distance for me. It became a great tool to hack away at the helplessness and feel less alone in what I feel.
Circle back once you’ve tried a couple of these and let me know if these tips helped you!
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