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Episodes
Monday Oct 25, 2021
Monday Oct 25, 2021
Aria McKenna on storytelling and world-changing for the climate and the environment
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Aria McKenna is an actress, writer and producer turned climate advocate. She founded Global Cooling Productions and is in development with several mission-driven projects. She trained with Al Gore as part of his Climate Reality Leadership Corps and has studied, worked, and presented with organizations such as The American Sustainable Business Council, Citizens Climate Lobby, American Renewable Energy DAY, EarthX, and the Cooperative Impact Social Innovation Conference. She is currently working with the Healthy Climate Alliance and the Planetary Restoration Action Group to advocate for an emergency three-pronged approach to restore the climate to safe levels.
Connect with Aria
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/revolutionearth/
Website: https://www.ariamckenna.com/index.html
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Aria McKenna: I feel like there is an incredible power in storytelling and that the media can be used to help pull people along and to engage them long enough to get them to have a deeper understanding of the situation. And to care deeply about changing it.
[00:00:29] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Hello and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. I'm your host Izolda Trakhtenberg on the show. I interview peak performing innovators in the creative social impact and earth conservation spaces or working to change the world. This episode is brought to you by brain FM brain FM combines the best of music and neuroscience to help you relax, focus, meditate, and even sleep.
[00:00:49] I love it and have been using it to write, create, and do some of my deepest work because you're a listener of the show. You can get a free trial head over to brain.fm/innovative [00:01:00] mindset. To check it out. If you decide to subscribe, you can get 20% off with the coupon code, innovative mindset, all one word, and now let's get to the show.
[00:01:13] Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg, I'm your host, and I'm thrilled that you're here. I'm also thrilled and honored and think this is so important. So you need to know that to welcome my guests this week. Aria McKenna is an actress writer and producer turned climate.
[00:01:32] Catnip to me, as you know, she founded global cooling productions and is in development with several mission-driven projects. She trained with Al gore as part of his climate reality leadership core and a studied work and presented with organizations such as the American sustainable business council.
[00:01:49] Citizens' climate lobby, American renewable energy day, earth X, and the cooperative impact social innovation conference. She's currently working with the healthy climate Alliance and the [00:02:00] planetary restoration action group to advocate for an emergency three pronged approach to restore the climate to safe levels, such important work aria.
[00:02:09] I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so glad that you're doing the work that you're doing. Welcome.
[00:02:14] Aria McKenna: Thank you so much. It is great to be here. I have really been enjoying doing my research on you and seeing what amazing work you're doing and the commonalities we have with the voiceover background as well. I really love your, oh,
[00:02:31] Izolda Trakhtenberg: thank you so much.
[00:02:32] And we have another commonality. I worked for years for the globe program, which was a, it's a joint NASA NOAA NSF program. K through 12, designed to teach students all about, uh, the environment, the earth. And it was, the idea was started by Al gore in his book earth in the balance. So we sort of have Al gore in common as well.
[00:02:53] Oh,
[00:02:53] Aria McKenna: wow. I love that. Yeah. I know you've been doing some education. I also did some educational outreach [00:03:00] with the Cleo Institute. Ah, fabulous.
[00:03:04] Izolda Trakhtenberg: It's such important work. It really is. And, and, you know, I want to just, I want to jump right in and I mean, obviously this is important work and we know that the G 20 summit is happening at the end of the week in Rome.
[00:03:19] So I want to talk to you about what, what importance you think the these countries can play in bringing the climate back to safe level.
[00:03:31] Aria McKenna: Yeah, no, thank you. Um, it is absolutely huge and so important that we get countries on the same page together to create a collective action plan that actually has the power to restore the current.
[00:03:53] Um, as part of a healthy climate Alliance and the political, the planetary [00:04:00] restoration action group, we are working to help forward the mission of educating people about the difference between climate restoration and reducing climate change to less than two degrees, which right now is what the United nations has agreed to.
[00:04:21] So we know that there has been some work in, in this direction. It's wonderful to get countries on board, agreeing to a goal, to deal with the climate. First of all, you know, let's just say that first. Um, but right now their goal is to reach net zero by 2050. And we know that carbon dioxide and methane do not just automatically disappear from the atmosphere on their own.
[00:04:55] So we are continuing to put greenhouse gases [00:05:00] in the atmosphere. And so it's going to keep on warming and we know that warming is leading to extreme weather. Uh, what happened with hurricane Ida caused $95 billion. Just that one. So we need investments in turning this around. So what we're advocating for is a three-pronged approach to restoring the climate to safe levels.
[00:05:31] Those are levels that are pre-industrial levels that humans have lived safely within for, for some time. So if we actually brought carbon dioxide down to 300 parts per million, then that is actually known to be safe. Uh, right now we've got, uh, three 50 has been a goal where we know that if you go [00:06:00] beyond three 50, it's not safe.
[00:06:03] So we actually have the power, not only to reduce our carbon footprint and to reduce the amount of methane we put in the atmosphere, but we actually have the power to draw those greenhouse gases down. And as we draw them down, we help reduce warming. So those are two major steps that need to happen to move us toward climate restoration.
[00:06:30] And then the planetary restoration action group has introduced the third step, which is the emergency mitigation that we need to do in response to how quickly the Arctic is melting. So right now we're looking at massive sea level rise, which is a serious environmental injustice situation, especially when it comes to small [00:07:00] nations of Florida is, is, you know, half of Florida is going to be gone.
[00:07:05] So we need to deal with sea level rise as well. So if we just have goals to reduce warming, we are not doing anything to reverse sea level rise or to. Or to deal with the, uh, massive injustice that is thrust upon small countries around the world. So we are advocating for a three pronged approach that deals with the emergency situation of an escalating crisis that has completely disrupted our weather systems and led to flooding, uh, droughts, fires, uh, all around the world.
[00:07:51] So, um, you know, we really need to change that goal, create a positive vision for the future and to really pull, [00:08:00] pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and create a plan to turn the situation around so that we can have a safe planet for our children.
[00:08:12] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Wow. Um, I'm taking all this in. Cause it's it. And here's the thing I've worked in earth science when I worked at NASA for years.
[00:08:24] And so I understand all of this and I, and I get it and yet it's still, it's still overwhelming. And so the thing that I come up against, whenever I'm talking to anybody about climate change and the climate crisis is how do we get people to think long-term about this? Because we can look at today's weather and go, oh, it rained today, but it didn't rain yesterday and it's not going to rain tomorrow.
[00:08:50] Those changes are easy. But when we're looking at the climate, we're looking at long-term trends and patterns and how do, how do we come up with, and, [00:09:00] and what are your thoughts on this? How do we come up with innovative ways? To get people to understand the causality there that the climate changing is what's causing some of these extreme weather events and, and wildfires and all of these other catastrophes that you mentioned just a minute ago, how do we get that causality to connect in people's minds?
[00:09:27] Aria McKenna: I think that's an excellent question. And I have so many different things that pop into my mind in response to that. Uh, one of them is the importance of keeping these things in people's mind, because exactly what you say. We have these disasters and when it's on the news, people go, oh my God. Wow. Oh, I can't believe that.
[00:09:53] And of course, if you're personally affected by it, that that's, that's, uh, affecting you on a whole nother level. Right. [00:10:00] But once it goes away, You go on to other things, you start thinking about other things you think about, you know, what am I going to eat? How am I going to take care of my kids? What am I going to do about these immediate things that are right in front of me?
[00:10:16] So we need that kind of long-term engagement that helps to educate people and emotionally charged them to take the kinds of actions that will actually make a difference in the world. Right? So for me, personally, my personal approach to this is that I feel like there is an incredible power in storytelling and that the media can be used to help pull people along and to engage them.
[00:10:58] Long enough to [00:11:00] get them to have a deeper understanding of the situation and to care deeply about changing it. So, you know, I've got some projects that I'm working on. I'm not going to go into full detail, but I do want to say that I think that when we tell stories, people, people care about people and they care about their children.
[00:11:29] And, and so many people care about the planet that we live on. Right. And that's across political divides. Unfortunately, the issue of climate has absolutely been politicized. There has been a lot of misinformation propagated by the fossil fuel industry and, and other industries that, that gain to profit.
[00:11:55] Right? So we're fighting a lot when it comes [00:12:00] to focusing on climate, some people are gonna hop a board, they're gonna get the connections and they're going to take action in response to those connections. But there are other people who might not get the connection ever, honestly, It might take them a lot longer.
[00:12:23] And the good news is that I think there are multiple ways in because the same things that are affecting the climate are also affecting our drinking water. They're affecting the air that we breathe. They're creating childhood cancer. They are, uh, affecting people's breathing asthma emphysema. There are so many direct causalities and environmental injustices tied to [00:13:00] the fossil fuel industry.
[00:13:02] That I do think that when we educate people about these issues as well, we end up getting double benefits. So I think that the, one of the things that's difficult with us when it comes to the news cycle is you talk about how many people are affected when it's a statistic. And when it's an overwhelming statistic, we shy away from it.
[00:13:26] It feels overwhelming. There's nothing we can do about it. But if you tell a story about one person and how they're affected, and people care about that person and they can make connections to their own lives and how they're being affected that I think has more power when it comes to. Energizing people and inspiring people to make personal changes.
[00:13:55] Does that make sense?
[00:13:57] Izolda Trakhtenberg: It does. It does. Absolutely. It's [00:14:00] just the thing that, the thing that I'm concerned about as I think about what you're saying, and as I take it in is, again, that notion of, if somebody is going through surviving through a hurricane, are they going, oh, well this is due to climate change or are they going, oh, let me get to higher ground or lower ground or whatever it is I need to do to protect myself and my family.
[00:14:24] Right. And then later that connection that you're talking about has to be restated or reinforced because they might not know. And so what do we do? Oh, hold on one sec.
[00:14:44] I had to cough there for a second. Didn't want to cough. What do we do? To, I don't want to say befriend, but to align with these industries that traditionally either don't [00:15:00] care or don't see that, that the work that they're doing is causing. These grave and big changes on a planetary scale, right? The fossil fuel industry, isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
[00:15:15] Is there a way in your mind to get them to change their practices? I mean, I know farmers who are stopping doing dairy production, cow, you know, keeping cows and cows are some of the biggest methane producers. And there've been new farmers in the news recently that have said, you know what, I'm going completely vegan.
[00:15:37] I'm just going to go to plant farming, things like that are happening. Do you think it is possible for the fossil fuel industry to pivot? And if so, what would it take for them to start looking at new ways, more sustainable ways of treating our home planet? Kind of.
[00:15:56] Aria McKenna: Well, I think that's where the [00:16:00] international community comes in for one thing right now.
[00:16:04] So many governments are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. Right?
[00:16:11] Izolda Trakhtenberg: So,
[00:16:14] Aria McKenna: and they're not giving the same kinds of funds to clean energy in general, you know, at least in this country, it's not par or it hasn't been in the past. So those are things that we need to change.
[00:16:29] And fortunately, the cost for electric, uh, you know, uh, solar energy, wind, energy, electrification, all of these things, the costs have gone down so much that right now, there is so much financial incentive to actually change their ways. So it's actually, I'm trying to remember where I had read this. Oh shoot.
[00:16:58] There was, um, [00:17:00] a recent, there was, there was a meeting and it had to do with the fossil fuel industry and they actually ended up coming to the conclusion. There were some, oh, I don't know if I tell the story properly. I'm sorry. Um, but, but the bottom line, I'll just say that they had come to the conclusion.
[00:17:21] They realized that it was no longer in their financial benefit to continue business as usual. And there were some stakeholders who actually drew a line and said, no, we have to change.
[00:17:35] Izolda Trakhtenberg: I love that I, that gives me some hope. It really does, you know, and you know, it's interesting what you were saying about, I have so many questions.
[00:17:43] Uh, well, you were saying about storytelling is so true that if that, if we talk about, uh, climate change on a, on a global scale, or even on a city scale, when I work with kids and we'll talk about, uh, Cape town and then breaching getting very close to date day zero, where they [00:18:00] have no more water supplies and they, they keep pushing it back because the rain comes just enough.
[00:18:07] The kids themselves, I was working. Remember I was working with a bunch of sixth graders. They got it. And then they went, can we ship water to. And it was a really interesting question, because then we talked about what it would take, the, the resources it would take to ship water from at this point, this was Washington DC to Cape town, South Africa.
[00:18:28] And could we ship enough and all of that. And, and so talking about these stories, got the kids really interested in what they could do. They're tomorrow's decision makers. And I know that you, as you said, love stories and you started as an actor and you've transformed your mission. It sounds like to tell stories about the planet about climate.
[00:18:52] And I'm just wondering, how did that happen? What made you go from I'm a performer [00:19:00] on stage or screen to I'm an advocate and an activist on behalf of the planet and the.
[00:19:07] Aria McKenna: Yeah. No, thank you. Um, I'm I'm glad you asked that. Um, I'll just say to, to start off, I'll say that I grew up in Florida and Florida is absolutely beautiful.
[00:19:24] I'm I'm I'm partial. Okay. We've got these incredible beautiful crystal clear Springs. We've got these incredible lakes. It's, it's a water place. Obviously we're a peninsula. I grew up in the water, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Uh, so these things are really important to me. I've always loved nature. Uh, it it's been a solace to me, so I actually was, you know, play, uh, down in key west.
[00:19:54] I was playing Betty in summers in, in, uh, Betty summer vacation [00:20:00] and I was Snoopy diving. Um, and a, a diving, Snoopy diving. It's amazing. You don't have to get a scuba diving certificate. All you, you can be in your bathing suit and you put a snorkel on and the snorkel goes all the way up and it connects to a boat that's filled with oxygen.
[00:20:25] So you just breathe the air and the boat just, it's like a little raft and it floats above you. So you can go way down. And I was exploring, uh, the world's third largest coral reef there. It was so beautiful. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life to be down there and to feel like a fish.
[00:20:47] It was, it was incredible. And I was down for about a half an hour. And when I came up, I just was like, oh my God, I'm so affected by this. This was so beautiful. [00:21:00] So incredible. And the guy. Told me that the water, her warming, he's the first person who told me about global warming. And he said that those coral reefs were dying because of the warming oceans.
[00:21:20] And it just devastated me. I couldn't believe that something like this was going to be wiped out and I'd always wanted to have a daughter. It was just one of those things that was in me. And I remember that was one of my first thoughts was someday when I do have a daughter, is she going to be able to experience this?
[00:21:46] This is something I would love to share with my kids, but this, this could be gone by that. So that just affected me a lot. And, but I, I went on, I did the [00:22:00] play, I moved to New York city. I started my career and moved there right before September 11th, which was a pretty intense time. Um, but the entire time I was up in New York and I remember there was the Gulf oil spill that happened, and that was absolutely devastating.
[00:22:22] And meanwhile, being up in Brooklyn, I found I was having a lot of difficulty breathing, uh, because of all the traffic and, uh, you know, just the, the air pollution. And there was an oil spill up in the Queens area and I was living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and every time I went over to the water, I struggled to breathe just because of that.
[00:22:47] So I had health repercussions and. I also simultaneously was seeing the Gulf of Mexico be absolutely devastated and destroyed. And that was my childhood [00:23:00] playground, you know, so just seeing so much, you know, my health being robbed by the fossil fuel industry, uh, the devastation and the goal, knowing, you know, seeing sea turtles that I knew were, were being devastated by, uh, the, the horrible oil spill.
[00:23:20] So just the passion kept building in me. And, you know, after I moved to New York, I also had my daughter, my daughter Phoenix was, was born, um, after I moved to New York. So of course, as a mom, your sense of responsibility for the world that they're living in. Just becomes so much greater. So it, you know, it was a struggle back and forth for some time.
[00:23:51] And I just, it just, I was getting work in TV and [00:24:00] I just started feeling like, what is the impact of the work that I'm doing? This is not having the impact that I want to have. I felt like I was being cast in things that just perpetuated fear in people and that didn't really have lasting redeeming value.
[00:24:20] And then what was most important to me was to have a safe planet for my daughter into the future. And I felt like I just needed to stop standing on the sideline and I needed to get involved and I needed to figure out what it was that I could do. And so in that process, that's when I had this epiphany and I was like, you know, what, what if I created a TV series that.
[00:24:48] Uh, dug into these issues that focus on the issues that matter to me and give me that opportunity to create work that I could [00:25:00] really be proud of. And so, but I didn't know nearly as much as I know now then. And so that started a process of, okay, I've got a research, I've got to learn a lot in order to be able to create the series.
[00:25:16] And the series that I was working on is, is very much focused on what could that beautiful future world look like if we could turn this around. And so I had to do research into what would it take in order to. Transform this horrible trajectory that we're on right now and turn it into a much more positive trajectory.
[00:25:47] So that's when I started, uh, trained with Al gore, I did the climate reality leadership Corps and that just led to all kinds of other things. And I think one of the things that has been, [00:26:00] uh, really inspiring and taught me a lot is working with the American renewable energy day. It's like a week long summit.
[00:26:09] Uh, I went there, I had been invited to be on a panel, um, and. There are so many people they're doing incredible work. People who really need to be supported as well. And that's really where I learned what it would actually take technologically scientifically all the fat. Um, and then of course, we've got the cultural and the society, uh, aspects as well in order to support the types of leadership decisions that we need.
[00:26:43] Um, and the industrial decisions that we need. Um, you know, sorry. So I've learned a lot in the process, so that's, that's basically where that started.
[00:26:55] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Wow. I, you know, those kinds of things, [00:27:00] those kinds of epiphany's obviously it changed, it changed the trajectory of your life and it's changed how, how you're working in the world, which I, which I think is incredible and amazing.
[00:27:13] And I love and. I keep coming back to this. How do we do it? You know, you're a storyteller. What, what role do you see? Art storytelling, music playing in change, opening minds, changing minds. I'm not sure exactly what the right way of asking the question is, but I mean, music makes me cry on a regular basis.
[00:27:39] It can also inspire me. How can, how can music do it? How can storytelling do it? How can art do it? How can we use them to inspire people, to look at the earth and the climate in a different way than they otherwise might?
[00:27:59] Aria McKenna: I think the [00:28:00] important part of it is that they help us to reconnect with our humanity and that ultimately caring about the planet, caring about the next generations, caring about other people on the planet.
[00:28:16] You know, we need to be connected to our humanity, to our hearts in order to care enough, to do some lifting, you know, to understand that, you know, honestly, our, our personal choices are connected to this, but also what's really important is who we vote for. Um, You know, we, we need leadership. That's going to take us in the right direction and we need an educated populace in, in that.
[00:28:53] So, you know, my, my part of it, when it comes to storytelling, um, I'll just talk about, without going into too [00:29:00] many details, I'll say that I have a character in, um, one of the main stories that I'm really looking for, that I, that I started working on back then, that I'm in development process with, uh, that character, first of all, is a conservative.
[00:29:19] So that is, you know, a party that, uh, unfortunately there are some people within the conservative party who have been spreading a lot of climate denial. And so she starts the story off this as being really uncertain. She doesn't know what to believe and, and what to think, but she's an intelligent, compassionate, human being.
[00:29:44] And so as that character gets educated, that also educates the public. Um, and I'm, I'm hoping that we've created a character that a lot of people are going to be able to identify with as [00:30:00] well and care about. Um, I think when people can see themselves in somebody else, then that helps open their heart up to another way of thinking and having some compassion, uh, getting over their prejudgments.
[00:30:22] And so. I feel like that's really important to me in the storytelling as well is to create characters that both sides can identify with and not to paint people of the conservative party, for instance, in a bad light to, to understand that we're all human beings and that we all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses and we all have room to grow.
[00:30:59] You know, [00:31:00] we have opportunities for redemption. And so, so, so that's, that's one way in that I really personally identify with, and that I'm really looking forward to getting out there and being able to move to fruition where I can have some, some deeper, more public conversations about the details of the story that I've, that I've been building.
[00:31:26] But I do think that also on a personal level, the more individuals start having those conversations about their own experiences, the way they're effected by the climate prices, the way they are affected by pollution, et cetera, and the things that they are personally doing in order to turn this around, hopefully that also will help give people that impetus and help bring people together at a time where people are unfortunately incredibly divided.
[00:31:58] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yeah, absolutely. [00:32:00] They, they, they, there is this incredible division. Among, uh, people who believe one way, people who believe in other way, but, but the sort of looking at it, it's funny coming back to Al gore and inconvenient truth, looking at the objective truth, we can look at the numbers and save things have been happening.
[00:32:18] They've been happening, especially in the last 50 years. Looking at the global mean temperature change since 1870 to today is that it's the numbers tell a very stark story. And yet if you say to me that, uh, the UN or the G 20, whoever it is said, oh, we're going to be okay with a two degree, uh, rise in temperatures where we're looking at it for that.
[00:32:48] Then how, because I, if I'm, if I'm somebody who doesn't know two degrees doesn't seem a lot, but it is right. It changed so much changes even with that two degrees. [00:33:00] So how do we get that? Notion across that, that any change going up is going to make a lot of difference, not only to us, but to the plants and, and the animals and all of the ecosystems on the planet.
[00:33:21] Aria McKenna: That is an excellent question. I really appreciate that. I think that, well, for one thing, you know, let's be clear, it's not two degrees Fahrenheit. It's two degrees Celsius, which is a bigger number, but also unfortunately there have been. So many natural disasters that we've been seeing lately. And fortunately, they are finally starting to talk about it on the news.
[00:33:55] It has taken so long to get them to this point where they're [00:34:00] actually speaking about it in solid terms for so long, we've had, you know, 98% consensus on manmade, global warming, and yet they've been presenting it as if it's a 50 50 concept. And we're really not sure let's talk someone who thinks this and someone who thinks that and give them equal weight in the discussion.
[00:34:22] And, and of course they don't have equal weight. So we know that. Um, so fortunately some of the mainstream news narrative is finally starting to change. I really wish they had done this a long time ago. Sure. But I am hoping that that does make an impact. I think that the awareness and the concern about these issues definitely is on the rise.
[00:34:49] And as more people are affected by it, and mainstream news media is starting to have more conversations about this. Hopefully that's definitely going to help people [00:35:00] understand, okay, we're starting to experience this right now. You know, I have a crop. This crop is dying because it's not getting enough water.
[00:35:08] Or I have a crop it's completely devastated because we experienced this flooding. I mean, the flooding up in New York city that happened recently, I could not believe how quickly that came back came, came down. Hmm. I mean, it was insane to watch a video of someone who started filming outside their window, just as it kind of started.
[00:35:38] And within a matter of minutes, they had cars just starting to float away on the street right next to them and bang into houses next to them. So I think that unfortunately it is taking a real life, wake up call in order to get people to pay attention. [00:36:00] So they're going to need to start connecting the dots with who they vote for the policies that they support and start taking some more responsibility in how people show up to the voting polls in order to make a difference for their children's future for one thing.
[00:36:16] But, you know, let's be clear. It's not just our children's future. Our future, it's our present. It's our, now it's everything. It's our food systems. It's our health. It's,
[00:36:29] Izolda Trakhtenberg: uh,
[00:36:31] Aria McKenna: you know, when you have people, you have, you know, I read some time ago about a bacteria that because of the warming started affecting these cows and they just keeled over.
[00:36:48] I mean, just, I will check it, remember the exact number. It was like hundreds or thousands of cows that just died because of the heat. So these types of things are happening. [00:37:00] And we just need to shine more of a light on it. My friend, Betsy Rosenberg, uh, actually has something that she's working on called green TV.
[00:37:12] Uh, just wanna throw that out there too, because she's been trying for years and years to get the mainstream news media to pay more attention and start covering climate on more of a regular basis. And now she's having the opportunity to have those conversations to start shining a light on the things that are happening and on the.
[00:37:32] Solutions that we have at our fingertips and the people and the companies who are working to forward those solutions. So you may just need to put a lot more support behind those solutions, stop funding and fueling and supporting all of the things that are contributing to the problem. Start voting for politicians who are actually gonna make a difference.
[00:37:53] And then people who are into agriculture. This is one of the things that I love so much [00:38:00] is that regenerative farming and getting rid of industrial agriculture has. Enormous potential for being able to draw down carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And then it has the by-product of making the soil healthier, making them more resilient to droughts and floods, uh, helping to regulate our weather systems.
[00:38:32] I mean, it's, it's like a miracle, but the other thing that it does is when you're not using the industrial fertilizers, then you don't have this, this runoff with. So what happens is with industrialized agriculture, they're using. These chemicals that actually contribute to global warming just through the creation of produce even is [00:39:00] contributing to global warming because of industrial agriculture.
[00:39:03] But if you have regenerative farming techniques, then when we are growing our produce, not only are we reducing our carbon footprint, but when it rains, we don't have as much runoff. And the runoff that occurs is not putting fertilizers into our waterways. Those, the fertilizers that go into our waterways, then go down into the oceans.
[00:39:25] The Gulf of Mexico right now has fish kills thousands of miles long. Because of industrial fertilizers that have made its way from agricultural systems into the waterways and created massive algae blooms that have absorbed all the oxygen and killed our wildlife, killed our fish. So that affects fishing industry.
[00:39:50] Which affects the economy, which affects people's food supplies. So it's a big circle. And the more we understand that circle [00:40:00] and we understand what the solutions are, the more people will get on board and say, yes, of course, I'm going to switch my farm to being a regenerative farm system. That's more compassionate, more humane creating food that has more vitamins, more nutrients in it.
[00:40:19] And that basically makes me happier because it's, it's a system that's more respectful of nature and its systems, and that can take care of itself better. It's it's wonderful. Really, the more we learn.
[00:40:39] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Yeah. Before we started, before we started recording this episode, I said that to you didn't I was like, yeah, I'm going to be saying yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, absolutely. To pretty much everything you say. It's interesting though, the soil is a carbon sink and we get that. I understand the soil as a carbon sink and certainly global climate [00:41:00] change with the permafrost melting.
[00:41:02] There's a lot more methane and CO2 being released back up into the atmosphere. So there, there, there, I, your point is well taken that it's a cycle we can look at. Uh, animals versus plants breathing, right? Plants breathe in CO2, breathe out oxygen. We breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. So there's a lot of, there are a lot of these systems, these cycles that go on and I make no secret of the fact that I'm vegan.
[00:41:25] So thinking about the notion of the fish in the ocean, I want to leave the fish in the ocean there. And I understand that there are that there are industries that, that, um, that slaughter animals and, and have animals as part of the food and eating process. And yet when we're talking about some of these processes, like regenerative, agriculture, and planting for the soil that you have, rather than the soil that you want so that you don't need fertilizer, we're talking about [00:42:00] a real shift.
[00:42:01] Right. We, in order, in order to shift our awareness and our focus to looking at the biome, looking at the bias, fear, the whole planet and seeing what needs to happen, what we need to do to make these changes. It takes, it takes a, it takes a massive shift in the minds of everybody, people who farm and people who eat.
[00:42:24] And if we're not farmers, we're all eaters. So how do we do that? Right? What can, what can an average person do? And you said vote and that's great. But today, right now, if I am Jane Q public, and I want to start doing something, what's your thought, what, what can I do right now today to make a difference?
[00:42:47] Aria McKenna: That's an excellent question. Um, I mean, for me personally, I think the biggest difference you can make is that if you can, uh, switch to solar panels, if you can. [00:43:00] Get off your gas, guzzler and switch to an electric vehicle. Uh, those are the types of things that of course make a really big impact. Uh, you get to dramatically cut your carbon footprint, and I've certainly heard people out there say, oh, but you know, there's problems with, with battery storage.
[00:43:23] And there is, there are, it's not perfect. There, there are costs to mining. There are issues, but on the whole, you are still making a dramatic impact, not only on your carbon footprint, but you're also reducing dependence on something that is constantly polluting. So to create that initial device, there can be some costs to that, but then once you've got it made, it's just constantly generating electricity without continuing.[00:44:00]
[00:44:00] To add to the problem while that electricity is being generated. So it's a, it's a huge shift in the right direction. Um, I do, I'm going to be perfectly transparent here. I was vegan for seven years and I created, I developed, created, I developed some. Issues. And so I had to stop being vegan. So for me personally, I think they're just, people have different bodies and need different things.
[00:44:28] And I hated it so much when I was told I had to start eating meat again, and I, and I fought against it, but I did start feeling better after I made that switch. So that's for me. And so, because of that, I'm so supportive of regenerative agriculture as well, because not only is it much more compassionate to the animals, but it also drastically reduces the carbon [00:45:00] footprint of those animals.
[00:45:02] When you do eat. If, if you are a mediator, so you can reduce your consumption and you can also be really conscious of where that food comes from, whether it's produce or whether it is animal and, uh, how that food is treated. It's not, uh, easy necessarily to find all those sources, but grass fed for instance, is definitely better than something that isn't grass fed.
[00:45:32] Uh, you know, so that those are the personal choices that I, that I've had to make. Um, so yeah, uh, and also of course, recycling makes a difference. It's not being utilized at the scale that it really should be utilized at. But you definitely just want to have that consciousness, you know, the whole reduce, reuse, recycle, uh, that does make a [00:46:00] difference.
[00:46:00] And I'm not sure what else to say there right now.
[00:46:05] Izolda Trakhtenberg: It is interesting. Isn't it? When, when, when someone says, Hey, what do you think puts you on the spot? It can be a little bit challenging, but at the same time, if we were to make some of these things habits, it would change today, but it would also change in the longterm.
[00:46:21] And one of the things that I advocate for is very simple. When you wash your hands, get your hands wet. Turn off the faucet. Don't keep the water running, you know, simple things like that. Every, I think it's every minute the water runs down the sink. It's eight, it's eight gallons of water. That's crazy to me.
[00:46:39] I know it's crazy. We can, we can do the same when we're brushing our teeth. We can water our plants, uh, in the evening or in the early morning before the water will evaporate because of the sunshine. There's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff that you can do today right now. Yeah. That won't make that won't make a, [00:47:00] a huge dent in your time, but will make a huge dent in saving water, for example.
[00:47:07] Aria McKenna: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. It's it's that thing or the more, you know, the more you're able to do, and there are so many different areas that are affected by this. So in general, like one of the areas I think is really important is just being a conscious consumer, learning about the companies that. Bye from.
[00:47:27] There are some companies that are, you know, have zero waste facilities that are powered a hundred percent by clean electricity when they are operating. Uh, you know, so things like that make a, make a huge difference. Just reading, reading, reading, uh, and buying glass containers instead of plastic, whenever possible, those types of [00:48:00] choices make it make a big difference.
[00:48:02] Not wasting papers. You know, things
[00:48:06] Izolda Trakhtenberg: like that. Absolutely. There, I mean, there are things, you know, maybe what I'll do is put together a list of certain things and put them in the, in the show notes. So that if you're interested in knowing more about the things you can do right now today to start making a difference, you'll have them in the show notes.
[00:48:22] If you're listening to this, I do want to ask you something aria that I, that you mentioned something that I was like, oh, this is so cool because I don't tend to have a very I'm, I'm an optimist, but I don't tend to have a very positive vision for the future, unless things change drastically. And you said that a positive visit vision of the future is something that you want to promote that it's possible.
[00:48:43] And so I was wondering how. Can that happen? How can a positive vision, because I don't know if you know who Wendy Hapgood is. She is the co-founder and director of the wild tomorrow fund. And she was on the podcast a few weeks ago, and she was talking about the same thing that, that we want to be [00:49:00] looking at a positive vision for the future, as a way of, of bringing more people into awareness about, about where we are with wildlife and the planet and, and the environment and climate.
[00:49:13] What do you think that a positive vision for the future can do to mobilize people and, and to, to sort of bring all of us out of a certain sense of apathy and hopelessness? Excellent
[00:49:27] Aria McKenna: question.
[00:49:28] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Um,
[00:49:31] Aria McKenna: um, well, I mean, I, you, you said it for, at first, I mean, whenever you're feeling hopelessness, that obviously does create a sense of apathy, which disempowered.
[00:49:44] Right. And unfortunately the environmental movement for some time in order to make people aware of what a serious situation we're in, the environmental movement has painted some pretty dire pictures of the [00:50:00] direction we're heading, because unfortunately that has been the direction that we're heading. So they've been perfectly honest and they've been trying to mobilize people through fear.
[00:50:09] And I think that's very understandable, but unfortunately it hasn't been yet. And I think it's done more to turn people away from the movement because people don't want to be bombed out. We're we're living in a very overwhelming world right now. There are a lot of things to be concerned about and to be afraid of.
[00:50:32] I hate to say that, but, but it's true. So when you add one more thing to it, and it's something that seems a little far down the road, it's, it's not going to be as important to you, or you're going to turn away from it because you're trying to protect your health. You know, you're trying to protect your mental health.
[00:50:50] So I it's, it's a shame, but I think that has been the direction we have gone. And that's been the reason why we haven't been as successful as we [00:51:00] absolutely need to be. So. It does take some concerted effort to change that dynamic. And so there were two things I'm involved with that I think are helping to move things in the right direction.
[00:51:14] And one is the work with the healthy climate Alliance and with the planetary restoration action group, because they are focused on changing the goal of the United nations from let's reduce the devastating warming that we're experienced to something that might be survivable. If we're lucky to let's actually restore the planet, let's restore the climate.
[00:51:38] Let's create something that we can be proud of to hand down to our next generation. We have to focus on what we want when we're creating those goals. And fortunately they have enough scientists. They have enough technology to have enough understanding to create a strategy. To actually deal with that.
[00:51:59] [00:52:00] And to be honest with what kind of strategy it is that we need in order to turn this thing around. So, you know, so that's, that's one thing, um, I just wanted to say really quickly, uh, Peter for Koski has been such an inspiration to me. He's the one who brought me into the healthy climate Alliance. And he founded the foundation for climate restoration and he's one of the most optimistic, hopeful guys that I know who happens to be in the environmental movement.
[00:52:31] And so that's been incredibly helpful to me because I think that being an environmentalist can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes there have definitely been times I've felt that kind of apathy and futility and frustration and fear about the direction we're heading. Yeah. So, um, so, so that's one thing I just wanted to say that I think that the work that they're [00:53:00] doing is incredibly important to it adequately understands the danger of the situation that we're in while also creating a vision for the future by changing our goals.
[00:53:12] To let's reduce it from less, let's reduce damage to let's prevent let's restore let's regenerate. Let's get our ecosystems back. Let's focus on the natural systems, the technological systems, everything it is that we can do to help turn this situation around and respect the earth and protect our environment.
[00:53:36] So I think that's incredibly important. And then the other thing is that through storytelling, that's what I'm focused on with, with revolution earth, with my TV series is to, uh, have an equal recognition of the dangerous situation we are currently in while also creating a beautiful, hopeful vision [00:54:00] for the future that we can all work
[00:54:01] Izolda Trakhtenberg: toward.
[00:54:06] I feel like going and seen. Wow. Yes, yes, absolutely. I that's just lovely and I can't wait. I can't wait to, uh, to, to watch revolution earth when it comes out. That's going to be amazing. Uh, thank you, aria. I'm so, so grateful that you took the time to. Beyond the show and to talk about what, obviously to me is a very crucial and critically important subject climate change and, and saving the planet.
[00:54:37] Let's face it let's, you know, and, and actually, you know, it's interesting to me is that it's not saving the planet. The planet will be fine for another four and a half to 5 billion years. It's not the planet we're saving. The planet has gone through lots of changes. It's the plants and the animals that live on the planet, including us, that we are working to save.
[00:54:55] And that's something that we need to keep in mind. Whenever we say, save the earth. Now the [00:55:00] earth will be fine. I'm selfish. I want the planet for, for me, for my cats, for the elephants, for the tigers, for the dolphins, for the birds, for the plants, for all of us. And, and I want it to be healthy for that.
[00:55:14] Cause the planet, the earth will be fine for billions more years. So it's interesting to me that we think about it in those terms and it's important and I'm so glad that you're doing. To tell these stories, aria it's. So it's crucial. And, and I think it's going to be critical to our survival. So I'm, I'm grateful to you.
[00:55:34] And I, I, I wanted to, if you wouldn't mind, uh, people learn differently and I know all of the information about where people can find you is going to be in the show notes, but I'd love it. If you would just list where people can find Arya, McKenna, and the incredible work that she's done.
[00:55:49] Aria McKenna: Uh, thank you so much is older.
[00:55:52] Uh, first of all, really great to be on the show. I'm so happy to meet you so impressed with the work that you are doing. [00:56:00] And, um, so yeah, I would say, please go to global cooling productions.com. You can learn more about the production company that I am launching in order to, uh, produce these projects that I'm working on.
[00:56:18] And I would really appreciate it. If you went and supported my. Patrion page as well, which is going to be in the show notes and, uh, yeah. And, and reach out to me on Facebook, uh, you know, just all those links that will be below. Please do I appreciate the follows, uh, any contributions that that can be made would be greatly appreciated to help continue the work and, uh, yeah, just thank you so much for having me on the show and we will be putting together and open.
[00:56:59] [00:57:00] As well, we don't have the site up point yet. Uh, but by the time this episode airs, there probably should be an open letter online, uh, to support, uh, that would go to members of the and also, uh, various world leaders at cop 26. So we really would love to get some, some public support for changing the international goals from less reduced, dangerous warming.
[00:57:32] To less actually restore the climate and utilize the technology and the organizations that are already out there that are already existing, that are doing amazing work to restore the soil, restore the oceans, uh, through ocean permaculture, to reduce ocean acidification and help draw down downward carbon dioxide there.
[00:57:53] Um, you know, there's so much that can be done that is being done by amazing people and [00:58:00] going there and supporting means so much to, to all of us and to our children.
[00:58:07] Izolda Trakhtenberg: And that is that. Yes, absolutely. And there's, this is something that you and I talked about before. I feel a little bit like I'm about to shill for you, but I'm going to do it anyway.
[00:58:18] You and I talked about this before we started recording the episode and that is that people who do the work that you're doing on behalf of the climate, or about, uh, on behalf of wildlife or on behalf of the plants or whatever it is trying to restore, trying to save, trying to nourish and nurture. A lot of people think, oh yeah, I'm doing it for the love of the game.
[00:58:41] And other people will say, yes, you're doing it for the love of the game. Good for you. But honestly, let's, let's be very real. You still have to pay your rent, even if you're doing it for the love of the game, you still got to buy Catlett or at least I do. So, uh, I feel a little bit like this is a telethon, but it isn't so seriously if [00:59:00] it, you know, when you, if you're listening to this and you're kind of going, oh, should I have that latte?
[00:59:06] That that latte could go to, uh, to some, to some activists, somewhere who was doing the work that will help all of us. That's something to think about. And, uh, I'm gonna, I'm going to shut my mouth on that now, but it's something that I really I've been thinking a lot more about recently that notion of, for the love of the game does not mean you are independently wealthy.
[00:59:27] So anyway,
[00:59:29] Aria McKenna: thank you. I absolutely. Yes, this is
[00:59:31] Izolda Trakhtenberg: true. Absolutely. I mean, it, it just is we're, you know, those of us, uh, who shine the light, like me and, and other people I know who are in the podcasting space, for example, you know, we ha I have an opportunity to talk to people like you who are doing this incredible work, but I always feel like.
[00:59:47] Yay. And you know, you aria and I, and in so many of us, uh, so many other activists in one way or another, still have to buy cat food. Uh, so anyway, uh, but I, I have just [01:00:00] one more question cause, cause you and I could keep talking and talking and talking to you and you'll have to come back after the launch of the whole global cooling productions or maybe when, when revolution earth comes out.
[01:00:10] I'd love to have you back to talk about it some more. I have. Oh good. Yay. I have one more question that I ask everybody who comes on the show and it's a silly question, but I find that it yields some profound answers. And the question is this. If you had an airplane, a, an, uh, an environmentally friendly airplane, uh, that could sky write anything for the whole world to see, what would you say.
[01:00:36] Oh,
[01:00:37] Aria McKenna: bye. That is a fantastic question. How to answer that? Oh my goodness. Um, geez and environmentally friendly airplane. First of all, that would be fantastic. I'm looking forward to that. Um, you know, it's, [01:01:00] it's interesting. This is going to sound, I feel like this is going to really sound
[01:01:05] Izolda Trakhtenberg: hokey. I love hope.
[01:01:08] Aria McKenna: I just, I feel like what connects all of this, the work that we're doing is, is just fueled by, by love, you know, love for self love for others.
[01:01:24] Love for the planet, the, you know, the animals, the ecosystems. If there was a way to just kind of spread that and, and connect people more deeply to, uh, uh, a constant sense of love and appreciation. I don't know if there are three words, you know, words that I could put up there that would just make that magically happen.
[01:01:51] Um, but you know, love yourself and, and, and love others, you know, and the more [01:02:00] we can connect with that, I think the more compassionate we are and the more we can hear each other, uh, the more, hopefully we'll be able to come together and start working together again to make the world a better place. I don't know if there are words that magically make that happen, but I do feel like that's what connects all of this.
[01:02:23] And hopefully something that everyone can agree on.
[01:02:27] Izolda Trakhtenberg: Totally. I, I agree with you and the words that came to me when you were talking were two words and it was just, they were just spread love, spread love, man. Oh yeah. I love that though. That's what I, when, when you were talking, I'm like, oh, I think she's talking about spreading love.
[01:02:43] I think that's great. Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. Normally I don't, I don't come up with these answers, but there are times when they pop me on the head when Edna, the librarian who lives in my head, pops me on the head goes, this is what you were thinking. Okay, great. Thanks Edna.
[01:02:59] Aria McKenna: So anyway, [01:03:00] thank you.
[01:03:00] All right. So
[01:03:02] Izolda Trakhtenberg: REO, once again, thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show.
[01:03:08] Aria McKenna: Oh, thanks. Thank you so much for having such a pleasure to speak with you and also to explore all your wonderful resources that you have. Yeah. Thank you. I
[01:03:21] Izolda Trakhtenberg: appreciate that. I, yes, I have many resources go to the website is all the t.com.
[01:03:26] You will find them all. This is the innovative mindset podcast. If you've enjoyed the episode and I am sure you have, first of all, remember to turn off your water while you're washing your hands. That's very important. Get involved and. Much more involved and really pay attention to the work that aria is doing.
[01:03:46] She's doing some incredible work. She, and those like her are doing some incredible work. So please get involved with that. If you're enjoying the show, tell a friend, subscribe to it, have them subscribe. Let's all. Talk about how we can be innovative [01:04:00] to move into this new and uncertain future stronger and better together until next time.
[01:04:06] This is Izolda Trakhtenberg for the innovative mindset podcast, reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.
[01:04:19] thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Please subscribe to the podcast if you're new and if you like what you're hearing, please review it and rate it and let other people. And if you'd like to be a sponsor of the show, I'd love to meet you on patrion.com/innovative mindset.
[01:04:37] I also have lots of exclusive goodies to share just with the show supporters there today's episode was produced by Izolda Trakhtenberg in his copyright 2021 as always, please remember, this is for educational and entertainment purposes. Only past performance does not guarantee future results, although we can always hope until next time, keep living in your innovative mindset.[01:05:00]
Friday Oct 22, 2021
Friday Oct 22, 2021
It's so simple, and it works so well!
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
This technique will unlock your mindfulness abilities and get you started.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Thursday Oct 21, 2021
Thursday Oct 21, 2021
Want to build a community? Do this.
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
It's simple, and it works. I just did it, and I love how it's growing!
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
Wednesday Oct 20, 2021
You'll never get it all done.
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
Do you ever feel like you'll never get it all done no matter how hard you try? In this episode, I go deep into my own issues around feeling like I have to get it all done. And I give techniques on how to deal with it.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
Access your inner creative genius with this simple tip.
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
In this episode, I detail how to spark that creative genius when your muse plays hide the inspiration.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Monday Oct 18, 2021
Monday Oct 18, 2021
In this week's show, I explore how slowing down can help you get more productive and creative. It's counterintuitive, I know. We tend to think that to achieve more, we have to do more. But oh my stars, that isn't always true.
Do you have to do something? Sure. Do you have to do everything? Nope.
Here's how you can get more attention so you can give more attention.
First, try the one-minute breathwork assessment. Try it for a week. Note how you feel before you do this 53-second exercise and then note how you feel afterward.
You can find the video on the Back To Basics Meditation page. You'll also find a link to an easy little assessment you can do for yourself. You'll see the proof with your own eyes.
It's super easy.
- Click the link to the document.
- Make a copy of it for your own use (Go to File and select Make a Copy)
- Enter how you feel (the date and time will appear automatically right next to your feeling).
- Do the super short activity video.
- Enter how you feel (the date and time you do it will appear again)
- After a week or two, evaluate the difference. I'm betting you'll see one.
Here's what the document looks like.
Get in touch and let me know what differences you notice in how you feel before and after. I'd love to hear from you.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] That's one of the best reasons to slow down. You begin to notice things again, instead of letting them streak by you. You actually have enough attention to pay attention.
[00:00:16] Hello, and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. Izolda Trakhtenberg on the show. I interview peak performing innovators in the creative social impact and earth conservation spaces or working to change the world. This episode is brought to you by brain FM, brain FM combines the best of music and neuroscience to help you relax, focus, meditate, and even sleep.
[00:00:36] I love it and have been using it to write, create and do. Deepest work because you're a listener of the show. You can get a free trial head over to brain.fm/innovative mindset. To check it out. If you decide to subscribe, you can get 20% off with the coupon code, innovative mindset, all one word. And now let's get to the show.[00:01:00]
[00:01:01] Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg, I'm super thrilled that you're here and I'm excited to talk to you about this week's topic. It's about a surprising thing that you can do to increase your overall productivity, creativity, and sense of wellbeing. And here's the surprising thing it's slowing down.
[00:01:25] I believe that we're so busy with what we should be doing, that we don't really think about what we want to be doing. And I'm recording this episode the day after the big Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram crash, or whatever it is that happened. And it was amazing to me how often mindlessly, I was going to Facebook and to Instagram to check in, even though I knew.
[00:01:50] But there was nothing going on there that there was nobody that the sites were down, but it didn't seem to matter. There was a mindless sort of, oh, let me see what's going on. [00:02:00] And so when I slowed down a little bit and started thinking about it, it changed a lot. For me, it changed how I was looking at.
[00:02:10] Downtime, slowing down time. And, and the question to ask is what if you took that time, how would it be? What might you do if you were slowing down? Would it be okay? Does it work. Are you feeling pressured and pushed into directions? You don't want to go and therefore don't really take the time. Right. So, so let me ask you, what did you do with the time that you couldn't be on those platforms yesterday?
[00:02:38] I mean, I spent more time on Twitter, but I also spent more time looking at the cool art on the walls of the study room at the New York public library, which is where I spent the day where. And I see, I find a need, a change of venue to create as well as my trusted brain FM app. I have to admit that, but yeah, I take the time to [00:03:00] go take the subway and go to the library and I go outside of my home.
[00:03:06] So I use the subway ride to chill out and I used to try to listen to podcasts or send emails or read emails, but I've stopped doing that because I can't hear much because of how loud it is. And it's hard to write. So nowadays, when I ride on the subway, I daydream, I imagine I come up with new ideas or even.
[00:03:24] I meditate. And how hilarious is it to spend 20 minutes in deep meditation and forget where you are to open your eyes and see a guy speaking with deep love to his cup of coffee, surrounded by people in various stages of napping or yapping, but it lets me be here now. And that's a cool place to be. The other day, I noticed the core graffiti, some enterprising artist has painted in the dark tunnels in the space between stops.
[00:03:49] There are miles of darkness and there are sometimes small lights that punctuate the darkness to sort of illuminate the space maybe for workers or something like that. And someone or [00:04:00] a number of someone's painted cool art right below the lights on one of the lines. You see a sort of movie unfold as you look at the lid spots.
[00:04:07] Two people meet, try to be romantic decide they can't be, and instead become friends. And I'm not sure if it's there still, because since periodically someone from the subway comes along and paints over the art to base it black, but it's super cool when you notice it. And if I didn't take the time to slow down, I would have never noticed it.
[00:04:26] And that's one of the best reasons to slow down. You begin to notice things again, instead of letting them streak by you, you actually have enough attention to pay attention. And I wouldn't see any of that if I didn't slow down and I love art where you find it, right, art, illuminates life for us, it highlights the bizarre, the fun, the tragic, the on inspiring the human condition.
[00:04:52] And so when you take the time to slow down even a little bit, you get to take in. All of this other amazing and cool [00:05:00] stuff. And it also gives you time to imagine, to get new ideas, new thoughts, new insights. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about different ways to slow down. My favorite of course is meditation, but you don't have to do that unless you want to.
[00:05:15] And I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about that in a sec. You can doodle, you can daydream, you can take time off social, right. And taking time off social does something very interesting. It helps you stop consuming content. So your brain is more free to create it. And I don't mean create content for necessarily posting on social media or whatever, but creating new ideas, new creative ways of doing something.
[00:05:41] Thinking about something of what you're going to cook for dinner. It doesn't matter what, what the creation is. It lets you be creative. Instead of watching other people be creative or listening to other people be creative. And it also helps you stop the comparison game, right? It gives your eyes and your ears arrest.
[00:05:57] It helps you stop comparing your life to. [00:06:00] Because you're the only person living your life. You're the only person telling your story. So giving yourself permission to do that is an incredible thing. And one of the ways to do that is to take a little time to slow down and not consume content as much as so many of us do myself included.
[00:06:16] Right. It also resets your mind, right? So going for a slow walk, it gives you time to sort of breathe and be and chill out and you can also do. One minute slow down to breathe, right? It's a way of filling the, well, it gives you the opportunity to do that. Very thing to just sort of go, okay, that's it.
[00:06:36] I'm going to slow down and. I'm going to give you a mission, right? If you meditate, keep doing that. If you don't consider starting, and I'm going to talk to you about that right now. So how do you start? If you, if you don't meditate, how do you start doing it? How do you get into that space? Well, I've created a start where you are a meditation and that's great.
[00:06:58] If you're already set, if you [00:07:00] already know where you are, that's terrific. But if you don't, if you're a little bit lost, then it becomes tougher to figure out exactly what to do and how to do it. And this is where I come in. So meditation, why, why do people meditate? We've sort of talked a little bit just about that earlier.
[00:07:17] Right? Slowing down is beautiful, but it also, there are lots of reasons, right? If you're a monkey, you might do it because it's a way of getting closer to God or closer to whatever you hold sacred. If you're a lay person, you might want to do it because you want a greater sense of peace in your life. A greater sense of patience, a little bit more stability, that kind of thing.
[00:07:33] And that's the whole point, since we're talking about how you can be more productive and creative. Yeah. Slow down. Meditation helps with that because it gives you space in your mind and your body and your heart and your soul to have that well, be filled with something that's positive and creative and maybe even productive, but at the very least positive and creative.
[00:07:54] So there are lots of different reasons. There are people, like I said, who use meditation for [00:08:00] opening up their creative channels. Some people use it for developing better relationships, you know, with yourself as well as with other people in your life. For me, meditation has been about being creative without meditation.
[00:08:11] I wouldn't have read it written seven books, but it's also about learning about yourself, you know? What the lessons are that you need to learn to know yourself better and to also be connected to something greater than yourself. If you, if you take that time, in my case, if you knowing myself better, that's about the earth and all the critters on the earth.
[00:08:33] Right. But it could be whatever it is that makes you feel like you're connected. It's also way first and foremost, for me to get back into myself, finding that space within me, that helps me reset. And especially if I'm. I use a lot of breathing techniques to help with that, to help with being stressed, to help with releasing some of that Trent stress or anxiety.
[00:08:56] I feel with my history, I have a lot of reasons [00:09:00] to be anxious. And I work through that often because as a, as a survivor of child abuse, as an immigrant, as someone who lived in a war zone, as someone who overcame a huge public speaking phobia, there are lots of reasons for me to be. And sometimes that anxiety rears its ugly head.
[00:09:19] And I need to have tools in my toolbox to figure out how to deal with it and how to release the anxiety and as much as possible, the stress, right? That's the whole point of that. But again, it depends on who you are and what you want out of it, but a lot of it is going to end up, use it for what works for you.
[00:09:39] If meditation is something that works for you, it's going to work for you. If it doesn't. Then my suggestion is. Keep trying until it does, but you're going to have to make your own way. Whatever meditation means to be. There are some tried and true techniques that work, there are some tried and true techniques that you start with.
[00:09:55] And in the show notes, I'll, I'll give you a link to a meditation. That's [00:10:00] all about. The really simple breathing exercise and your mission to begin a very easy practice. It does not have to be a huge, I'm going to sit for half an hour, a day kind of thing. It just doesn't to begin with. You can do something very simple and very easy, and there are lots of different ways to meditate.
[00:10:20] And we're going to talk about that in the weeks to come, but at its root, most of the time meditation is going to have some sort of breath work. When we do that, right? It's going to be with just simple breath work and, and meditation exercise. And as you develop your practice, you're going to have to see what works for you, because what I'm doing might not work.
[00:10:44] There are apps you can use. There's calm and Headspace and balance. And my current favorite brain FM, there's listening to music. Vegging out as long as you've edge out without falling asleep, that's kind of meditative. And in fact, I dare say that there are gurus out there, [00:11:00] meditation teachers out there who would say that if you do anything mindfully that washing dishes can become a meditation, Allah tech, not Hahn, certainly something like Tai Chi is a moving meditation.
[00:11:10] Things like that. There are lots and lots of different ways to meditate and that I'm developing and I'm going to be releasing meditation packs of different sorts of meditation in the coming weeks. But for today, we're just going to do a very back to basics kind of thing. Right. We're going to just breathe and that's your mission, right?
[00:11:30] So here's, here's what I'm going to ask you to do in the show notes. There's a link to a little YouTube meditation that I developed. That's all about breathing. Very purposefully if you will, for even less than a minute. And here's the mission, the mission is that I'm going to ask you to go to the Google doc that I have.
[00:11:55] There are two things to do here. I know more than one is, can be confusing, but the reason I'm [00:12:00] doing this, because there are two different things for you to do here, right? Developing an assessment or evaluating for yourself, how you feel before you meditate and how you feel after you meditate. And since breathwork is the root of meditation, we are going to do a very simple breathing meditation that takes less than a minute, but here's the thing.
[00:12:24] If you go to the Google doc and you can see the image of what the Google doc looks like in the show notes, if you go to the Google doc, there's a little thing that says, how do I. And you're going to make a copy of that Google doc. So you can do this for yourself and you're going to write out how you feel.
[00:12:42] Do you feel stressed? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel good? Do you feel hungry? How do you feel? And then. Once you do that a little date and timestamps is going to show up. And once that date and timestamp shows up, that's the before, right. And then do the breathing exercise in that little YouTube video.
[00:12:59] So click [00:13:00] on that link and you're going to see that that actually gives you another sort of minute of that breath work that we were just talking about. And after you've done with that, go back to that Google doc and then. Type in how you feel now. So you're going to have a, before I do the breath work and after I do the breath work kind of thing happening, and the link to the YouTube video that does this little 53 seconds of meditation is right there in the Google docs.
[00:13:31] So all you need to do is go to the Google doc, go to. Got to make a copy, make a copy. Cause you can't add anything into the, into that file so that lots of people can use it, but then you'll get a way of assessing for yourself. Does it make a difference? Right. I'm very practical when it comes to this stuff.
[00:13:47] I love having the notion of does it make a difference and can I measure it? So that is what we're going to do. Right. [00:14:00] And w the way to look at meditation to begin with is that right? You, you have to give yourself permission to stop the rush every once in a while, take a minute and breathe. And so that's what this, this sort of test for yourself is going to be right.
[00:14:17] You're going to write down how you feel beforehand, and then you're going to write down how you feel afterward, just so that you can have this notion of. Breathing and meditating and see if it makes any kind of difference for you. Try it for a week and note any differences for yourself. And I'm going to bet that you can just see some and you'll notice how much even a minute of sewing down will help you feel better and think better.
[00:14:43] And if you decide that you want to go even further, then I'm going to invite you to go to yet a third thing to do. I can't believe I'm putting so many things in the show notes here. But there's a, there's a back-to-basics meditation that you can grab for yourself. And it's just just an MP3 file of me [00:15:00] talking you through this back to basics meditation.
[00:15:03] What does it take to get to very, very beginning of breath work and you can feel free to grab it. It's yours for the keeping it's right there on that page. You can just grab it. And in fact, what I think I'm going to do now that I think about it is I'm going to put the link to that Google doc and the link to that YouTube meditation right there, so that you can have all three in one place.
[00:15:26] And you'll notice that one of the things that happens when you do this before and after. Breathing assessment. You're going to notice changes in how you view everything. And once you notice those changes, you're also going to notice that you have more awareness to some of that, that stuff that let's use slow down, and some of the stuff that's going on around you, that you've been too busy and too stressed to notice.
[00:15:48] That's really cool and really beautiful. So I'm going to invite you to do that and see. What it does for your productivity, because if you approach this stuff from that place of, I feel [00:16:00] peaceful and I don't feel stressed and rushed, you won't forget things as much. You'll have an easier time completing things.
[00:16:06] You'll have an easier time of conceptualizing things, which means you're going to be able to see the whole picture, which is a beautiful thing when you're trying. Productivity to be part of your life. And you'll also see inspiration. And that's where that creativity thing, that creativity piece for me happens most when I slowed down enough to see it, to pay attention to it when it happens.
[00:16:28] So if I, if I believe, and I do that, that innovation happens when. Someone who's creative sees a problem that they can solve and comes up with this really cool creative way of doing it. That's innovation. Well, if you want to innovate, if you want to create something, no one's ever created before first, you have to have the mental and sort of heart emotional space.
[00:16:52] To be open to the inspiration, which is what a really easy, simple meditation practice will allow you to do. I hope that [00:17:00] you've enjoyed today's episode. I know that it's a lot of stuff to think about. Please head over to the back to basics meditation page it's is old, a t.com/back to basics. Made it back to basics meditation.
[00:17:12] Oops. I said the wrong URL is older t.com/back to basics meditation. There, you will be able to find a Google doc that lets you do that. Evaluation the link to the YouTube video. That is the less than a minute of breathing. That's the thing to do when you're doing the before and after, and also the back-to-basics meditation, the exact, how the heck do you start a meditation that will help you?
[00:17:38] Into that space of breath, breath, work, and breathing. I hope you've enjoyed the episode. I'd love for you to let me know what you think. If you're doing this for a week or even a few days, and you notice a difference, please let me know. Drop me a line is older@hisoldat.com. And if you're enjoying the episodes themselves, please rate and review the show, tell a friend [00:18:00] about the work that we're doing here and the cool stuff that we're exploring until next time I remind you to listen, learn, laugh, and.
[00:18:07] A whole lot.
[00:18:13] Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you being here. Please subscribe to the podcast if you're new and if you like what you're hearing, please review it and rate it and let other people know. And if you'd like to be a sponsor of the show, I'd love to meet you on patrion.com/innovative mindset.
[00:18:31] I also have lots of exclusive goodies to share just with the show supporters. Today's episode was produced by Izolda Trakhtenberg and his copyright 2021 as always. Please remember, this is for educational and entertainment purposes. Only past performance does not guarantee future results, although we can always hope until next time, keep living in your innovative mindset.[00:19:00]
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Build Your Awareness Muscle With This Easy Tip
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
Episode Transcript
Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. I'm your host. Izolda Trakhtenberg welcome to mindful Friday. If that's, when you're listening to the show, if not, then it might be mindful Monday or mindful Tuesday. I wanted to talk about awareness in last week's mindful Friday, we talked, uh, I talked a little bit.
I explored what it means to start building that. And this past week, we've been talking about ideas. And how does having an idea give you the potential to change the world? Right. If you listen to the idea of when it comes up, if you, if you note it down, if you follow it, if you find collaborators. If you have compassion, it can definitely help.
There are lots of layers to this, but it's really important to keep thinking about it in these terms, because that's how it's done. Right? You find your creative genius inside yourself. You listen to the ideas that pop up out of your subconscious and then you. Find the team, you build the team collaborators, but before any of that happens, you have to have the awareness to be present and ready for whatever idea will.
And I talk about meditation a lot and it's hard because we're not all able to find the time to sit down and meditate for half an hour a day. I try to find that time, but it's sometimes really difficult. I have to admit I'm up to 15 minutes, twice a day. And, uh, there are times that I'm like, hurry up, hurry up.
And I have to be okay with that. Right. And waiting for the little alarm to ring, to tell me that my meditation time is over. I don't know if you watch the TV show, billions, but all of the main characters meditate. That's one of the things that they do because they realized that it gives them an edge, right.
That, that ability to be agile. Happens when you meditate, you're more agile, you're more aware you're more present and you're able to respond better and faster if you're in that mindful state. So when Bobby Axelrod from the show, billions needs to be mindful. He meditates beforehand. So yes, I am going to advocate for meditation almost every mindful Friday, for sure.
But what if you just don't have time? So here's a really great. Easy way to build some mindfulness into your commute. Right? And I'm not a, if you're driving, I'm not saying you need to close your eyes or anything, please don't drive safe. All of that. Absolutely. You must drive safe. You must stay aware of what's happening on the road around you.
But I am going to ask you to start thinking about when you're at red lights. For example, if you're, if you're driving to work and you're at a red light, uh, let the red light guide. So while the red light is red, breathe in for a count of four and breathe out for a count of four and breathe in for a count of four and read out for a count of four.
And then when the light turns green go, and hopefully you're not stuck in traffic. I know, uh, And if you're walking or if you're commuting, commuting is beautiful. If you happen to take the subway, you can look at the lights that pass through the windows and just notice each light. You don't have to do much of anything else with it, but it's a way of getting into that mindful meditative state without having to sit on a cushion and breathe rarefied air.
If you're walking count, you remember that, uh, uh, It's a horrible little thing, but it's like walk a step on a line, break your father's spine thing, and step on a crack break your mother's back. I mean, they're horrible. They ha they are horrible, uh, little sayings, but kids play like that. Right. So, but you can use that.
You can use that as part of. Mindfulness training. Just notice each line and notice whether or not you stepped on the line or off the line and just pay attention. Right? That's all I'm asking you to do is pay attention to each the lines and the sidewalk, or if you're taking a bus, uh, notice the colors of the trees and as you pass by them, and if there aren't any trees, then notice, find something else to notice because the more we build that awareness muscle.
So you can improve your skills, your awareness skills, the easier it will be when you need to innovate. When you need to create, when you need to access that ingenuity, it will be easier on you. To do it if you've already built that awareness muscle. So this is a very short episode today, but I want to encourage you on your morning commute or evening commute.
And if you're working from home, by the way, as many of us still are that's perfectly. Okay. You can do the same exact thing by looking at what's outside your window and look at it for 10 seconds. And then close your eyes and see if you can remember what you saw. That's another way of building that awareness muscle.
It's a great exercise. And in fact, I'm going to put something in the show notes about that. All right. I hope that you enjoy today's episode. This is his older Trachtenberg reminding you that if you're liking the show, if you're liking this new five day a week format, I'd love to hear from you comment, rate and review.
Tell a friend, uh, we'll see how long this goes. I'll be honest with you. Uh, I love talking to you about this stuff because it is my passion. I think this creativity and ingenuity and innovation is how we're going to change the world and save the world. I really believe that with all of my being, so I hope that I will be able to.
Growing this podcast and this conversation really, uh, on how we might change the world for the better for all of us. If we are all creative, curious, compassionate, collaborative, and mindful until next time, this is Izolda. Trakhtenberg reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Thursday Oct 14, 2021
Improve Your Collaborative Skills By Knowing Who You Are
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. I've used these techniques to get featured in magazines, newspapers, and podcasts. They work! https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
Your gift! The Idea Document. Head over to it, make a copy of it, and keep track of your ideas!
Episode Transcript
Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg and I'm thrilled to welcome you to collaboration Thursday. So let's talk about collaboration. What does it mean in the simplest terms? Of course it means working together as a unified team to achieve a goal. Right?
So you work with other people in order to achieve the thing you're trying to achieve. When you have a lots of personalities, that can be a challenge. So you need good communication skills, uh, for sure, to be able to collaborate well and effectively, but you also need to know who the people are, what their skill sets are, and also who they are, how they operate innately.
And. There are these personality traits that I've been thinking about a lot. And there are other people who talk about them too. There are lots of tests that you can take, you know, you can, you can do the Myers-Briggs or, or discuss or whatever. All of those things are absolutely valid. Uh, I think, and yet to me, they break down into some very basic form.
Uh, I mentioned this yesterday in the compassion Wednesday episode, but I want to go a little bit deeper into it. A specialist. What is the specialist? A specialist to someone who is great at the one thing, right? Albert Einstein, Mozart, they were specialists. They were amazing at the one thing they were great at and maybe not so great at other things like, uh, paying the bills or.
I don't know, picking up after themselves, I guess. I'm not sure what, I'm not sure that, uh, I don't know exactly what kind of housekeeper boats art was, but I imagine he was so full of the one thing he was great at, which was music that he let everything else sort of float away. So that's what a specialist is the opposite of that, or along the continuum of that is the generalist.
And the generalist is someone who may not be grand at any one thing, but they're really very good at a whole bunch of things. And that person is able to see assess, evaluate. Different, uh, ideas, notions factors, components of things, and then see a way to make them work together. So you can have the specialist.
Who's great at the one thing, but maybe not great at other things. And the, the generalist who isn't great at the one thing, but is really good at lots of other things or lots of things I should say. Then you have the visionary versus the implementer. This is sort of the grid that I've developed and the visionary is.
The person who can see the whole lay of the land, right? They can, they have the idea, they can see all of the different parts, but they may not be the person who can implement it to make it actually go right. So they can envision the engine, but they may not be the person who builds the engine. That job falls to the implementer, the implementers, the person who's got the skills to actually make it happen.
Right. And if they don't have the skills to make it happen, then they know how to form a team. Of people who will have the skills to make it happen. Right. I know it sounds kind of confusing, but we need all of these kinds of people on projects in order to make them go. You need the visionary, you need your Elon Musk, right?
He's the visionary, he's the one who's going to be out there with, with the huge ideas. The Steve jobs is another one. But you also need the implementer. You need the person, the Tim cook, let's go with apple. The Tim cook is the one who's gonna be the implementer. He, he may not have the vision, uh, of huge revolutionary change for apple, but he certainly knows how to implement the things that that need to be done in order to keep apple being one of the biggest companies on the planet.
And he also knows how to build a team of people that will, uh, that will help him do all of that. As I said, specialists or people like, uh, Mozart and Weinstein. One of the things that I think a generalist does is they're able to do a lot of different things. And when I think of a generalist, I think of.
Oprah is one of those people who she's got a lot going on. Right. She can write the story. She can act, she can produce, she can direct. She can do just about anything. She's a journalist she's she has many, many, many different skills. And I'm not saying she's not great at them, but she's not known for the one thing that she knows how to do.
She's got. That she can draw on. And that is really important because when she needs any one of those strengths, they're there and she knows herself well enough to know that if she's not the person with the, the unique, uh, special. Skills she'll find that person and she will have them do the work. That's one of the gifts of the generalist is that, you know, when you're not great at something and it may be frustrating, but if you collaborate with those who are specialists, if you find them.
Communicate to them, what you need from them. Then the specialists will be able to do the thing they're great at so that the generalist doesn't have to be the person who actually does it and all together, those four can work in, in that collaborative. To create the project that needs to be created in order for things to work.
I'm going to delve much more into this in the coming weeks and months, because I think it's really important for us to think about who we are and I'm in the middle of developing a, an assessment so that you can figure out. Am I a specialist or am I a generalist? Am I a visionary? Or am I an implementer?
And once you know that it'll be a lot easier to know what role you will best play in any kind of collaborative or project situation, but you need to know what that is. And I'm going to have that available, hopefully within the next few weeks, maybe by the beginning of November, so that you'll be able to take a, an assessment and figure it out for.
It won't be long, but it will be illuminating. I am sure because it will give you in some ways, permission. To play to your strengths because there are times when we don't do that, we go, oh, but I want to be great at the one thing. And maybe we're not. And we have to be okay with that because if you're a generalist trying to live the life or the, do the work of the specialist, you're going to be knocking your head against the wall a lot.
And in many ways, vice versa. So at some point it becomes better, more optimal, and we'll give you a better outcome if you. No, who you are, know your skills, know your strengths, and then find the people who will compliment what, you know, how to. In a way that will be substantive and will help you get the job done without you needing to get a bruise on your forehead.
From, as I said, knocking your head against the wall. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. This is his older Trakhtenberg. I'm reminding you. If you are enjoying this podcast, this new, shorter formed, uh, Tuesday through Friday. Please, please please rate and review it. Tell a friend, these are short and sweet episodes are pretty much never going to be longer than about 10 or 12 minutes.
I just want the Tuesday through Friday to be something that is actionable in the four CS that creativity and compassion and curiosity and collaborations. And of course Fridays are mindful Fridays, so we're doing everything. And then the long form, of course, the long form Monday morning shows that are the interview shows are going to be a continuing they're not going anywhere.
Having said interview shows. I do have one more long-form me episode this coming Monday. So I hope that you will stay tuned for that. It's all about how slowing down can make you faster until next time till tomorrow. This is Izolda. Trakhtenberg reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
Compassion Wednesday
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Episode Transcript
Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg. I am your host, and I'm really happy that you're here. I want to talk to you about thinking differently about compassion today. This is compassion Wednesday. I'm super, I'm super excited about this because I'm going to talk to you.
I'm going to bringing back a, a topic that. Addressed a few weeks ago with the co-founder and the director of the wild tomorrow fund Wendy Hapgood. The wild tomorrow fund is, uh, an organism, a nonprofit organization that does wildlife conservation and habitat reclamation in South Africa. And what their goal is, is to provide habitat for the species, especially endangered species, but the, the indigenous species of animals that live in Southwest.
And they're not just going, okay, we're going to, we're going to fund or support anti-poaching efforts because yes, that is important. And in fact, Wendy told me that the very first thing that they ever did was that they were at first raising funds to buy. Replacement boots for the Rangers that are trying to keep the animals safe, which I think is an incredible thing.
You don't think that they're going to need boots, but yeah, of course they do. They need boots, they need clothes. They need whatever Rangers need in order to do that very important job. But then when he talked about how they thought, when they were developing, while tomorrow fund even further, they thought, okay, saving the animals is great, but we need to say.
Uh, and reclaim land for these animals to live. Right. So that's one of the reasons. Wildlife conservation. Isn't just about wildlife conservation or as, as in saving the animals, Wendy and John, her co-founder decided that what they were going to do was figure out a way to reclaim habitat, to reclaim land, to make sure that there was dedicated land for these animals to live.
They have, they have a habitat, they have a range, these animals that they need to have a freedom to move. In order to thrive. And one of the things that Wendy told me recently was that they've just had baby giraffes, born, and animals do not reproduce if they feel stressed. So, uh, if they don't feel stressed or threatened, they're more likely to reproduce.
So that should tell you that having enough habitat for these drafts means that these drafts are reproducing on their own and they're getting to live the way they were meant to. And so in order to look at, at this, we have to look at things differently. We have to sort of turn things on their head, right?
You can't just go, I'm going to just save animals. That's my entire goal, because just saving an animal, it means nothing. If that animal doesn't have. Water, fresh water, clean water, a food supply of some sort, whether it's a, a predator or an herbivore, doesn't matter, they're going to need food and, or access to food, I should say.
And they're going to need that range that I was just talking about that, that place to live. Right. So without those. The animals will not survive. And so Wendy and John and their team at wild tomorrow fund went, okay, we need to think of this differently. And when you have compassion, your tendency, your instinct, I think, is to just go fix the thing, right.
Let's save the animal. And that is a very important part of it. But if you're going to look more long-term, you're going to have to look at how. That compassion needs to ripple out into different ways of assessing and acting on the. So when you feel the need to look, uh, to look into something like we talked about yesterday, with curiosity, when you feel the need to look at something and you have an idea, the idea, can't just be the one thing.
It, you have to end up looking at what kind of infrastructure you're going to need to establish and foment in order to. Let this compassionate idea that you have grow, right? You don't, it won't grow in a vacuum and it can't be single-minded. You're going to have to look at different ways of doing what you're trying to achieve in order for it to work.
And so. Compassion is a great motivator. Absolutely. That feeling the feelings that, that you want to help in some way, especially those who are less fortunate, uh, endangered species, children, uh, abuse survivors, so many different, uh, beings, the habitat itself, the environment. There's a lot of, oh my goodness.
Just thinking about it as a little overwhelming. You know how I like to say small steps are still steps. So even taking a small step is a, is a good thing. Uh, and sometimes especially a small step is a good thing because you don't want to overreach, but yet you want to be sure that you're paying attention to the, the rivulets to go out, not just in the straight line of I'm going to go save that animal, but all the way around.
To habitat to food supply, to access, to clean, fresh water, uh, to being free from being hunted. If, if it's a critter, there are lots of different things that we need to look at as part of our compassion up as part of our purpose driven mission. And you have to think of it in those terms, it cannot be the straight line you're going to need to have, you know, the straight river goes on one direction, but there are lots of tributaries and you need to pay attention to that.
And that brings me to the notion of visionary versus implementer and specialist versus generalist. If you've, if you're a longtime listener of the show, you've heard me talk about this before. It's really important. And I want to address that a visionary will have the one vision, the implementers, the person who's going to have to go figure out all the different rivulets, right.
Specialist will have, uh, uh, the one talent and the generalist will have the capability of doing multiple things at once, or at least have, uh, at least. Expertise of a number of different, um, factors in what you're trying to achieve and the way those, those interplay with one another is what's going to make projects succeed.
And I'm going to talk a lot more about that tomorrow when we do communication Thursday, but I wanted to at least put that bug in your ear. So you come back tomorrow. And we can go delve deeper into the difference between a specialist and a generalist and a visionary and an implementer, and how those working in concert, we'll get you in from the spark of an idea, to being curious about how it could work to developing a plan and then implementing that plan.
And having a go to fruition and tomorrow we're going to talk about mindfulness mindful. Friday's going to be about how you build the awareness, not just the curiosity, but the awareness that the idea is there to begin with. Now. All righty, I am super excited that you were here. If you enjoy this episode, drop me a line and let.
And, uh, and, or leave a review of the show. I would love it. Tell a friend, all of those things. I am giving you a 42 things that I'm asking you to, but it wouldn't have seriously. It would, it would mean the world to me. If you were to leave a review for the show, I would really appreciate it until tomorrow.
This is Izolda. Trakhtenberg reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!
Tuesday Oct 12, 2021
Tuesday Oct 12, 2021
Creativity Tuesday.
This episode is brought to you by Brain.fm. I love and use brain.fm every day! It combines music and neuroscience to help me focus, meditate, and even sleep! Because you listen to this show, you can get a free trial.*
URL: https://brain.fm/innovativemindset
If you love it as much as I do, you can get 20% off with this exclusive coupon code: innovativemindset
It's also brought to you by Gloria Chou's PR Starter Pack. If you want to get featured in the media, this is your best first step. https://izoldat.krtra.com/t/so6Aw0yCuva4
[00:00:00] Izolda: Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg, I'm super happy that you're here and I'm also happy to talk to you about creativity today. Creativity, Tuesdays are going to be a thing from now on, and I'm really excited to do this in part, because I want to really get down into the nitty-gritty of the four CS that's creativity, compassion.
[00:00:28] Collaboration and curiosity and curiosity and creativity, they go together. And I actually looked up the exact definition of curiosity in the dictionary, and it's really very simple. It is the desire to learn or know about something being inquisitive. And so the question then becomes. What is curiosity's role in creativity?
[00:00:56] Curiosity is the thing that gives you the need to follow the thread of [00:01:00] an idea. Right? So if we think of creativity as following the spark of the idea, the, the, the notion that you decide you want to do something, curiosity is the need to know about it, or to learn about it, to see where it's going to go.
[00:01:15] So that need to follow the thread of an idea because. Really important. But before that you don't want to discount the idea or the thought when it pops up, instead of. You can get curious as to why it bubbled up in the first place, what it is and if applicable, what problem it solves. If your idea's creative in nature, it can go one of three ways.
[00:01:39] It can simply exist and be part of the world's stories. It might be a painting or a piece of music or an interpretive dance or performance art that adds to the human experience and the human condition. Right? If you, if you decide to write a book or a short story or a poem, it is part of that human experience.
[00:01:58] And it becomes [00:02:00] an excellent opportunity to get creative and curious about what that notion is trying to tell you if you're an artist of some sort and, you know, I believe that we're all artists in one way or another, you'll need to figure out for yourself whether or not this idea, this seed of creativity is something you want to pursue.
[00:02:17] If you're curious, of course you want to pursue it. You might have to rearrange your schedule or figure out a way to pursue it, but pursue it. Yet you have to figure out for yourself whether or not it meets one of the other two criteria. The next criterion is you might be interested in making an impact.
[00:02:38] You might be interested with this idea in sort of affecting people or situations or the world at large. You might want to get them thinking or doing things differently. The last has. Driven creators and innovators and adventurers for ever. I'll have a lot to say about this, but, but this [00:03:00] one is super important.
[00:03:02] Let's look at why. And here's what I mean by that. If you are a creative and you have a mission, if you're trying to solve a particular problem, all of a sudden you slide into. Being an innovator, right? To me, an innovator is a creative person with a mission. And so you might want to solve the problem to make things easier or to help, right?
[00:03:34] You want them, you might want to make money and making money is great. No question. But there can be something infinitely, more satisfying because you're compassionate about something or you're solving a problem to help yourself. But also others. The inventor of the, uh, electric washing machine remains unknown.
[00:03:53] The actual person, various people hold patents for various parts of it and various advances. But let's [00:04:00] look at the notion of going from beating clothes against rocks, to putting them in a drum and rolling them around to putting in paddles inside the drum so that the clothes get agitated even more and get cleaner to all of the various types and iterations until we come to the modern washing machine, then pretty much do everything.
[00:04:22] And here's, here's an example of why this kind of innovation and creativity can be a really beautiful thing as far as helping others and, or solving a problem. I was standing in line the other day at, uh, the kitchen bus at union square and in Manhattan, uh, they were, they're giving out free slices of vegan cheese pizza, and I was waiting to get my slice of vegan cheese.
[00:04:48] Cause they've released a new vegan mozzarella and it's fabulous. And I started talking to the woman in line behind me. Then she was upset because there's too much technology. She said, it's too much. It's going too [00:05:00] fast. And then she said something I found very interesting. She said, Technology's going to take all our jobs.
[00:05:06] And that actually gave me a wonderful opening. And I said, but what about the jobs nobody wants to do? Let's take, for example, uh, uh, look at all of the garbage on these New York city streets. What if there were robots who went around and picked up all the trash, then people wouldn't necessarily need to be the ones doing it.
[00:05:26] And robots would probably be doing a better job and they also wouldn't necessarily mind. I, this is my own judgment here. I do not like the notion of being a, uh, a garbage picker-upper. They made, there may be people who love it, it's it, it is not for me. And I imagine some jobs are not jobs. Any human is going to want to do so getting a robot or some other tech to do, it might be a beautiful thing.
[00:05:53] And her eyes lit up. Like it was Christmas morning. She said, you mean we'd have garbage pickup that worked. We wouldn't [00:06:00] have bags and torn stuff all over the streets because robots are do it. I told her sure it was possible. I mean, maybe not today, but someday. And she loved the idea. She'd been thinking about all the jobs that would be lost, but she hadn't been thinking about the fact that some of those jobs are jobs that we humans don't want to do and robots wouldn't mind doing it all.
[00:06:20] So that notion of. Solving problems and creativity becomes really. And she said you've changed my mind. And I was actually surprised about that, but she, she did, she, she asked a question that I thought was a Stute. She said, but how are those people going to make money? And I said, well, wouldn't it be cool if they didn't have to pick up garbage and were therefore freed up to follow a different path, maybe they want to be a writer.
[00:06:46] Maybe they want to drive a bus. Maybe they want to have their own business delivering roller skates or electric bikes to houses. So the people who want them don't have to go hunting for them, but can just have. Delivered. I'm not sure what they could do, but it seems pretty limitless. [00:07:00] And I'm not saying everybody has to become an entrepreneur, but some of these jobs that we don't really want to do, I'm assuming here, I admit they could be moved away through new inventions and new innovations.
[00:07:10] And then those people who'd been doing those jobs can do something else. And what that is, I'm not. And of course we'd have to look at the infrastructure of things like that. And of course, we would have to take care of the people whose jobs would no longer be to pick up garbage for example. But what if we made that change?
[00:07:27] What if we looked at this all a little differently? How cool would that be? If somebody is innovation, somebody's creativity. Being driven by wanting to solve a problem, allowed people the freedom to pursue different kinds of work or pastimes, right. Anything that helps us save time. Because remember time is, is finite, right?
[00:07:53] We all only have so much time. And so if something comes along that allows you to save time, like [00:08:00] the dishwasher, for example, right? You doing dishes by hand is one thing, loading the dishwasher, having to do all the work and then just taking the dishes out and putting them away. That's that's an hour or so that's saved, right?
[00:08:12] That's that's yours. And we don't tend to think of it. If we have a dishwasher, we don't tend to think of it as, as a big deal, but it's a huge deal. Remember if you ever lived in a time where you didn't have a dishwasher or a place where you didn't have a dishwasher, it is a big deal. So, and there are still parts of the world, certainly where there are no dishwashers.
[00:08:31] So when we look at this sort of thing, when we look at the innovations that come in and help people save time, so that those people are then freed up to do other things. That's a really big deal. And in fact, I was just talking to a couple of podcast guests who are going to be on the show soon about the little sun.
[00:08:51] Uh, it's a, it's a solar powered light. It's called a little sun shaped like a flower. It's really cute. And the reason this little [00:09:00] sun is a beautiful thing is because the person who and I can never remember his name, he's an architect who lives in Iceland, but I just can't remember his name. I'll have to put it in the show notes, uh, Elias somebody, anyway, he invented this little solar powered light, and every time you buy one, they send.
[00:09:18] To somewhere in Africa that does not have a light infrastructure. They don't have in indoor lighting. And so people who want to read at night or who want to do, do things at night after working, if they want to hang out and play a game or read or learn or study or work or work, even they can now do it because that little second.
[00:09:39] Is solar powered. So you charge it during the day. And then in the evening you have light and in an area of the world where there isn't that kind of artificial light happening. Uh, that's a huge, huge deal. It saves people a lot of time and it actually doesn't save them time. It gives them time. It [00:10:00] gives them time to be able to go ahead and.
[00:10:05] Do things that would otherwise be impossible. And so this notion of being creative, this guy's an architect, the guy who started it, he's an innovator because he's doing it. You know, he's being creative with a mission. He got curious about what, what kind of thing he could do to help people who don't have a way of seeing at night?
[00:10:27] How cool is that? That, that he got curious about it and he didn't stop. Right. When the idea came to him, what if I did that? What if I created something that would help people in parts of the world that don't have artificial light for nighttime? What if I did something to help them see and he didn't go, yeah, that'll never work.
[00:10:45] Instead he went home. Okay, let me pay attention to this. Let me get curious about what I could do. And that brings me back to that notion of curiosity. What do we need to do? To [00:11:00] follow the curiosity to follow the idea. I mean, what do we need to do? How, how do we keep space? Well, being mindful about, or being aware that the idea has come and honoring that instant is really important.
[00:11:16] So here's my mission for you. As I, as I said earlier, you know, I believe that we are all creative people. We are all innately possessive of our own unique creative genius. And so you have ideas, ideas come to you, and I'm going to ask you to either go to the idea document, and I'm going to put a link to it in the show notes that I developed.
[00:11:40] Uh, it's it, it's yours for the keeping, right? You can go to the idea document and add your ideas in, and it's not my idea document. You would actually make a copy of it, grab it and use it to your heart's content. It's it will be yours. Cause you'll make a copy. That's going to be your personal copy, but it gives you the opportunity to jot down [00:12:00] your ideas and or you could keep a notebook, whatever it is you must for the next week.
[00:12:07] Jot down those ideas in the idea document or a little notebook or a piece of paper or on your phone and your notes app. However you do it. If an idea comes to you instead of going, no, no, no, I don't have time for that right now instead go, okay. This idea came, whatever it is, it could be. I know what I want for dinner.
[00:12:25] It could be, I figured out how to do, uh, flying cars. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you, instead of going out, I don't have time. Stop what you're doing and note it down, jot it down, uh, recorded into your, into your voice memo app on your phone, whatever it is, note down, whatever ideas you have and at the end of the week, go through and listen to, or read your ideas and see if any of them have merit.
[00:12:58] If any of them [00:13:00] spike your curiosity. Having the idea and getting curious about it is the first, there are the first two steps of unleashing your inner. Ingenious innovator. And that is what we're talking about here. Creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens when the idea strikes from inspiration from without, or from your subconscious or from a dream doesn't matter.
[00:13:25] But then you have the curiosity about it to see where it will take you and that desire to know or learn about something is what will propel you forward to make curiosity and creativity a bigger part of your. All righty. So you have your mission. I'm going to put the idea documents, uh, in the show notes, the I, the link for the idea document in the show notes, and I hope that you've enjoyed today's short episode.
[00:13:51] I am Izolda Trakhtenberg and I will be back tomorrow to talk about compassion. I have a feeling we're going to be talking about the wild tomorrow fund and the. [00:14:00] Amazing people who run it. Uh, Wendy Hapgood was just on the show a few weeks ago. And I'm going to talk a little bit about what they're trying to do and the difference between, uh, or actually the relationship between wildlife conservation and habitat reclamation, because compassion Wednesdays are just as important as creativity, Tuesdays and collaboration, Thursdays and mindfulness Fridays.
[00:14:24] So we're going to have a whole bunch of different ways of looking at innovation and. I will talk to you tomorrow, but if you're liking this episode, I would love it. If you would review the show, tell me what you're thinking, and if you really love it, tell a friend until next time, this is his older reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.
* I am a Brain.fm affiliate. If you purchase it through the above links and take the 20% off, I’ll get a small commission. I'm also a PR Starter Pack Affiliate. I use Gloria's methods to get featured in the media often. And please remember, I’ll never recommend a product or service I don’t absolutely love!