Passion and Sustainability
What an amazing time we live in! Change and challenges are everywhere! Oil spills, floods, melting icecaps, not to mention economic and debt crises. Whenever I stop and reflect, I am always surprised at the number of events and changes that have taken place.
I am reminded of the idea that passion is one of the most constant factors in our lives and work and that if we lose touch with what is most important to us, then it is just so easy to be carried away by the currents of change. However coming from a place of connectedness with our passions, it seems to me the world is just doing its thing, sometimes madly, sometimes brilliantly. We remain centered in ourselves.
Institutions continually change. Fortune 500 companies are estimated to have life expectancies of only 40 to 50 years. Families, friendships and business relationships change. Governments change. Technologies change.
And what has this to do with sustainability? I think everything. Sustainability requires patience and persistent aware action in the face of change and evolution. Passion can provide this.
I have always felt passionate about making a difference to the environment or sustainability.
This passion has largely fuelled my personal career transition from Investment Banking to Passion Mapping – a winding and surprising journey. After Ieaving the world of conventional investment banking behind, I hoped to bring my financial markets skills to sustainability projects.I enjoyed a period when I worked to arrange financing for sustainability projects. Most available work was for heritage rather than environmental projects and I have fond memories of working on a World Bank project in China with a small group of architectural heritage consultants. My role was to develop a financing structure for the conservation the heritage of Lioaning province including parts of the Great Wall. Carrying the name ‘Wallman’, some of my Chinese colleagues considered this most auspicious generating lots of laughs as there was no equivalent Chinese name.
Soon I realized that most environmental projects used inappropriate technology and for me to contribute to environmental sustainability, my focus needed to shift to encouraging the use of appropriate technology rather than of securing investment funds. After a while I realized that many people and aid organizations did not understand how to use appropriate technology and my focus needed to shift again to the knowledge around sustainable technology, rather than the technology itself. Shifting to the newly emerging field of ‘knowledge management’ transported me into the fascinating realm of learning and the amazing questions of mind and consciousness.
Something worried me. We can know something intellectually but we can also know the same thing in a deeper and embodied way. What was this? And what did it have to do with sustainability? It dawned on me one day that, although most people ‘knew’ the environment intellectually; their connection was not embodied. And if they were not connected to their own bodies, how could they be connected with the physicality of nature and fully care for their environment. I was one of them.
My journey from there involved all sorts of discoveries and in particular my continuing yoga practice. Passion Mapping evolved as a means of accessing and integrating the deeper knowing we all have. And working with Passion Mapping has been a wonderful journey of discovery in its own right. I have been blessed to observe many times what is possible when our passions, which emerge from this deep whole place in ourselves, are liberated and focused on our goals.
And it is interesting for me to observe that my passion has been at work the whole time.
One journey of discovery and possibility that has inspired me is that of our featured Passion Maps practitioner, Paula Drayton, who is also passionate about sustainability and is about to launch her new business, Sustainability Coach.
The full Sustainability Coach website will be unveiled on September 7, 2010.
By Peter Wallman