Turning Our Climate Change Ship Around - Some Baby Steps For Getting Started

Posted on 24 February 2023

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~ Taking Baby Steps~
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Effecting change on a mass scale takes many people making many efforts. And those efforts can come in many sizes - point being, start small if you have to, but Start. 
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Here are some mental baby steps:
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Seek Inspiration - It is easier to act on things that inspire us. In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about the power of inspiration to fuel change, and how enthusiasm is like a wave that we ride, it crests, we rest, and then we ride it when it rolls in again.
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Listen To Your Intuition - It's a skill, and some people never learn it. For others, it may take a lifetime, but it is a skill worth honing, and an inner friend and advisor who's got your back. Your intuition can be your truth-teller in a world of misdirection and lies...As George Orwell wrote in 1984, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
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Think Critically - It can be hard to do, but the more you do it the easier it becomes. As William James said, “A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” Critical thinking is realizing that you are the product of your mindset, or as Alan Watts says, “We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
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Embrace Your Imagination - The world needs it! It's a lens, and when we look through it we realize that the world indeed does suffer from a failure of imagination. In the words of Lewis Carroll, “Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.” In the words of Albert Einstein, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.” Ultimately, though, Charlie Chaplin gets the closing word: “Imagination means nothing without doing.”
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Announce Your Intention - The universe wants to help you. Often the best way to take action on something that seems daunting is to simply announce that you are going to do it. Next thing you know, it starts getting done. And it's interesting to remember that there's action "for" and action "against". As Ursula K. Le Guin says, “To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.”
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Baby Steps Begin Within - There are so many baby steps we can take towards effecting change at home and fighting the larger fight against climate change. But some of the bigger, more difficult changes need to begin within our own minds. So remembering the old adage helps in getting started: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." And, looking forward, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said: 
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"You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
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