Sustainability from the Inside Out
The Spodek Method
Created by Josh Spodek (JoshuaSpodek.com), seen on The Daily Show and featured in the New York Times Magazine, and Heritige Foundation Podcast, and profiled in The New Yorker
Author of Sustainability Simplified: the Definitive Guide to Understanding and Solving All (Yes, All) Our Environmental Problems
Next starting date: March 6, 2025
Thursdays 7-9PM US ET
8 weeks
2 hours of homework each week on average
Asking price: $700, but pay what you choose, no one will be turned away as long as they invest something. Please get in touch if you can't spare the money StandingMarmotAT@gmail.com. The money allows people to do this as an income stream rather than limiting the pool of teachers to only those who can afford to volunteer.
Facilitators: Joshua Myrvaagnes, teaching assistant Evelyn Wallace
Hear experiences of former participants of Joshua Spodek's workshop here (what got me to sign up for it when I took it).
Get in touch for a 20" phonecall to sense if this is the right fit for you here (Standing Marmot AT (abbreviation for Alexander Technique) at G Mail dot com.
Or just sign up here.
About your instructors:
Joshua Myrvaagnes
My pollution footprint last year was 26% of the U.S. average, down from about 50% some years ago, and I believe I can continue to reduce it. Nature has long been an infinite inspiration for me. I teach Alexander Technique (movement learning). I live in a small town with my partner, some poultry, and a livestock guardian dog. We are one of the poorest towns in my state on paper, but we have spirit.
Evelyn Wallace
I live in RURAL (wonderful) Eastern Oregon and spend most of my time breathing in and out.
What I hope to gain from this community is: how to better spread the message of this AMAZING thing Spodek designed and the rest of us have discovered. How do we best show people that looking at sustainability with a stink eye is like looking at free money with the same sourpuss face? Or that not flying isn't about the absence of a desired activity so much as it is about the presence of (as Lorna Davis said) being present?
What I can offer this community is: my own genuine, authentic experience about how living more sustainably alleviates pain points I had no idea were connected to living unsustainably.
My vision, and what I believe we can achieve, is a world where people grow up to live their inner values and are free to share their gifts, are strongly supported, and live in cooperation with nature and it's brilliance.
This is touchy subject, and it goes to the core of our inner conflict.
Here are some resistances that I've been able to work through:
How can my one individual action matter without systemic change?
Collectives are made up of individuals. The rare individual acting alone does not make much difference, but that individual leading others can. The individual who does not change her/himself first has much less power to influence others; the hypocrisy undermines the argument. Leading by example linked with leading by supporting others can scale. In addition, the important thing is the exponential growth, not the current tiny dent that the individual makes.
Who are you to call me corrupt and judge me?
I didn't call anyone corrupt, and I am not in a place to judge anyone. What I do think is that we've all inherited corrupted thoughts and premises.
We aren’t saying you personally are corrupt. We are saying that the corrupting society is the water we swim in. We have a collective insanity as regards our environment. And many seeming virtues are placed on the faulty foundation of corrupted thinking. Our very instincts are shaped by the influence of pollution-based thinking, such that it feels strange to do the sane thing.
I can’t get anyone to commit to something, I’m not a leader
if you keep on experimenting diligently, I believe you will find it will fall into place. People do want to live more by their values, and you are tryign to help. If you keep experimenting you’ll land on something. Each failure is information, and experience is the best teacher. If you want to get to Carnegie Hall, you start by playing scales. (And you never stop playing scales even at advanced levels of musicianship.) This is a skill, not a natural, innate ability. It is true that some people have been born throughout history with a knack for it, or stumbled on the essence of leadership, but nowadays there is plenty of study of the art of leadership, and it CAN be taught. It isn’t head knowledge, it can’t be memorized and regurgitated, but anyone who’s willing to keep practicing _will_ get better at it.
Is everyone supposed to move to a New York City apartment and get some solar panels?
There are an infinite variety of ways to reduce one’s pollution impact. The Spodek Method is about a mindset shift, such that we choose increments of progress in leaving the environment better than we found it. What these specifically look like will vary from individual to individual. Less information about this is better at the early sages, as the inspiration to act must come from within the individual.
Can't we just innovate our way out of this with cleaner energy?
It's not clear enough to bet the human race on. Solar panels and wind turbines take energy to build, and they take energy to recycle. The accounting of how much is very complex, but it is not “free” energy. There is some argument for using these—minimally—instead of burning non-renewable fossil fuels, but it is not a full solution. It is not a full solution because we, humans, are also growing as a population. As long as we make things easier by growing our technology, we make it easier, given our insane thinking basis, to grow faster. In fact, if we had a completely free energy source, we would destroy the planet’s other resources much more quickly and destroy our species sooner than without! The Jervons paradox is this: that an energy-saving technology will simply enable more consumption of that energy. Once it’s possible to fly places quickly in a plane, it’s easy to move to a faraway city, and fly back home to visit family for holidays. But it is not sustainable.
We can innovate in the sense of innovating—creating new—ways of finding joy in solvent stewardship, but not in the sense of creating more efficient ways to pollute and consume.
How does a tiny first commitment matter?
The first commitment a person does shows the result of their experiment, in their own experience. The rewards of this experiment are reinforcing. Josh Spodek started with a small commitment, but found it made his life noticeably better. This was a basis for making a second and a third experiment and so on. Without a first win it’s difficult to find a way to move forward.
But aren't you really asking people to sacrifice, which they will never do.?
Sacrifice is a matter of perspective. If I go to the gym and lift weights, someone might call it sacrifice in the interest of health, while another person would view it as a satisfying sensation. Raising a child is very challenging, but few people would describe the endeavor as a net loss, as being primarily a sacrifice. The rewards are not monetary or material, but they are real.
How can I do a Sustainability Leadership technique if I'm not sustainable yet?
It is true that you need to focus on leading yourself, but any person can support another in finding an emotional connection to nature, coming up with a commitment that will generate some of those emotions, and support them in carrying it out. Social support around a goal makes a difference for most people. We are evoking a cultural change, making a tiny culture pocket of two people whose culture validates environmental stewardship and environmental joy, both, and this support is invaluable. Remember also that your first steps may be small but as you gain practice at finding rewarding ways of being a larger steward of nature, it will become closer and closer to sustainable and eventually reach that goal.
How can we possibly have a sustainable world when we need fossil fuels for hospitals and…?
While there are many was that we could paint a picture of such a world, there's no single answer that we can give you that's going to convince everyone completely, and guarantee that we're going to succeed. The fact is we just miss 100% of the shots we don't take, beyond that, you will have to try this out and see what happens in your own experience...
We can also point to civilizations present—the Hadza, the Kogi, and the San, which have a high reported level of happiness—and past ones, such as the Hawaiian civilization which was self-sufficient within a small number of islands for at least 500 years before contact with any outsider; the 99% of human history before industrialization, the many settlers who defected from the British for a better quality of life with American Indians. No verbal description is going to convince anyone %100, and there's always another fear that someone can come up with, so you’ll need to conduct the experiment yourself of trying out the mindset shift process.
Another way of approaching this would be putting out how we've had mindset shifts at various points in history in the past. In 1850 almost nobody in America thought the country could end slavery.
Our minds make up predictions, and this helps us simplify our maneuvering around daily life, but these predictions can be wildly inaccurate.
They can also be self-fulfilling prophecies. As Henry Ford is quoted, “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.” We broke the four-minute mile--one runner first, then immediately many others, because now it was impossible to believe it couldn't be done. People move the w ay they move based on their beliefs, not the facts, and the same is true of how we behave.
I am living far, far closer to sustainably today than I ever thought was possible in the past, and much more certainly so. I could up my game more with the help of a changed mindset, and it is a joy. I want to share this with you.
Try the Spodek Method right now with a friend, enemy, or stranger:
Intrinsic Motivation for Sustainability Method (Spodek Method) (Joshua M.’s Version)
1 What's an experience of nature you had in childhood that made an especially strong impression on you?
(What were the colors, sounds, smells, any other sensations?)
2 What feelings did you feel then? can you name the emotions?
(Speak the names of the emotions back to the person, 2 or 3 is plenty).
3 For the next question, there are three constraints and I'm going to tell you those before I ask the question.
a) something new that you're not already planning to do
b) something you do yourself, vs. paying or making someone else do
c) something that leaves nature some bit better than you found it--or some increment less harmed--by your own standards, in some physical way that could be measured. Again, just some tiny bit is enough to meet the constraints.
The question is this: What's something you can do in your life today that can give you some of those emotions you had in your childhood experience in nature? (name the emotions again)
This step can trip people up, and if the person says "let me get back to you" I offer to help them brainstorm if they wish for 10-15".
4) Chunk it down to a manageable commitment they'll make to themselves, and schedule it on the calendar
5) schedule a follow-up call to find out how it went, if it gave them the emotions they wanted to feel again, and to support them in carrying through on it.
The most important thing is the emotions, not the size of the commitment. If the person has a "win" the first time then they'll want to do more, and from tiny first steps can come bigger and bigger ones.
The Spodek Method Quick-Start Guide
(original method by Josh Spodek)
The Four Steps:
0. Break the ice: “Is the environment something important to you, enough to act on it?”
1. What does the environment mean to you?
2. I invite you to think of something you can do to act on that meaning.
3. Make it a SMART goal
4. Schedule second conversation
Steps 1 and 2 are leadership: evoke intrinsic emotions and motivation, then help them come up
with a way to act on them. They’ll feel inspired.hh
Steps 3 and 4 are management that help them do the commitment.
More Detail
Step 1
Sub-steps of this step
• Evoke quintessential moment. I like to start with “Different people think of the
environment differently, depending on where they grew up, for example. Can you think of
a quintessential moment of yourself in the environment?”
◦ I find the younger they are, the more meaningful.
• “Can you describe what you see, taste, smell, touch, hear? What’s your sensory
experience?”
• “Can you name the emotions you feel?”
This step is done when they’ve named some emotions that sound genuine and meaningful.
Step 2
• Build on the emotions from the last step: I usually say “Based on the emotions you felt in
nature, I invite you to think of something you can do to act on them in your regular life.
• Make sure to say “I’m not saying something that almost everyone hears, which is to do
something to fix problems. This is for you to act on what you value” before they respond.
If they say “But individual action doesn’t matter,” it’s hard to get out of that mindset.
• Three constraints: Something
a. New, that they aren’t already doing
b. They do themselves, with their own hands, not for someone else to do
c. A physical component. They don’t have to measure, but it should feel they left the
world better than they found it.
• Tell them it can take five or ten minutes to come up with something
• Don’t let them get away with “I’ll get back to you on it.”
Steps 3 and 4
It’s easier to avoid, say, meat for dinner five days a week for a month than “to eat less meat.”
The second conversation adds accountability. When people are effectively led, accountability adds motivation. Plus you communicate that you want to hear their results.