Awareness: First Steps to Sustainable Change
August 17, 2010 by Julie Urlaub
Filed under •-Feature, Nature
Whenever you want to improve in a specific area or program, just the process of increasing awareness will yield improvements. The same applies to living a sustainable lifestyle. Most of us recognize that change can be tricky: habits and convenience make it far easier to slip back into the comfortable way of doing things. However, implementing effective sustainable change does not have to be a laboring process. The key is conscious awareness.
Awareness is the tool used to help discover the personal patterns of behavior that offer low hanging fruit for a sustainable lifestyle. For instance, are you aware of your habits related to energy? Consider how and when you consume the most energy in your day? How could you be more efficient? What inspiring eco actions could you take?
Conscious awareness is key to sparking the eco awareness in a personal sustainability program. As noted in our eco friendly training, following are aids to assist in raising awareness:
• Consciously notice what is most inspiring to you about living green and take eco action in those areas.
• Notice your current patterns and invoke curiosity as to which eco actions would be a sustainable substitute.
• Applaud your efforts: small changes add up. In fact, daily habits have the most impact.
• Observe how new changes become the new habit/ norm.
• Momentum brings visibility to previously inaccessible ideas and behaviors.
• Gain speed: There is ease in taking more eco action.
• Inspire by living the example.
Each day we are presented with opportunities to expand our eco awareness and make informed choices. The trick to capitalizing on those opportunities is being aware. Conscious awareness offers us the opportunity to make changes that are inspiring and manageable relative our current life and the process of incorporating sustainability becomes much easier. Being aware of sustainability concepts when shopping, or at work and play, contributes to living a more sustainable lifestyle.
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As a catalyst for sustainability, a matchmaker for green business relationships and a promoter of green products and services, Julie Urlaub, Founder and Managing Partner of Taiga Company, consults, writes, speaks, blogs and tweets on how viewing your world through the lens of sustainability can refresh your business and deliver uncommon results. Her effervescent attitude inspires others to eco-action. With superstar green blogging power and over 20,000 followers on Twitter, she works with companies to not only maximize sustainability strategies, but also leverage social media to communicate their story of how sustainability is making a difference in their business and our world. Julie’s work is featured on several websites including CSRVault.com, SocialYell.com, GreenEconomyPost.com, BusinessExchange.com, VividLife.com, ModernHippieMag.com and many others. Not only does she walk the talk, she rides it too as an endurance mountain bike racer. |
