Homepage
An Invitation to Evolve: Changing Ourselves to Change Our World. A Fireside Chat with Dr. Renee Lertzman and Jo Confino 

A 90 minute fireside chat on zoom

How can we be impactful in our sustainability work, and yet feel at peace by letting go of the sense of urgency and the expectations we feel all around us ? How can we work through our own climate grief, anxiety, and fears, to create more inviting and less alienating spaces for our stakeholders to join us in our work?

Our sustainability work can easily push us to the verge of burnout, disconnected from ourselves and others, and in a state of constant urgency and resulting anxiety. When we get stuck in cycles of busy-ness, our own nervous systems become over activated. We feel starved of the inner resources that let us be more at peace, more spacious and at home in ourselves. We experience a false binary: either I indulge in working on myself, or I work on changing the world out there; as if the two were disconnected and the first were a form of self-indulgence that we cannot afford.

But it does not need to be that way. We can do both – do work on ourselves and work on changing the world.

As sustainability practitioners we can tune inwards to create more spaciousness, to work through our conflicting emotions,including anxiety, grief, and a need for validation – and do meaningful work from a different place, feeling more at home in ourselves.

In this virtual fireside chat, Renee Lertzman and Jo Confino will be in dialogue with each other on this topic and will share their wisdom from their experiences in climate psychology, journalism, and years of mindfulness practice with zen masters.

Renee Lertzman is a world-renowned existential change psychologist and strategist, who has pioneered work on the complex responses we have to climate change and existential threats, and how important it is to tune into the anxiety, ambivalence, and aspirations in ourselves and others. Her 2019 TED talk has over 2 million views  https://www.ted.com/talks/renee_lertzman_how_to_turn_climate_anxiety_into_action?language=en

Jo Confino is an executive coach, spiritual mentor, workshop facilitator, journalist, and sustainability expert. Jo has worked for 17 years with Zen masters such as Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village in France. As a journalist for over 35 years, he has had a successful career spanning many roles, including executive director at What’s Working for the HuffPost, as journalist and editorial director of the Guardian Sustainable Business website, and as Wall Street correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.