#177: Is life sustainable?
Hey - here's my latest newsletter. Find more of my writing in the links at the end.
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I’ve been asking myself a question lately.
A question about how we live our lives.
About our health and our sustainability on this planet.
Is our life sustainable?
Or, more personal, how sustainable is my life?
Over the last 5 years I’ve built a mental health business with the sole purpose of creating spaces for people to grow, heal and connect.
A space I needed and through coaching and therapy I have healed, changed and grown.
No matter how impactful the coaching may be, or how much I heal from my past traumas in therapy. I still live in a world that is mostly unchanged and I look outside and see a world burning, in desperate need of change. I see rising wealth inequality all around me and I see our climate changing to the point of emergency.
A friend shared this story with me after meeting a sage older woman whilst travelling in India for 6 months..
"I don't understand.”
“You risk your health to climb the corporate ladder, chase money and get that next promotion.”
“And then use that same money to buy your health back."
Imagining this conversation and the point it rubs against, has stayed with me. It’s not just about personal health, it’s about the irony of capitalism, how we’ve industrialised the self-care industry. How now we need to pay for and profit from medicines, or practices that heal us, or make us feel better. It feels like a metaphor not just for westerners but for the whole world in general, let’s DO more and use the profit to fix what we destroyed along the way. It’s warped.
Why meditate, do yoga, go to therapy and “buy” all of this self-care just to continue to live the same lifestyle that expends energy and creates psychological damage, for me to need to mend myself again?
The raft of self-care products at our finger tips now, are they solving the problems in our world? Or are they an antidote to a poisonous and polluted world that we live in?
Do we all need to do more therapy, more yoga and more meditation? Or do we need to change how we live?
The individual interventions are remarkable and coaching and therapy have changed my life immeasurably. Yet will they change our collective way of being? In 100 years will humanity be enlightened enough, aware enough to make the changes to how we live that are necessary for the health of our people and planet?
I’m not sure and I am not sure we have time.
No matter how much therapy I did I felt beaten down by the fact I can never own a home where I lived (London).
No matter how many coaching sessions I went to I felt sad that I only saw my family on special occasions.
No matter how much I meditate I can’t stop myself raging at our global political leadership.
No matter how much I write in my journal I can’t help but feel powerless to change the policies or processes that are needed to impact the climate crisis.
We as individuals can take responsibility and take ownership for how we feel. We can learn to grieve, to accept and we can be compassionate. Yet our wider culture and environment we exist in will win and grind us down.
So what needs to change?
I don’t know, but I know that for me personally going to therapy more isn’t going to make me any more fulfilled than I already am. I’m sure there will be more personal work for me to do and more “inner work”, but I also need to make environmental changes too.
What I know I need to change is how I live.
That might include where I live, what I do for a living, what I eat, what I buy, where I spend money, who I vote for, how I engage in ‘society’, what products I use both online and offline.
I feel called to a different way of life. A slower way of life. A quieter life. A life more connected to nature, a life more connected to people.
This all feels like a distant mirage to me right now, yet I know something about how I live has to change. Whereas for the last 5 years I’ve changed myself, now I feel like I must change my environment. This is less about who I am in the world and about how I am in the world.
This is all raw from the source, I’ve not idea where this will lead.
Today, I just had to share it.
Cheers,
James x
Loweswater, Lake District (Get in Mozz)
My Spotify Wrapped
What I'm writing
Nothing new this week, but I have put all of my "Published Writing" for you here.
Last newsletter - #176: i find writing really hard
What I'm reading
I'm reading Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
My pocket read is A Very Short Introduction to Politics by Ken Minogue
My book - 'Mental Health at Work'
You can order my book 'Mental Health at Work' from Amazon, Bookshop.org, Foyles and Waterstones
You can listen to my book as an Audio Book too! Here it is on Audble.
Personal Website with writing and other bits -
https://jamesroutledge.co/
Sanctus OnlIne Gym with daily journaling classes - https://sanctus.community/welcome
Sanctus website with more about Coaching in the workplace -
https://sanctus.io/
Who am I?
I'm the Founder of a Mental Health business; Sanctus and I'm the Author of "Mental Health at Work" that's published by Penguin.
I write this newsletter about mental health, startups and my life journey. 8,000 people like it enough to still be here. I try to respond to everyone who emails me, it just takes me a while.