Colin Beavan

have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Colin Bevan.

Colin's writings, speaking, consulting, and activism have changed and encouraged tens of thousands of people to examine their lives to discover what's really important to them. Colin is among the world's best known spokespeople on environmental issues, consumerism and human quality of life. He was labeled one of the ten most influential men on MSN and Eco Illuminator by All magazine and a Best Green Ambassador by tree Hugger dot com. His blog was selected as one of the top fifteen

environmental blogs by Time Magazine. Colin has appeared on The Coal Bear, Raport, Good Morning America Nightline, and countless other TV and radio shows. Here's the interview. Hi Colin, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, thanks for having me. I'm excited to get you on. Your new book is called How to Be Alive, a Guide to the kind of

happiness that helps the world. And really the whole book is pretty much a focus on what it means to live a good life, and and our our subtitle for the show is Conversations about creating a life worth living. So this should be a great discussion. I was first introduced to you, like many many people were, when you were doing the No Impact Man project. And I started a solar energy company a very similar time too when you started the No Impact Man project. So we certainly, uh,

we're walking in some parallel directions back then. So I'm interested to get more into what you're doing now, Yeah, great, and thanks for doing some work in solar energy. That's definitely the good life right there. Yes, it was, although doing solar energy in Ohio and the political structure in Ohio slowly made it not quite as much of a good life, But I understand. So let's start, like we

always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,

which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. You know, it's it's thinking. It's a lovely parable, um because it tells us that we have choices and how we live and and and it's also kind of a gentle parable. It doesn't say you know, you have to kill the parts of you that, UM feel unwholesome. It just it just tells you to focus on the parts of you that feel wholesome. And

I like that too, um. And what interested me was that there's a part in my book where I say the entire are underlying principle of this book is to have the life that you want, and to have a life that's not just good for you, but good for your community and good for the world. All you have to do is, day by day, give more energy to that which is true for you, and give less energy

to that which is not true for you. And that presupposes that what's actually and deeply and most profoundly true for you is what makes you happier and what helps other people too. So the idea is that you don't have to change your whole life radically, just at this moment, just day by day, take energy away from what's not true, give more energy to what is true, and and in many ways that's feeding one wolf and not the other exactly,

it's very similar. That was one of the things I was going to get to in the book is that I love that quote, which I think you've said kind of sums up. If you take a something page book and put it down into two lines, that was kind of what you said would be the the biggest summary of the book. That's right, I mean, I mean, then what happens in the book is it talks about the different relationships that we have with the world. I say that our life, ourself in fact, resides in our relationship

with the world. It's a delusion actually that we're separate from the world, where one thing, both the world and ourselves, reside in our relationship between the two. And we have lots of these relationships. We relate to the world through the food we through the way we transport ourselves, through our civic engagement, through are friends, through our jobs. That's just for There's hundreds of ways we relate to the world.

And so the book largely is about saying, how do I give energy to what is true in the various types of relationships we have, Because sometimes, even though it sounds so simple to give more energy to what's true

for you, give less energy to what's not true for you. Um, it takes a little sorting out to kind of figure out how to do that in the different ways that we relate Early on in the book, you reference no Impact Man and No Impact Man for people who aren't aware, was your attempt over the course of a year to have as little negative impact on the earth from environmental

perspective as possible. And you say that the surprising result of No Impact Man is that I learned that we don't have to deprive ourselves for the sake of the world. It is not about not wanting things. Instead, we simply have to learn to want the things that actually make us happy. What are those things? Can I just say that for me, this is so inspiring, this idea that what's truly good for me is also good for everybody else,

That it's not as zero sum gain. What truly makes me happy also happens to be good for other people, and that that's a wonderful thing. We don't have to reside in this place where we're either a martyr who's giving up everything for the world and everybody else, or a scoundrel where we are actually only caring about ourselves and doing things for ourselves. But I actually have a schema where you can be a victim, which is somebody who doesn't do anything for themselves or the world because

they feel, you know, they can't. A scoundrel who does everything for themselves and not the world, a martyr who does everything for the world and not themselves for the hero who actually takes care of both at the same time. And all of us have that hero within us. So the research is very strong. My own lay person's way of saying, it is becoming yourself to help the world

and helping the world to become yourself. You know, that could sound fastile, like it's some sort of a New Age saying or something, but the psychological research shows that it's true. We have more or less for psychological needs relating to our happiness, and when we fulfill these needs, we feel satisfied. One is obviously just the need for security and to have our physical needs met shelter, food, sex, water, sleep. Then these other needs are The first need is autonomy.

We need to feel as though we're the authors of our own actions that were not compelled to behave by either reward or punishment. But we're happiest when we're actually behaving from the root of our being. That's called autonomy. The second thing is competence. We need to feel as though we're effective in the world. That what we do matters that we have agency. And the third thing is related nous. We need to feel that that sense of agency that we have actually has an effect and a

positive effect on our community. So if you take that together, that they need to be authentic, they need to be competent, and they need to be related. What that means is that we need to become ourselves and use our gifts and so find the gifts and talents and the ways of being that we most enjoy and that we're actually good at, and use them in service of our fellow being. That is actually what makes us happy. And I would argue, what's the good life? And if you think about it,

that's self actualization. It's the pinnacle of personal development, when you get to the place where you are yourself in service to the rest of the world. You make a distinction in the book, based on some research that's out there, between intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Could you share a little bit more about that. Sure, most human behavior is motivated towards a set of between eleven and fifteen goals, depending on the researcher, But all the research basically breaks down

human behavior as directed between this number of goals. I happen to work with a body of research that says eleven. But it doesn't matter, because whether it's eleven or fifteen, they're pretty much the same set of goals. And it turns out that these sets of goals are the same across culture, across economic background, across race, across religion. That

isn't to say that everybody is chasing the same goals. Um, It's just to say that all of our behavior breaks down to this same set of goals, but we prioritize each goal separately. On the one hand, we have what are called intrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals are goals that actually make us happy just by pursuing them. And the reason why they make us happy by pursuing them, by the way, is because the pursuit of them fulfills the needs for autonomy, competence,

and relatedness. So the goals that are intrinsic goals that satisfy them just by their pursuance of them are things like doing good for your community, doing things that make you healthier, spending time with friends and family, pursuing your spiritual path. These are all intrinsic goals. On the other side, we have what are called the extrinsic goals extrinsic goals. When we pursue extrinsic goals, they only make us happier if we actually achieve them. The pursuit of them itself

does not make us happier. And these are extrinsic goals are what we normally associate with as materialistic goals fame, popularity, financial success. Turns out, what's really interesting is that, first of all, if we emphasize extrinsic goals too much, the materialistic goals are less likely to be happy and to be satisfied with our lives. Then if we emphasize the intrinsicals, we kind of know that if you're a materialist, you're

less likely to be happy. And the reason for that, by the way, is partly because when you're pursuing extrinsic goals, it takes time away from pursuing intrinsic goals. Um Also, all sorts of things happen if you're if you're materially inclined, and your friends are likely to be materially inclined to your birds of a feather flock together, and if your friends are materially inclined, they will invest less in their friendship with you because they care more about their material goals.

So there's all sorts of reasons why the extrinsic or material goals don't make us as happy. The intrinsic goals make us happier. One thing that's also interesting that it turns out at when we pursue intrinsic boals, we also feel more generous and benevolent towards the world. That is to say that if we're living in a life where we're pursuing these intrinsic goals, which makes us happier anyway, we're also more likely to want to help other people

and the planet that we live on. So we started a while back where where I said that the inspiring thing to me is that the path forward is a place where we do what's both good for us and good for the world, not being a victim, a scoundrel, or a martyr, but being a hero, being somebody who becomes themselves for the sake of their community in the world. And that's what this research shows about our needs and

also about intrinsic and extrinsic goals. One of the things that you talked about in the book, and it's a topic that we talked about on this show. An awful lot is that the stories that we tell ourselves about our lives have a real big impact on our lives. And you tell a story about friendly versus unfriendly dogs, or how we perceive dogs, and I think it's a really good metaphor for how the stories in our lives impact our view of the world. Could you share that

one with us? I wrote a book called No Impact Man. It made a film called New Impact Man, and they were both about a year I spent living as environmentally as possible, but in some ways that it was environmental was besides the point. What really happened was that I found myself taking apart my entire life and putting it back together again. And so yes, I learned about environmental living, but in many ways, what I really learned about was from scratch put together a life that was actually good

for me and good for the world. And so I got invited many many places around the world to talk about this project. And what I found was that there was a real feeling of defeatism and the people that I was talking to that lots of people felt they were powerless to change their own lives and also powerless to have influence and agency over the world we live in,

which is a really sad thing. Kind of means that those needs for autonomy, confidence and related this that I just talked about aren't getting met if we feel that we're powerless and have no agency. So I asked, well, why is it that people feel they have no agency? And I realized that a lot of it had to do with the stories that they were telling themselves about

the world and about their lives. What you're referring to when the book is how I explained that actually, the stories we tell ourselves build the universe that we live in. And I explained that and and kind of prove it more or less um by this story about a dog. And so what I say is, so imagine that your mother, say, got bit by a dog when she was young, and she, as you're growing up, is scared of dogs and always tells you dogs are dangerous, stay away from dogs. And

so you have dogs are dangerous story in your head. Right, Other people might have a dogs are wonderful story in their head, but you happen to have a dog's are dangerous story, so um whenever um. And And by the way, we have thousands of stories in our head, and when situations occur in life, our brain kind of goes through our story file and picks a story that we think tells us about the situation, and then we react according

to the story. It's called analogical thinking. So your mom raised you telling you that dogs were dangerous, and so when you encounter when a dog comes running up to you, your brain goes through its story file. It remembers the story of how your mom got bitten by a dog, and it says, oh, my god, that dog that's running up to me is dangerous, and so you start shooting it away. Now, the truth is that dogs run up to us both because they're friendly and want to play

with us and because they're dangerous. Um. But you are reacting to all dogs as they're dangerous, right, So you're trying to shooting all the dogs away. The thing is, the only dogs that will go away when you shoo them away are the dogs that actually want to come and play with you. The dogs that are mean and want to bite you will not be deterred by you're asking them to go away. So what happens is that because you're shooing away all their friendly dogs, you've now

created a universe where all dogs are dangerous. The story they you told yourself about dogs being dangerous actually turns into a world where all dogs are dangerous. And I give this explanation because it tells us that when we say that we have no power over our own lives and over the world that we live in, we actually don't have any power over our own lives and over the world we live in. Because that story tells us not to bout making an effort, and obviously we don't

make an effort, then we have no agency. Actually, that story is very relevant to me because I grew up as a person who was scared of dogs, and I did not like any dogs until Chris, who's in the room here, got a dog named Bertie, who was the sweetest thing that probably ever lived, and I finally started to say, well, this is a nice dog. And um, soon after Chris found me a dog a lot like Bertie, and now I am nearly obsessed with how much I

love dogs. That's wonderful. Yeah, I have three of them, which is a bit much, but they are wonderful, So you have three dogs. I absolutely do. Yeah. Well, so so that's really interesting because what you're saying is that you had a small interaction with a dog that went well, and that small interaction started to change your story. So, in other words, you never would have gone out and bought a dog or lived with someone with a dog,

but that small interact and change your story. And one of the big strategies that I talk about in the book How to Be Alive is, you know, normally, when we talk about changing our lives, we tell ourselves we need to change our career or romantic partnership or our home. And what I say is, hey, let's slow down a little.

Let's actually change something small here. And so what I suggest is that people, for example, change work on changing the way that they eat in line with their values, or the way they transport themselves in line with their values, or their relationship to the owner of things in line

with our values, to try experimenting in small ways. And the reason for that is, just like you with Chris's dog, is that it gives them a small, relatively unthreatening experience which allows them to begin to change their stories about how they relate to the world. In other words, in a in a small relationship with the world, you get to feel as though you have agency and are capable of making it bringing in mind with their values. And once you can do that in a small relationships, then

eventually you can move on to career relationship in home. Yeah, that was one of the things I loved about the book a lot, because we talk on this show all the time, and in the coaching work that I do is so much about start with really small steps, you know, start small and then build from there. And so I like a lot of what you talked about in the book. It really resonates with what we do here. And you've got an example in the book that you then turn

into sort of an overall approach for starting small. You call it the Ukulele approach. Can you explain that? Sure? The ukule the approach is about a guy named Jonathan. It starts with a story about a guy named Jonathan, and he's a New Yorker and he works his rear end off and he's very, very busy, but all his life he wishes that he was a musician. Um and he has a guitar, but he kind of keeps looking at his guitar and thanks to himself. What's the point.

I don't have any time to get into learning this properly, and there's so many amazing guitar players in the world, and the last thing I want to do is be a bad guitar player. So what's the point. I'm not even going to start. It was it was too big for him. It was too big, and for years he just never had music in his life, which is sad. Think about it, right, that your your life can pass

by and something that you feel passionate about is missing. Anyway, one time he was on business travel and he was changing flights in Atlanta, Georgia. He had a long way over, and his friend came and picked him up the airport and they went to There was a sunny day, and they went to the park together and his friend happened to have a ukulele with her, and so she sit down and she started playing some songs on the ukulele, and then she handed it to this guy, Jonathan, and

taught him four courts and suddenly he was playing music. Um. And on the way back to the airport, they actually stopped at a music store and he bought himself the ukulele and he took it home, and he found that as busy as he was, he had the time to look at the YouTube video every so often with a lesson for the ukuleleen it and he would play, and before long he just happened to meet somebody else who played the ukuleleen. Before long, he actually literally was a musician,

what he always wanted. And the reason why he finally got there was he lowered his ambition and obstacle and started small. He had always thought about playing the guitar, and it was too big a goal for him, and instead he took what I called the ukulele approach, which really means start where you are, start with the small thing. And obviously this can be applied in all sorts of areas. Can I tell you a story of how it applied to a woman who ended up actually working on and

helping the world. So there's this woman named Um. And also in the book, you know, all of us have something that niggles us about the world, that we don't feel quite right about. And and in her case, Um, she always just kind of felt a little bummed out about the coffee trade. She knew that coffee has a big impact both on the environment and also the well being of many people because of low wages and and

everything that happened in the coffee trade. And she always kind of knew she she should be more careful about the coffee she bought, but she never she just didn't know what to do. But one day she went to the grocery store and she just said, you know what, I'm just going to choose a coffee that has a label that seems like it's ethical, and I'm gonna I'm just gonna do that little thing. I know it won't

count for much. And so she went in and she she looked at all the coffees and each one had you know, some of them had no labels at all of ethical um production on them. But but she found one copy that was kosher, UH Forest, UH Forest Service certified, UM Green Forest Alliance certified, all these certifications. She decided, that's the one I'm going to buy. That's the ukulele approach right there. She just she kind of started with the small thing. Now, starting with the small thing does

not change the world if you just stay there. The next day, you have to do something else too. And and so what Anne did was when she got home, she started researching a coffee and she found out that actually some of these certifications are problematic because small coffee

browers cannot afford the certification. And she found out about this thing called direct trade coffee, which is where the owner of a coffee house actually goes to say South America, and meets a small coffee brower and looks at the way they do things and whether they pay their employees properly, and whether they steward the land properly, and then just decides to forego the certification process and buy straight from them. So Anne went to a coffee house like that and

started buying her coffee there. So and would go to this coffee place in the mornings as well to get her coffee. And she became friend with the baristas, and the baristas happened to be part of a community garden, and they invite did her to go to the community garden,

and then she became part of the community garden. And then the people in the community garden were climate activists and went out on the Climate March, and they invited her to go out on the Climate March, and so before you know it, and actually she started just by taking the ukulele approach just by doing something small, just by buying her coffee with the right labels on it. But because she kept taking more and more small Ukulele steps every day, the next thing, you know, she was

really living a life in line with her values. And she developed a whole community of friends of people who supported those values, ensured those values too. And again, what we're talking about here is every day she just gave a little bit more energy to what was true for her and a little less energy to what was not true to her. There's some other stories in the book where you talk about this idea of limiting your concern

to grow your influence. I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and and that's a pretty core concept in there, this idea that we we all have a circle of concern and the things that we care about, and then there's a smaller circle within there, which is what we can actually do something about. And you really talk about, you know, focusing kind of what Dr Covey talked about, which is focusing on that

circle of influence about what you can actually do. And you share two stories in relation to that, and uh, I'll let you pick which of the two you want to tell, But one is the Starfish story and the other is about a woman and named Julia Butterfly Hill story. But I think they're both great stories about how this idea of starting with what we can actually do, and the more we do that, you know, focusing on what

we can do, our influence grows. Let me say before I tell the stories about just something about Stephen COBE's you know, this business about shrinking your sphere of concern to your sphere of influence. Sometimes it's misinterpreted. Sometimes people say, well, I can only influence what happens in my whole life, so I'm not concerned about the whole rest of the world. Right. Sometimes it can, it can cause us to be really self centered. But I don't think that that's what he

meant at all. I think what he meant to say was you can care about the whole world and everything that goes on in the whole world, but concern yourself with the areas of influence that you have over what goes on in the whole world. It's not about shrinking what you care about, but it's about picking and focusing on areas that you can start to have some influence instead of being overwhelmed and feel and helpless. That's right. So so in other words, that's for the sake of arguments.

Say that you're really concerned about the arms trade and that you really wish that weapons weren't treated so easily in the whole world. Now, you could just pull your hair out out of concern about weapons straight through the whole world, or you could choose to get involved with an organization that works on the anti arms trades issue and actually concern yourself with the workings of that organization. So, yeah, exactly what you're saying. In terms of stories, I'm going

to tell you the starfish story. I just I just really like it, and some people may have heard it before. It's apocryphal, But one day a man goes down to the beach and discovers that across the beach there's thousands of starfish that have been left behind by the slack tide, by the really low tide, and they're on the sand

and the sun is baking and they're slowly dying. And the man looks over and he sees a little girl and he watches her and she picks up at starfish, and she he takes it down to the water and she drops it in, and then she walks back up and she picks up another starfish and she drops it back in. He goes up to her, and he says, to where he said, a little girl, don't you realize you're not going to make any difference at all. There's thousands of starfish on this beach. There's that you know,

you just can't possibly make a difference. And she says, tell that to the starfish I just dropped in the water, right, which I think is for one thing, really cool. But um, that's that's where the story is. I was told it ends, but I extend the story because then I say, well so, so she says, tell that to the starfish you dropped

in the water. And then he says, you know, the little girl has a point, and so suddenly he decides he's gonna he may not be able to save a thousand starfish himself, but he's going to walk a few starfish down to the water. And then you know, within the within the half an hour, a few other people have walked down and seen this little girl and this little man moving starfish um down to the water. And

they decide to participate to um. And so what happens, you see, is that if you restrict your sphere of concern to your sphere of influence. That is like the little girl she said, I'm just gonna save this one starfish because I knew I can't, your sphere of influence then actually grows. She says, I'm just going to save this one starfish. But by saying thing that one starfish, she inspired the man to save some starfish, and then he in turn inspired some other people to save some starfish.

So if we actually, if we actually take in our take our energy and put it into the relationships that we have with the world, it actually increases our influence over our own lives and over the world. I love that story too. And the other story that you tell in relation to that, and I'll tell it very quickly, is about a woman who is concerned about deforestation, so she goes up in a tree and lives up there, and ultimately she only manages to save one tree as

part of that. But the fact that she did that and got so much attention means that she is speaking all around the world to thousands of people year after year influencing a great number of trees to be saved throughout the world. And I just thought that was another great example of limiting your concern to your influence, but also taking a longer term view two and recognizing that we don't know exactly what impact what we do will have. We just keep doing it and and things can take

on a life of their own. And I think it's also as important as it is for us to feel that we're effective. Sometimes people say, how do I know whether I'm the type of person that can change the world, And I say to them, well, the question is not whether you're the type of person who can change the world. The question is whether you're the type of person who wants to know they tried. Because regardless of results, um, just the act of doing things in line with your

values is satisfying. Remember when I said about intrinsic goals, and we actually get satisfaction just from pursuing those goals. And it's the same if you live in line with your values, it actually makes you feel better. Another thing people sometimes say to me is is their hope for this world? And I often say that that too, is kind of a distract because both of those questions, Am I the type of person who's able to change the world?

Or is there hope for the world? In both cases, those questions are questions designed to kind of let us off the hook, Like, am I the type of person that can change the world? Well, if you're not, what are you gonna do? Um? Well, I'm going to go watch TV? Right So, and the same thing, is there hope for the world? Well, if I tell you know what you're gonna do, I'm you know, I'm gonna go eat ice cream? So So, in either case are the questions that helpful? So the real question is not does

the world have hope? The real question is are you willing to give the world hope? Um? And and and and and again. I'm not saying that means we should murder ourselves. What I'm saying is that that is that if we work in that way, we're actually achieving the highest level of actualization for ourselves and we'll have the highest quality of life exactly. There was just one last topic that I wanted to touch on because I thought it was very interesting. There's a lot of talk about community.

There's a lot of talk about friendships, about being connected, um, which is all great stuff, and it's it's something that I'm actually learning a lot more about as as we do the show, and I'm I'm beginning to learn more about the value of that and the health benefits of all that. But you take it one step further and you talk about something called social interconnectedness, which is a little bit beyond Could you explain what that means? Sure?

So it turns out that what I'm calling social interconnection is what people used to call community. But I'm careful of the word community because many of us grew up in communities that we couldn't wait to escape, and so you have. But we have a bad association with the world word community. But but what community really is a personal community, which is a community that you choose for yourself. So not the kind of community you want to escape,

but your own personal community. Um is socially interconnected. And what that means is that not just that I have ten friends, but that those ten friends all are friends with each other too. I'm not just connected to those ten people, but those ten people are connected to each other.

So that's socially interconnected. And there's a lot of research that shows that that kind of interconnection contributes at least as much, if not more, to our quality of life and happiness then for example, um owning a house, even having a romantic partner, And if you think about it, there's some really interesting reasons why. So let's say that I'm friends with Joe and Sally, and Joe and Sally

are also friends with each other. Now, if I do a good turned by Joe because Joe knows Sally, Joe will tell Sally that I did a good turn by him. And then sometime in the future, when I'm in need, Sally will in turn do a good turn by me because she knows from Joe that I'm a good player. This is this is actually a phenomenon called generalized reciprocity. So we're used to the idea that when we're friends with just one other person, one hand watches the other.

You do good by me, I'll do good bye you. But when we're part of an interconnected group, that reciprocity generalizes through the group. And there's all sorts of research that shows that people that are interconnected live longer, they're healthier, they're happier, and guess what, they also helped the world more. Ye, well, Colin, thanks so much for taking the time to be on the show. I really enjoyed the book. We will have

links to all your things on the website. We also have a free download on the site of some of my favorite ideas from the book, which listeners can get at one you Feed dot Net slash Colin O great and can I mean, do you mind if I say my website please go right ahead? And so also, people are welcome to take a free sample chapter to the book How to Be Alive from my website. Um, it's at www dot Colin Bevan dot com and I'll spell that it's c O L I N B E A V A n dot com. And then there's a tab

where it says offerings. Just click that and you can get a free chapter of the book. That excellent, And I'll make sure we link to that off our website too, so if people don't remember that they can easily get to it. I'll I'll link up to all your various places online. Thanks Eric, it was really great talking to you. Thanks so much. Take care bite. You can learn more about Colin Bevan and this podcast at one you Feed dot Net slash Colin