“You’re not supposed to be unhappy. If you’re unhappy, that’s a signal. Respond to it.”

Russell Brand is on a mission to help us find fulfilment. Much of his life has been research; there aren’t many pleasures he hasn’t dived into headfirst. His addictions famously include heroin and crack cocaine, but also compulsive eating and sex. Ultimately, they led him to self-destruction. “Because I had ‘the gift of desperation’ because I fucked my life up so royally, I had no option but to seek and accept help,” he says. With the support of the 12-step recovery programme used by groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Brand has transformed his life. And the programme’s principles, he says, can benefit everyone.

Now a married father-of-one, and 15 years clean from drugs and alcohol, Brand has written Recovery: Freedom from our Addictions. It’s a book to benefit us all, because it’s not just those labelled as addicts who are struggling, he insists. Addictive behaviour is commonplace, whether we’re hooked on coffee, consuming, gambling, hoarding, TV or technology.

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“We’re all on the scale of addiction,” he tells me. But it’s often only apparent that we have addictions when they become extreme, believes Brand, because they have become normalised. “Most of us are able to operate within the culture successfully, to a degree. To use a crude science fiction analogy, you don’t know you’re in the Matrix because you’re in the Matrix.”

This ‘Matrix’ is our culture of consumerism, materialism and individualism, which is “all-encompassing,” he says. It drives the things we do compulsively to feel good: our addictions.

Brand during the 2012 MTV movie awards in California. Image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Brand is warm, gentle and attentive. He talks slowly, his words considered, before switching gear, speeding into articulate bursts. “We all have biochemistry. We all have drivers, desires and fears,” he says. “And we live in a capitalist society which operates by stimulating fear and desire in us.”

There is a yearning and dissatisfaction that we’re all affected by in some way, he believes. ‘Addicts’ are the “outliers” who struggle to regulate themselves in the face of it. “So, they take drugs or eat food or masturbate excessively, making the phenomena visible.”

What is it then, that we’re longing for?

“It’s a spiritual problem,” Brand says. “People drink because it feels good. People buy too much because it feels good. People drive their cars fast; they do stuff for feelings. That’s somehow become abstracted from the idea of spirit and placed in the realm of the material, where it clearly cannot belong, and can never be resolved.

“I wasn’t taking heroin because it tastes nice, it was a way of dealing with the fact that I couldn’t connect, couldn’t find union. Access to a connection will always be the solution.”

We all have biochemistry. We all have drivers, desires and fears. And we live in a capitalist society which operates by stimulating fear and desire in us

Indulgence was a pitfall for Brand but he’s adamant that beneath such behaviour there are feelings that need to be honoured.

“You’re entitled to feel valuable and valued. That’s the thing that can be confused with narcissism and vanity, I suppose. But if you don’t feel connected, do something about it. Be connected, be contented. Be less tolerant of being unhappy. Don’t be some browbeaten component in a machine where it’s like ‘this is life, I’m on this elevator now, then I’m going home, key in the door, into a relationship I’m not happy in’ – don’t tolerate it.”

Despite his glamorous life, Brand clearly still struggles on a daily basis. “It doesn’t feel very easy to me to be alive,” he admits. “It doesn’t matter what compliments you throw at me: it works for a second, some sort of inner narcotic – ping! – but what sticks to me is ‘you’re nobody’, ‘you’re worthless’, ‘you’re scum’. I have to swim hard to keep above water. There’s a racing inner narrative that often leads me to feeling awkward, uncomfortable, not good enough.”

The 12-step programme

In his book, Recovery, Brand draws upon the 12-step programme, which is well-established in dealing with alcoholism and drug addictions.

“If you belong to the kind of support groups that do to deal with my addiction, you hear people continually say that everyone should have this programme,” he notes. He is convinced that it can be a template to release ourselves from various and subtle forms of addictive behaviour. These can crop up in the way we relate in romantic partnerships, for example, or how we operate in our professional lives.

As such, he wanted to make the programme accessible: “I try to make it colourful and funny, so that you don’t feel this is a self-help book.”

Brand on Wall Street, New York City, in 2014. Image: Alo Ceballos/GC Images

A crucial part of the process is uncovering past experiences that affect how we act in our lives now; digging into what Brand calls the “personal archaeology of our damage”.

“Most of the time, we don’t really go back and think of the times when someone really hurt us,” he explains. “But even today, when I look at quite mundane and trivial events, I realise that they are rooted in historic beliefs. I was a little kid, and then I was a drug addict. There was never a bit where it was like ‘this is me when I’m normal and I’m cool’. Everything was chaos and mad all the time. Now, I learn to recognise it.

“I have deep, deep programming: if a woman says particular things to me, I have a reaction, if a man says particular things to me, I have a reaction. And I think we’re victim to these feelings: we’re living by unconscious coordinates.

“I don’t want to live according to that code any more, I want to be free. I believe it’s possible for us to have an intuitive and a central reaction moment to moment, to see beyond what we appear to be: individuals trapped in time, trapped in motion, trapped in skin sacs.”

Be connected, be contented. It’s different from being indulgent; you are entitled to feel valuable and valued

Although this deeper context is something Brand has often brought to his social commentary, his new book represents a shift away from overt activism. Memorably, the ‘Paxman v Brand’ interview on BBC Newsnight in 2013 turned him, overnight, from an entertaining TV personality into a voice for the anti-establishment.

Now, he’s taking a different route towards change. We can all empower ourselves by trying to understand our own behaviour, he says. “I’ve already tried, in my own limited way, to effect institutional and systemic change. I found that path quite well barricaded. This time, I want to go in at source – what is it to be in this world? How can we meaningfully change? I got a bit tired of talking to people in power about how they should reach out a hand to help people. Now, I’m going to spend my time telling people to take the power, because it’s already yours.”

Helping others

Later, I’m in St James’ church in central London, where Brand is launching the book. Given the venue, he decides to finish the evening with the ‘serenity prayer’. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the I things can and the wisdom to know the difference.” And it is this serenity that Brand is pursuing as he moves through his various public incarnations. He is introduced at the launch as “the poster boy for someone who has evolved under the spotlight”. What has he learned so far?

“The most fascinating thing I discovered about myself through this process is that the thing that makes me happy is helping other people,” he says. “I find it very hard to accept that, because I have deep, deep roots in performance and in showing off. But something happens. There are places I go where I don’t think about myself. Sometimes it’s around other addicts, sometimes people who have nothing.

Now, I’m going to spend my time telling people to take the power, because it’s already yours

“If you’ve taken your ego as far as I have, to the limits of glistening fame, consumption and literal orgies, and you still feel a bit bilious and awful – it’s a sign. David Foster Wallace says the problem with luxury is that it can’t ever deliver what it promises. Once you’re suspended in amniotic fluid, floating about on a cruise ship, you realise that luxury and material can’t work for you. There’s a horrible, horrible despair in that. So I try to do things for other people as much as I possibly can and I feel better.

“The point at which I connect to you is in your wound, in your fallibility, in your vulnerability. And I feel that if I am as honest and open and revealing about that as possible, it will help me overcome the idea of my own separateness. If there is such a commonality between us and our problems at root and essence, how alone are we?

“I live in the gutter and always will, to a degree. But I’m aspiring to be connected.”

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The 12-step programme (in Russell’s words)

Brand credits the 12-step programme as being key to his freedom from addiction. It is a universal blueprint for personal growth, he says. In his book, Recovery, he interprets the steps to create his own principles for transformation.

Step 1: Are you a bit fucked?

Step 2: Could you not be fucked?

Step 3: Are you, on your own, going to ‘unfuck’ yourself?

Step 4: Write down all the things that are fucking you up or have ever fucked you up and don’t lie, or leave anything out

Step 5: Honestly tell someone trustworthy about how fucked you are

Step 6: Do you want to stop it? Seriously?

Step 7: Are you willing to live in a new way that’s not all about you and your previous, fucked up stuff? (You have to)

Step 8: Prepare to apologise to everyone for everything affected by your being so fucked up

Step 9: Now apologise. (Unless that would make things worse)

Step 10: Watch out for fucked up thinking and behaviour and be honest when it happens

Step 11: Stay connected to your new perspective

Step 12: Look at life less selfishly, be nice to everyone, help people if you can

Featured image: David Titlow, grooming: Nicola Schuller, styling: Amy Hanson-Bevan

This article is featured in issue 92 of Positive News magazine. Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Residents of the small Swedish town of Eskilstuna don’t have to go far to get their shopping fix – or to help save the planet. Whether they’re looking for a TV, furniture, fashion, sports equipment or houseplants, they will find them all at ReTuna, Sweden’s – and probably the world’s – first shopping centre dedicated to refurbished and recycled goods. Everything sold has either been recycled or reused, or organically or sustainably produced.

The brainwave of local politicians who want to make the municipality a green role model, ReTuna opened in August 2015 and has since expanded to house 10 shops, a cafe and a conference centre. The centre receives close to 700 visitors each day. Some drop off at a drive-thru recycling depot unwanted items that are then sorted and upcycled, while others simply come looking for a bargain. It is run by a company called Eskilstuna Energi och Miljö, which was set up by the local municipality.

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“We have customers who want to be a part of the renewable economy and then we have customers who come to buy TVs for a fraction of the price,” says Thomas Söderberg, who runs the re:Compute-IT shop at ReTuna. “But we need to get more into the consciousness of people so they can make the ecological choice of buying used products as much as possible.”

Everything sold at ReTuna is either recycled, repaired or sustainably or organically produced

Since opening, ReTuna’s efforts have reduced waste to an estimated value of 8.1 million SEK (£714,000) and created more than 50 jobs.

“Our mission is to save the planet,” says Anna Bergström, ReTuna manager, boldly. “Or at least be part of its rescue. We know that we can’t save the world by ourselves – but our customers feel that they are a part of something good.”

Although Sweden is known for having some of the best recycling rates in the world (more than 95 per cent of glass, 85 per cent of newspaper, 70 per cent of metal and 65 per cent of plastic are recycled), there is still room to challenge perceptions around consumption and the circular economy. To that end, ReTuna’s shops also offer workshops where customers can learn how to repair household items. “People imagine that a sustainable lifestyle takes extra time and effort and is symbolic of a reduced way of living,” says Bergström. “But at ReTuna, we really try to help people be sustainable – and have some fun with it too.”

And with consumer spending on the rise, rethinking the retail experience may be just what Sweden needs: “For the economy to keep moving forward we have to keep on consuming,” says Söderberg, “but if we keep up the pace, there will be nothing left to consume, there will be no resources left.”

This article is featured in issue 92 of Positive News magazine. Subscribe now to get the magazine delivered to your door each quarter.

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1) Revamp your wardrobe without going shopping
Bright Friday

The #BrightFriday campaign aims to raise awareness of textiles waste and encourages people to get value from clothes they already have by swapping, restyling and refashioning instead of buying new this Black Friday. In the UK, a third of the clothes in a typical wardrobe haven’t been worn in the past year, and 300,000 tonnes of clothing ends up in the bin each year, according to WRAP. #BrightFriday has been organised by sustainability charity Hubbub.

Get involved: Join #BrightFriday and hold a clothes swap with friends, or join one of Hubbub’s swaps in London

2) Quell the mania by reading a book in peace
Saturday Sanctuary

A campaign to celebrate bookshops and the joy of reading is suggesting you make Saturday #SaturdaySanctuary. The advice from the Books Are My Bag team reads: “Mark Saturday 25 November as ‘busy’ in your diaries, write a Christmas shopping list (with some room for recommendations), plan which bookshops you’ll be visiting, invite all your friends, treat yourself to some #Bibliotherapy.”

Get involved: Visit booksaremybag.com and use the hashtags #SaturdaySanctuary and #Bibliotherapy

3) Get outdoors and enjoy nature
Opt Outside

“BYO adrenaline” says US-based outdoor clothing retailer – and co-operative – REI. For the third year in a row, the company is closing all of its shops on Black Friday and is instead urging people to #OptOutside and spend time in nature with friends and family. It will pay its 12,000 employees but shut all 151 shops and process no online sales either. “We are doing this again to unite people and to find common ground in the outdoors,” said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke. “Right now, I think people are looking for a moment to take a breath, reground themselves and come together.”

Get involved: Share your #OptOutside experiences here

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4) Support ethical businesses instead
Shop Ethical Instead

Black Friday encourages us to shop for things that we don’t really need or want, points out Sian Conway, the driving force behind Ethical Hour – an online community for ethical and sustainable businesses. “This Black Friday we’re bringing together ethical brands from around the world for our #ShopEthicalInstead campaign – encouraging people to spend their money with small businesses and social enterprises and make a positive impact instead,” said Conway. According to Social Enterprise UK, there are nearly 80,000 social enterprises in the UK, employing more than a million people and contributing more than £24bn to the economy.

Get involved: Visit #EthicalHour and @EthicalHour on social media

5) Buy secondhand – and make a difference at the same time
Buy Nothing New Day

Image: Furniture Re-use Network

Dispelling the myth that secondhand means second best, the Furniture Re-use Network will hold Buy Nothing New Day on Friday (24 November). The team is urging people to support their local furniture reuse charity by donating to or buying from them. Craig Anderson, CEO of the Furniture Re-use Network, which has 200 members, says: “Our members don’t just rely on furniture donations to provide essential household goods to those in need, alongside providing employment and volunteering opportunities. They also rely on customers to buy from their shops to support their core activities to help people in time of crisis.” In 2016, 3.45m items of furniture and electrical equipment are thought to have been reused in the UK.

Get involved: Find your nearest furniture re-use charity here, and share your charity treasures on social media using #BuyNothingNew

6) Buy gifts for refugees in need
The pop-up shop where you can buy presents for refugees

Choose Love is a pop-up shop in Soho, London, where you can buy real products for refugees, from emergency blankets to school bags and medical equipment. “Shop to your heart’s content, leave with nothing, and feel great,” say the team behind it. All funds raised will go to UK charity Help Refugees which works across Europe and the Middle East. It was founded in 2015 as part of a grassroots movement of volunteers. The charity’s CEO Josie Naughton said: “It’s easy to forget how lucky we are to have a bed, a blanket and a roof over our heads. For thousands of refugees this winter, these basic human needs are completely out of reach. This shop is all about one simple idea: that we should all choose love this Christmas and help those in need.” Every item on sale in the shop, from mobile phone credit to warm socks, is accompanied by a story about how and why it was chosen. Prices range from £4.99 to £499.

Get involved: Find out more here and visit the shop at 18 Broadwick Street, London, W1F 8HS, from Friday (24 November) until 31 January 2018

7) Put your wallet away and give your time
Volunteer instead

Instead of rushing to the shops, consider spending the day, or part of it, volunteering. It can prove beneficial in unexpected ways as well as helping those in need: volunteering can help lower your blood pressure, according a study published in the US journal Psychology and Aging.

Get involved: Visit the National Council for Voluntary Organisations’ volunteering information page here, or see Volunteer Match for places to volunteer near you

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8) Support independent designers and artists
Just A Card

Image: Sarah Hamilton

The Just A Card campaign aims to encourage people to buy from designers and makers, and independent galleries and shops. The message? That all purchases, however small – even ‘just a card’ – are vital to the survival of small businesses. The campaign came about when artist and designer Sarah Hamilton saw the quote “If everyone who’d complimented our beautiful gallery had bought ‘just a card’ we’d still be open” by storekeepers who had recently closed their gallery.

“People seldom realise the considerable costs involved in exhibiting at design shows or keeping a shop open,” said Hamilton. “Stand fees, power, materials and wages need to be met before even a penny of profit can be realised. Running a shop is often a labour of love. Without dedication and passion, and crucially sales, it would be another boarded-up eyesore.”

Get involved: Visit the Just A Card website here and share your thoughts on social media using #JustACard

9) Go cold turkey on consumption
Buy Nothing Day

Image: adbusters.org

Adbusters, a global network of activists, artists, writers, designers and “poets, philosophers and punks”, is behind Buy Nothing Day. They say: “As the Christmas season approaches, keep in mind that buying stuff will never make you happy. It might lift your spirits for a few hours, or if you’re lucky, maybe a day or two, but in the end (and we mean the real end) your connections, your friends, your family, and your human experiences are all you’ve really got. So this year, at this moment in history when the existential threat of climate change is breathing down our necks, why not do something wildly different: Ignore Black Friday.”

Get involved: Visit their site here

10) Support companies that are doing their bit
Brands giving profits to charity

Some brands trading on Friday are choosing to give profits to charity. From midnight on 24 November until midnight on 25 November, 100 per cent of sales from Pukka’s website will go to Pukka’s two chosen charities: the Forest of Avon Trust and The Matthew Tree Project, both of which are based in the company’s hometown of Bristol. Patagonia and Fat Face are among the high street names to take a similar tack in the past.

Get involved: Find out more at www.pukkaherbs.com

The post Forget rampant consumerism: 10 alternatives to Black Friday appeared first on Positive News.

Makers, tinkerers and anyone interested in making ‘stuff’ more sustainable are invited to attend a new festival in London in October.

Fixfest – thought to be the first international gathering for the community repair movement – runs from 6-8 October and will bring together fixers from Argentina to Norway, as well as across the UK. Organisers The Restart Project hope the event will help “galvanise an emerging community repair movement” and promote a more sustainable consumer economy.

“Fixing requires skill, teamwork, ingenuity, perseverance. It is also a hands-on way to learn how our throwaway economy fails people and the planet,” said The Restart Project co-founder Ugo Vallauri. “The most exciting thing about Fixfest is connecting with other groups from around the world with a similar experience.”

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The Restart Project is a London-based charity which works to help people learn to extend the life of their electronic gadgets and prevent ‘unnecessary e-waste’ through practical community repair events. The three-day festival marks five years since the charity’s first community repair event.

Fixfest will host a series of talks, discussions and workshops. Those from the ‘repair community’ will be encouraged to share experiences, skills and frustrations, such as the barriers to repairing certain products. On the night of Saturday 7 October, a Restart Party will be held at the Museum of London. The event will be open to the public to learn new skills and to bring along broken items for fixing.

It is a hands-on way to learn how our throw-away economy fails people and the planet

Speakers over the weekend include designer Leyla Acaroglu, science writer Lewis Dartnell and the Repair Cafe founder Martine Postma. Topics will range from the origins of the community repair movement, to how we could create a ‘more resilient world’.

Image: Heather Agyepong

Since its first event in 2012, The Restart Project, along with partner organisations, have seen 3,800 people attend repair parties to save their devices from waste and volunteers have put in 5,100 hours of time to share their fixing skills. As a result, those behind The Restart Project estimate that a total 3.7 tonnes of e-waste has been saved from landfill.

“We expected frustrated owners of broken gadgets and appliances in need of help, but we never expected to unleash such a generous and engaged technical community,” said Vallauri.

Fixfest runs 6-8 October at the London School of Economics and the Museum of London.

Discounted early bird tickets are available until 15 September. Free tickets are available to community repair activists and discounts are available to those who need them.

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“If you think you’re enlightened go spend a week with your family” said US spiritual teacher and author Ram Dass.

For some of us, the Christmas season can be a wonderful period of catching up with old friends and spending quality time with family: a couple of weeks of relaxing by the fire and even allowing ourselves time to read while munching on culturally-sanctioned excesses. It can be filled with warm nostalgia and the excitement to create something magical for the kids.

But not for everyone. During the run-up to December we may also feel some pressure. The approach of Christmas can also feel threatening with impending family time – for many this is a hotbed of triggers and old wounds surfacing.

We can frame and experience our ‘suffering’ in a number of ways. We can look at the trials and tribulations as things we have to endure or we can imagine that there’s some offering here beyond just survival. What if life’s challenges were tailor-made to give us opportunities to dissolve everything we’re carrying that’s weighing us down? After all, so many of the head-trips and limiting self-beliefs we live by were set in motion by our painful, childhood family experiences.

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This year I’m treating all the challenges and triggers of the Christmas season as the benevolent, illuminating mirrors and invitations to self-awareness that they really are. I am passionately interested in harvesting all the potential breakthroughs on offer – the real Christmas gifts to birth myself ten levels more liberated into the next year. But it’s going to take all the patience, awareness and playfulness I can muster, because when those demons of ‘I’m misunderstood’ or ‘I’m not appreciated’ or whatever excruciating belief my inner child is triggered into kick in, I often totally lose my centre.

I’m treating all the challenges and triggers of Christmas as the benevolent, illuminating mirrors and invitations to self-awareness that they really are

Most of us have been uploaded with the basic human software, Victim 101, where we view the unexpected and challenging people and situations that cross our paths as problems, as things we have to suffer, as things that are ‘happening to us’. It takes a great leap of faith to imagine during these uncomfortable moments that there might be a deeper intelligence at work which is in constant connection to our state of being and doing its best to invite us back to our juicy, authentic selves.

Let’s upgrade our internal software from Victim 101 to Warrior 305!

From the usual perspective, the people who irritate us are annoying things we have to put up with, but from the reframing stance of ‘life is trying to show me something’ there’s a whole new level of data to explore. The brother who annoys you might not bug me at all, and you’d probably be totally immune to the parents who drive me crazy. It is almost as if the family members who irritate us have been sent over specially by some sort of central casting agency to be just the kind of pain in the arse who upsets us. Is it all random or might it be a perfectly designed situation sent or manifested deliberately to give us some sort of liberation?

Keep asking yourself these questions, either ahead of the family time, or even at the time you’re feeling challenged by their presence and you’ll end up unwrapping boxes and boxes of precious gifts:

• How am I being asked to self-care here?
• When I get upset, what am I believing is true that hurts so much?
• How am I hiding, not communicating, or avoiding vulnerability here?
• What assumptions am I making about the others?
• What do they need, on a deeper level, this Christmas and can I give it to them without trampling my own boundaries?

If you dare to soberly ask yourself these questions, then the darkness and powerlessness transforms into lightness and empowerment. It’s the alchemical offering of Christmas and [the Jewish holiday of rededication] Chanukah.

And before I leave you to your pies, one especially important way to make sure we are self-loving around the festive season is to not hijack the positivity of New Year resolutions. Don’t root them in any beliefs that say ‘I should do this’, for example: ‘I ought to do more yoga’ because so many of these intentions can, on close inspection, be rooted in a sense of lack – a sense that I’m not loveable enough as I am.

Let’s upgrade our internal software from Victim 101 to Warrior 305

When we take actions based from that thought, we usually sabotage the action enough to perfectly deliver the ‘lack story’ we were trying to escape from. So please ask yourself, when attempting any worthiness in January: ‘Is this coming from excitement or self-criticism?’

For millions of people, once they are through the mundane, synthetic, commercialised reality of December in the 21st century, yuletide itself can really suck. A spiritual minefield of projection, reactivity, toxicity and semi-conscious hysteria, any notions of inner progress built up throughout the year are often quickly forgotten. Yet amid the chaos of consumerism, there lie golden opportunities.

Instead of intensely striving just to get through, I’m inviting you and myself to transform this Christmas into the liberating ashram it’s meant to be – and give us all the real Christmas presence on offer: self-awareness, lightening up, and daring to risk the vulnerability of a deeper connection with ourselves and our families and communities.

Image: Flickr user ‘Poppet with a camera‘

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Are you a consumer? Are you positive? Can you be both?

The word ‘consumer’ conjures up a whole set of inter-related ideas about how to behave. In this ‘frame’, your job as a consumer is simply to choose between menu items; you don’t have any say over what gets onto the menu in the first place. Making decisions in life is framed as shopping.

This has consequences, perhaps more than you might realise. Firstly, if you concentrate on the offered items, you often fail to even realise that there might be other options that aren’t on the menu. While you’re choosing between a red car and a blue car, it might not occur to you to wonder why you can’t buy a good bus service. Secondly, shopping focuses on us as individuals: in choosing your car, you don’t care how other people get around, let alone about any wider effects on society as a whole. Thirdly, you shop using money, and this means that the rich get more say: the poor may not be able to afford any choices at all. And fourthly, there’s the issue of blame: the ‘consumer’ frame implicitly blames us for problems. If we all want cars, or to fly, then climate change must be our fault.

“Spotting frames is all about seeing the bigger picture; looking outside and beyond the frames that we find.”

It’s much more uplifting, liberating and empowering to reject this frame. But to do that, you have to spot that it’s there in the first place.

In our experience talking to politicians, policymakers, civil servants, academics and activists as well as the general public, we’ve found that many ‘experts’ unconsciously think within frames too. Our new book, Framespotting, explores how to identify frames, and what happens when we do.

Frames can run deep: they can tap into deep stories of who we are and where humanity is going. At the moment too many people are trapped in one of two stories: a despairing ‘doom’ story or an unrealistic ‘endless growth’ story. This all too easily leads to depression or denial, neither of which is good for our mental health, never mind helping with the clear thinking we’ll need in the future. But what alternative is there?

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Well, there’s a third story, which we need to embrace. Growth sounds good: children grow, don’t they? But there’s the clue: children grow, but adults don’t. And what do we call it, when youngsters stop growing? Adulthood. Maturity. In other words, growth is something that happens in childhood, and is good only up to a point. This can be our story: if we realise that clinging to growth is childish, then we will have grown up. And the turning point, here and now in this generation, is our species’ coming of age. That’s a powerful, positive story.

Spotting frames is all about seeing the bigger picture; looking outside and beyond the frames that we find. And that can be inspiring: it can lead to larger, positive and appealing visions, which in the long term will be more effective than environmental scare stories or exhortations to change our ways.

Framespotting by Laurence and Alison Matthews is published by IFF Books.

www.framespotting.com

The post Re-framing our thinking for a better world appeared first on Positive News.