In this episode, Josh and I talk about change. There is only one way to fight climate change, pandemics and systemic racism. Through change. But to change anything, we need to first change ourselves. Changing our behaviors is how we can influence change in our society. But how hard is it? Tune in to hear Josh share his wisdom as he changed his lifestyle and continues to do so in a bid to save the environment.
Listen to the 1st part of this talk on building Habits that Stick here.
Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is a three-time TEDx speaker, #1 bestselling author of Initiative and Leadership Step by Step, host of the award-winning Leadership and the Environment podcast, and professor at NYU. He works with individuals and groups to improve their environmental culture and behavior.
Here's the TEDx video that Josh refers to in this episode where he goes into depth doing meaningful things.
In this episode, Josh and I talk about change. There is only one way to fight climate change, pandemics and systemic racism. Through change. But to change anything, we need to first change ourselves. Changing our behaviors is how we can influence change in our society. But how hard is it? Tune in to hear Josh share his wisdom as he changed his lifestyle and continues to do so in a bid to save the environment.
Listen to the 1st part of this talk on building Habits that Stick here.
Joshua Spodek PhD MBA is a three-time TEDx speaker, #1 bestselling author of Initiative and Leadership Step by Step, host of the award-winning Leadership and the Environment podcast, and professor at NYU. He works with individuals and groups to improve their environmental culture and behavior.
Here's the TEDx video that Josh refers to in this episode where he goes into depth doing meaningful things.
Hello, and welcome to heroes of New York, a podcast about everyday heroes who have refused to let the pandemic stop them from serving others. In every episode, I will introduce to you someone who has risen about the odds to uplift people around them. I'm your host, and Athena. So Josh, I was just thinking that change is one of the most difficult things for anybody. It's very difficult for us to change our behaviors, which probably build over time, right? It's built over time. And sometimes when you're hit in the face by something like a crisis that we're going through now. It forces you to change almost instantly, like maybe in a day or two time you have to change things that you've been doing for a long time and you've been talking and you've been advocating for changing our behaviors, to minimize the impact on the environment. You are doing this for a long time. And I feel like this is a really good time to share that with our listeners as to how can we probably more sustainably. And can we see a link here between global warming and the pandemic?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I mean, the To me, it's going back to how we were before. So I believe we've changed a lot inadvertently. I mean, we didn't have McDonald's for most of human history. And we didn't have factory farming, which is in factory farming and encroaching into wildlife territory, which I think is how the pandemic how a virus would leap from other species into us. So we've been doing a lot of changing, you said, change is hard. But a lot of these, a lot of the modern world is people. Organizations have gotten us to change in ways that aren't particularly healthy, aren't making us happier. And so those changes, they're pretty they happen. They also happened. I think people are very quick to change to save themselves, energy like that people are lazy. And if you give something to give them convenience, they'll do something. I have found that a lot of those easy changes aren't necessarily changes that make us happier, or that bring us closer with our families or our communities. So not all changes are hard. And after having made a few changes in the direction that I have, further changes get easier and easier and easier. That is a lot of people think of not flying, it's like, impossible. Well, now they don't think it's impossible, because to protect their own health, they're quick to do it. For me after having made some of the changes before like avoiding packaged food, then not flying was much easier. So you take these little steps, and then changes aren't so hard and harder, easy, I think is less the most important measure. If you're looking back if you think of yourself looking back on your life sometime later, you know, on your deathbed, you're looking back at your dying breath and you think of all the things in life, I think you probably prefer the things that were hard, that were rewarding, even if they were hard. The things that are easy, but just convenient. I don't know if people look back at that with such appreciation.
Unknown Speaker :I thought about this about flying because you've mentioned Several times before and I'm like, I cannot do that. Because my family's back in India, until I watched your TED Talk where you mentioned that you were you were actually in India and your dad is there. I'm not sure if he's still there. And so you do have family in distant parts of the world great. Not in the same place or same country. And yet, you don't find an excuse to travel.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I don't. I mean, I don't want to pollute other people's worlds people polluted my I grew up in a world, heavily polluted. And it's much more polluted. Now. I don't like that. And I don't want to do that to others. What is stewardship about what is doing to others? If not, if not, not to pollute their air, water and land. My ancestors came here by boat. They were never going to go back home. I don't maybe they came here and we're miserable. But There once was a time when people didn't think just because I want to I can. The level of entitlement that people have is just, to me unconscionable. It's not how many people think of the most spoiled person that you know. Do you know any spoiled people? If you do think to yourself Boy, I like being around that person. They're so spoiled. I love that. And did they think of themselves as spoiled? We're so spoiled, and we don't realize it. People who are spoiled on real estate too spoiled. I don't think they do. And so we're spoiled. We just think I can do this. I don't have to deal with the consequences. let other people deal with the consequences, the pollution being displaced from the land so we can drill for the oil, the spills all over the the oceans and deserts of oil. We're paying for that. You're right.
Unknown Speaker :But I was thinking when you talk about oil spills, it happens. You see it on news, you read it in the papers, but it doesn't really happen to you and until something happens to you, you're not really motivated to take change. Not everyone is right. I know you have people to not everyone does. So now like for example, when you're in a crisis and there's a lockdown and you're asked to wear a mask, you might because it's going to save you but when you hear about an oil spill, people are like whatever to do with it. How have I affected that or so me flying may not necessarily contribute to greenhouse. That's the perception A lot of people have
Unknown Speaker :It's not so much the perception as they want to fly. And it's their rationalization after the fact after they've made their decision, I'm going to fly. How can I make this okay? How can I, oh, I know what I do doesn't matter. It's, they want to do something they don't. It's easy to do it and not think about the consequences to others. And they convince themselves that it's a better life. And oh, actually, society is much better for all the interactions and so forth. It's, it's, um, they that's their decision. It's a free country, but they should make no mistake of where the where the pollution is coming from. Yeah, I'm not trying to make me feel guilty. What I'm saying here, by the way, this is not how to put it. This is not from me, this is what I'm saying has nothing to do. I'm not making this up. I'm not I'm just sharing what everyone already knows. I'm heightening the awareness. But I'm not changing that. That's what's happening. If someone doesn't like the message I I've found no way of saying it, that people like I'm glad to hear that. I'm not trying to make people feel bad. I hope I'm not I wasn't inspiring them, or I don't know. But it's not I'm not trying to make people feel bad. If they if they believe what they're doing is right, that's their business. My way of looking at things is particular to me, they're free to look at another one.
Unknown Speaker :Mm hmm. Do you think if we target something smaller, maybe giving up flying, for example, might be a very big ask. But if we look at something much smaller from our daily lives, like composting or reducing the plastic that'd be using consume, you know, from buying things that might be more doable for people to start with?
Unknown Speaker :Well, my third TEDx talk goes into this and talks about a lot of people met look at the measure of whether if I do this or not, is it big enough? Is it going to make a really big enough difference? No, it won't, oh, that's not worth doing. Or it's so small. They think, you know, they they psych themselves out of doing stuff. What I find makes a difference is is it meaningful? Is it something you care about this the person's motivation? That matters because if they like what they do, If they feel that it makes a difference in their lives in whatever way is meaningful to them, then they'll like doing it. They'll do it more. That's why my podcast I have people ask them first, what does environment mean to you? when that comes out, then we can talk about what's meaningful for them. If you start with meaningful, people will keep doing it. And they'll want to do more. And it will inevitably lead to big, big or small is less important to me as meaningful. What does environment mean to you watch my third TEDx talk, watch any of the TEDx talks, to get the process of and listen to some of my episodes after listening to yours, of course. And then ask yourself even better than asking yourself, have someone asked you and you ask them, somebody care about someone non judgmental, ask them, What does environment mean to you? And they'll give you some what I call a cocktail party answer a protective answer. They'll say, Oh, it's the children and something not so meaningful. And because they've been judged before we you know, when you let when you let out what you really care about was very meaningful for you, you're vulnerable, so a lot of people protect their vulnerabilities. So you have to go back and forth. Until Something really meaningful comes out and then ask what you can do based on that, what can you do so if what matters to you is the ocean, if I said to you, here's one little thing you can do. And it's something about, I don't know, food, well, ocean might not be a big deal. If the ocean is your big deal, I say food, it's not gonna be meaningful for you, you have to only you know, what matters to you what's very meaningful to you. And if you get that, and you act on that, you'll keep doing it. So I was working with a client, and he the ocean was very important to him. And he talked about growing up by the beach and he loved the water and all sorts of stories about that. And they said, you know, he was just he actually was in India recently, and he was walking on a Causeway by the by the water and the water splashed up on him, it was really, that he was disgusted by that. And that motivated him to not use water or plastic water bottles. And that started propagating through his company. He's a, he's a C suite officer in a major global company. That look, it might seem a little like, how many water bottles he can use in his whole life compared to the whole world is very little But he did it because he cared about it. And then the next time I was there, people in his office started avoiding using water bottles to apparently these divided by the crate, not crate by the pallet. So it started, it starts small, but that's not the point it started meaningful. And then it became big, seek, look inside, all the listeners look inside yourself and ask people to help you because it really helps to have someone do it with you. What's meaningful? What does environment mean to you, when you act on the environment? What motivates you to act, and if you listen to a podcast with all the guests, I generally do that in the first episode, and you can hear how it goes and you can practice it and then you can lead others and have them lead you. And that's how movements begin. When people say, we got to do big things, governments, corporations, they should they should be the ones who do it. Everyone gets when you start a project. You got to scale it. You can't start with the big you got to scale you can't start from I mean, no one started Facebook didn't start that big. Google didn't start that big. GM didn't start that big. You got to scale from something small, something personal, something you care about. Start points to start, start with something meaningful. Don't worry if it's big or small, it will get big. Eventually, it'll spread to others eventually. And no thank you for it, no matter. No matter how big or small it feels at the beginning, people will catch on, and they'll follow you. And it'll seem normal. No matter how weird you think you are for picking up other people's garbage as I do every day, after a while you feel like Oh, that's a normal thing that I do. And people start doing it too. And after a year, you'll look back and say, I should have picked up 10 pieces of garbage, you probably will need to do that. And you'll stop buying stuff that produces garbage, and your friends will do it, you'll think it's normal. And you think, Oh, I could have done something bigger and you will do something bigger, and so will they. And then you have a community with a lot less garbage in it, or whatever, you know, it could be whatever, whatever is meaningful to you the listener.
Unknown Speaker :So talking about garbage and plastic, right? I want to avoid plastic but almost everything that we buy comes wrapped in that and you have simplified your life you you reduce the amount of garbage that you produce. How do you do that? How do you avoid plastic?
Unknown Speaker :Well, I can't avoid it completely. I mean, this computer that I'm on right now has a lot of plastic in it and is
Unknown Speaker :plastic, a little But I'm
Unknown Speaker :in the kind of disposable plastic right plastic bags and wrapping stuff like that,
Unknown Speaker :you know, I was on someone else's podcast once and we were talking about how I swam across the Hudson River. And a lot of people asked me, How did you do that? There's only one way to swim across the Hudson River. You have it, there's no mystery you you get in the water and start swimming. That's all there is to it. Don't buy plastic, if you don't want to get plastic in your life. It's there's no other way to do it. I mean, the challenge is what you replace it with. But there's lots of stuff in the soup. So food packaging is one of the main places where it comes from see the stuff that is coming in the plastic don't get that and the stuff that is not in plastic do get that
Unknown Speaker :problem solved. It's funny because today morning as I took my shower, I see all the shampoo bottle and like that's it comes in plastic. How do I how do I buy shampoo without a plastic bottle?
Unknown Speaker :So the answer no one wants to hear is you go online and find it out because everything that you have every challenge you can think of has been solved by plenty of other people before you just go on and look it up. And some people do it one way they'll have bars of shampoo some will do it. No The way like I use a lot less shampoo because I, I cut my hair a lot shorter than I used to. And now my need for shampoo is way, way smaller. So that's interesting also happens that there's a store near me that sells bulk shampoo. So I can take a bottle and refill it there. There's plenty of other things people can do. But it whatever, anyone listen to this, and if they buy toothbrushes or toilet paper, or shampoo or deodorant, whatever, it's all been solved before. In any case, if it's challenging, and you want to reduce it, go to the other places reduce in some other place, it'll be easier once you do this. So it's it's all been solved before this. You live your on off on 14th Street. If I remember right here in the village, there's farmers markets very near near you. Yeah, that foods can be healthy, nutritious, staying within the local community, and very likely very unlikely to have much plastic I think now because of COVID. They're making these rules, which I think are counterproductive but whatever the bureaucracies have rules that probably will force you to get some plastic. But I I haven't been in the city but I'm presuming that you can still bring them back. And they'll put stuff in your bags but you got to follow the rules. And that'll relax at some point. I don't think COVID will last forever,
Unknown Speaker :even if it last for years. Mm hmm.
Unknown Speaker :Farmers Market reminds me that we used to have a farmers market within stay down, which is where I live. And we started composting here maybe a couple of years ago, and stay down Peter Cooper village, this community has like 11,000 apartments. And at one point we were composting right five tons of food waste every week. And from what I know New York City produces like 3000 tons every week of food waste. But with cool Where'd this work has come to a stop because of lack of property or lack of staff to do it. And so there's no more composting and I feel a little lost with that because I was religiously composting all of our food waste, and that reduced the amount of trash that we probably generated maybe once a week still more than what you do but it was once a week now I'm produce more trash because there's no way to compost all of that food waste. Yeah. Do you have Any suggestions on what we can do? Because I see a lot of people in our Facebook local Facebook community asking this question they do more convenient.
Unknown Speaker :Here's what I've done so far is I had a guest on my podcast, Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, and I spoke to people about it. They said that he's very into food sustainability and things like that and food quality. So I looked up my neighborhoods speaker, I wrote that person and I call that person. So for me, it's um, Cory Booker, who was it. Anyway, I emailed and called my local representative, look up yours and call and tell them that you want to change beyond that. I'm not sure what to do next. When I get back in the city, which is probably gonna be soon. I plan on heading down to the Lower East Side. What's it called Lower East Side recycling center, something like that. I will see if they will accept my household food scraps there. And if I have to walk a bit more to drop it off, I'll do that. Next up after that. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm here. I'm up here at my mom's house and they have a yard and they just we just throw the compost in A pile and it turns into a float through the food scraps in a pile and it turns into compost on its own. Right. But call your representative. Right your representative. Hmm, I think the title is speaker looking it up. Yeah. Ah, city council member. Mm hmm. I looked up for Greenwich Village. So I guess your East Village or your town I guess. Saigon down. Stay down. Okay, so it's Keith powers. Oh, Keith powers. He put in a bill to require places to own Cory Johnson is mine. So Keith powers is yours. So Oh, so everyone, everyone who's listening to this. It's council.nyc.gov slash districts council.nyc.gov slash districts. And there you can find whoever yours is. Got it and contact them and ask them to restore it. That's a that's as far as I've gotten so far. Yeah, that's
Unknown Speaker :definitely helpful. What else do you do to make your life sustainable Josh?
Unknown Speaker :Well, a lot of things. Oh, by the way, when you were talking about the composting, and the food scrap collection, and don't ever go back and listen to her voice, because there was meaning and purpose in what she was saying. She liked it and that's why she wants to do more. And everybody has stuff that they care about. If you're not into composting, well, you probably will be once you start if you're whatever everyone has stuff that they're into like this and that's when that she doesn't want to stop with that. I mean now she's doing the podcast is presumably growing out of some of the passion or maybe the same passion and every who's sitting there thinking what can I do find something sit down with someone have them ask you what is the environment into and let's do something to act on that. I just I look out the window here and I see the tree that I planted a little while ago. So I planted my first tree and hope people are disappointed me thinking what the first tree you're like almost 50 years old and you've only planted one tree in your whole life. Yes, I'm not apologize, but that's the way it is. It's I've only planted one tree so far, but I want to plant more. I don't know I just do all these little things. I challenge myself to go without food packaging without buying any packaged food for a week. And next thing I know, takes me two weeks to fill up a little garbage, then three, then four, then five and six, then months then then years is start and now corporations and government are inviting me to consult with them on how they can act more and more environmentally, that's how it happens. You want to change government change yourself, you won't change corporations change yourself. You won't change anything. change yourself. Don't think that Oh, no one will notice I'm flying around or no one will notice that I put the aircon and I leave the air conditioner on when I'm not home because I want to be cool when I get home. You can't find solutions if you don't do these things. So the things I do is like I look for little things like that. I notice when you know this unnecessary packaging, I try to avoid it. I buy less stuff. I get stuff off of Craigslist, almost all my furniture. My apartment came from people getting rid of their stuff in my in my building. I buy clothing at thrift shops and thrift shops in New York City have like brand new clothing all the time. I got adultery and Gabbana 20 $700 jacket for like a couple hundred bucks. Once it Housing Works. What does that tell you? We live in a society of waste and we don't value stewardship. We don't value enjoying what you have that and yet when we do those things, the joy and the connection and community that result from it. much greater than the fleeting pleasures of. I don't know Doritos. Everyone's tastes are different. I don't know maybe people prefer I think if you eat if you just eat a bowl of ice cream, an apple isn't going to taste very good. If you don't eat ice cream for long enough the apple tastes better than the than the ice cream ever did. Broccoli tastes better than Doritos, but not if you've been eating Doritos all the time. And I'm not just talking about food. I'm talking about everything.
Unknown Speaker :How do you make broccoli taste so delicious? Don't eat Doritos. Well, how do you flavor it? What do you flavor it with? Oh man,
Unknown Speaker :you got to get there to where broccoli is really sweet. It's delicious just on its own. I people come over to my place and like you eat broccoli stocks are edible. Like, are you joking? Broccoli stocks are incredibly delicious. The stocks of brussel sprouts are unbelievably delicious. One of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. I eat it so much. I get sick, not sick really sick just like my stomach. So for some of cherries, I don't know you would cherries. I eat until I feel kind of woozy. Other things don't make me feel woozy but cherries do and if I don't need them Until I feel woozy. I'm like I could eat more. Broccoli is the way to make broccoli tastes good. Is it stop eating Doof don't eat Doof is my word for processed stuff that's designed, designed that stuff to make you crave it. What makes you crave things salt, sugar, fat, if you extract the stuff out of it that makes you crave it,
Unknown Speaker :drug,
Unknown Speaker :what made you come off? packaged food,
Unknown Speaker :seeing how much garbage I produced and realizing I live in a polluted world and I am polluting other people's worlds. And maybe government should change. Maybe Corporation should change. But I am taking responsibility for my putting waste in other people's worlds. Don't get me wrong. I know that I'm I'm exhaling carbon dioxide right now. I'm a greenhouse gas. Life requires processing stuff that produces waste. But I try not to. But by no means am I perfect. Not even remotely. I still produce a lot of garbage. If you try it just Yeah, you got to balance convenience and budget Time and all these things with considerations of stewardship and things like that. I doubt there's point oh 1% of Americans whose balance is where it could be. And that if they move more towards stewardship, I think there'll be more happy. I think they'll feel more connected with their communities and families. The past saved more money to,
Unknown Speaker :I grew up believing that you need three meals a day, at least, and that breakfast was the most important meal of the day. Now, if I look back, I think I read that in books and magazines. And a year ago, I realized that it was probably something that breakfast cereal companies came up with. And a whole generation actually believes that breakfast is important. I'm not saying we shouldn't have breakfast, but a lot of things are sometimes out there because companies want to sell their products.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that tends to be the case. There's and people internalize and think that they believed it from the start, man the cereal aisle in the supermarket is Once you I mean, a lot of people look at Cocoa Puffs, that's the brown one. And then Froot Loops. fr OT not f are you it because there's no there's not fruit, like that's the colorful one. So for them, that's variety. And they look at me and one day I make oats I put on I also put apple and another day I put on peach, and they're like, whatever. That's the same thing. They don't see variety in what I do. But they see variety between what to me. I mean, to me, there's a human element of food that what people do with it, there's an it's an expression of what people share with you. And when what you do is you just deep fry it everything or process it to puff it up. To me, Fritos and cornflakes are basically the same thing. They both got processed and made into crispy crunchy, and they got salt added and sugar added. But it's still just corn turned into some weird thing. Whereas can be a Fuji Apple And I don't know a gala Apple, wildly different, because my taste buds aren't like they used to be just overloaded with salt, sugar fat. I got to mention because a lot of people assume that they're thinking, Oh, well, you can do that because you live by farmers or, and so forth. And I got when I brought the single mom from a food desert to come to try my famous packaging vegetable stew. She invited me up to the Bronx that talked about this last time. No, yeah, she brought me up to the Bronx and set up a little cook workshop thing for me in this church up there to show how I do what I do, because they said this is this is a way to get out of McDonald's to get out of Kentucky Fried Chicken and not have that stuff. Because it's cookie, what you're doing is faster and cheaper. They just didn't know how to do it. So it's more accessible. It's cheaper. And hopefully if communities start doing it more, then there'll be more farmers markets. They're not less The more we spend on McDonald's and Froot Loops, the more money they have to advertise to get people to do more of that. We want to change that. Got to change it. And as it turns out, it's cheaper and faster, more convenient. And dinner with the kids. I mean, I got nieces and nephews, and we cook this stuff. They're like, Oh, what's that? And they're interested in Froot Loops. I don't know. I wouldn't do that. I'd certainly rather cook with my kids. Then give them some sugar fat puffed up into weird concoctions of rice krispies, or essential metal.
Unknown Speaker :No, I think a lot. I was just thinking that a lot of people would say that they were too busy like working parents, and that sometimes
Unknown Speaker :boy, they bought into it. They got they're being pulled around by the nose by these companies like they more time they don't have time for what I just met a guy up here. He his son is he has his to homeschool his son because you know COVID and he said he had no idea how good his son was at math and how school was doing nothing for him. It was moving backward. And he says in the fall, he's been Probably going to continue homeschooling his kid. Even if school is back in session. I said, Well, that sounds amazing. You sound like you you've learned something and you've changed something that you want to well, how can you never you could have learned this before. How can we didn't use it because I was busy. I was busy with other things. I said, What were you more busy with this? I don't know. He doesn't know what he was doing that was so busy. But it was keeping him from his son. And now, he's now that he's spending more time with his son. He realizes what he was busy with was not making his life better. He's not rich. He's not privileged. I don't know if he's going to save money. But it looks like it's not some difficult transition. And so he's going to spend to spend more time with the son. The business was almost certainly the message that you talked about from the food company from the from the cereal companies. That message is probably what made him feel busy.
Unknown Speaker :I can relate to what he said because two weeks ago, I realized I wasn't giving my son as much attention as he probably needs. I have a full time job during the day daytime when his school going on. So I'm not I'm not giving him enough time. But then I just made that choice that I'm going to spend the first few hours of the day with him during school, so that he knows I'm there to help him. But that's a choice we have to make. It's about deciding what your priorities are. Maybe we have them in the wrong order. So like your friend said, he's made time to teach his child you know, and he said he was busy earlier, but now he knows that you can actually make time if he wants to. So it's a matter of choosing your priorities to during the day,
Unknown Speaker :it sounded to me like he never questioned, oh, I guess when the kid turns five, they go to kindergarten and the next year, they go to first grade. And that's just the way it is. And seeing as a professor as a teacher, seeing the difference between sitting in rows forming, compliance based teaching on tests, versus project based learning or student directed learning, and schools. Read what's up occult. I'm Peter gray, is the author, free to learn, I think is the name of the book, or just go to psychology today and look up people Great gra y, and I don't have a kid, so you know a son or daughter of my own. So I can't speak from personal experience. But man, I would have loved to have gone to the school that he describes in that book. And that the type of education that he talks about, and if you look at the reviews of my books, leadership, step by step and initiative, the people who do the exercises, I had no idea I could learn like this. This is I didn't know that you could learn that this could be taught at all, school teaches the opposite of learning to think for yourself and learning to, I don't want to speak to glibly, you know, they'll teach you to read about Plato and learn and read Plato and learn what values mean to Plato and compare that with what they mean to my Angelou. But as long as they tell you what's important, what to read, what subjects to study, and so forth, then you're not finding out for yourself what's important to you.
Unknown Speaker :She just mentioned your books and the exercises that you have in the in the books for readers to go through. And you also mentioned that our listeners can ask you know, find a friend and ask a question as to what the environment means to them. Are they Any other exercises that you can suggest for them to get started on this journey of change?
Unknown Speaker :Well, I mean, if they're the book initiative is designed to get you acting on something that's inside you, I mean, first before acting on it, to unearth it, to dust off all the protections that we've covered up all of our passions with, so that we live lives of, Hey, how you doing? And where you from? What what weather sports traffic on the way over? That's what a lot of people that dominates a lot of people's meeting new people, for example. So, those that's a series of 10 exercises that are designed to unearth, uncover from these protections, things that you like and develop them into passions and develop communities around you of supportive non judgmental people that support you in projects of yours. So my podcast emerged from me doing that myself. The leadership book is exercises that are designed for personal leadership for first person leadership and then leading others of To be aware of your perceptions to be aware of your beliefs and why you believe certain things and how those beliefs influence your, your perception, your emotions, your motivations, your behavior, and do these things enough and you start developing new behaviors and eventually that evolves into a different lifestyle me if 10 years ago did not have the abilities that the me of me Now does that to me, it now doesn't and didn't have the vision, the determination, the passion, it was there, it was all covered up by protecting myself. And the second half of the book is how to lead others is how to make people feel comfortable sharing their passion so that you can help them achieve those passions. If you go to my blog and search for exercises, there are a few exercises there. Actually, if you look at my post yesterday, it was someone told me about a new exercise. I'll leave it to the listener to go to Joshua spoto COMM And check out my exercise yesterday which was May 23. And I like to find these things and look them up. I know there's lots of things meditation exercise, get fit, eat healthy, learn to cook
Unknown Speaker :all day, you speak about in your TED talk, you speak about smart goals, having specific goals that are time bound. Yeah. Can you give an example of one of those that you have for yourself?
Unknown Speaker :Well, I mean, the acronym smart for smart goals. It's not something I came up with. It's useful I find so specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. So a lot of time on the podcast, someone will say, I'll use less plastic. And I said, well, let's make that a SMART goal. Because use less plastic is very vague. Does that mean for the whole rest of your life, then that's really big, and not many people are making such a big change all of a sudden, and doesn't mean less? Does that mean? one atom less or one molecule less doesn't mean zero percent drop. So the more the more you make it specific and measurable and achievable and realistic and time bound, the more easier it gets. So if you ever have a goal of like, oh, maybe I should eat less meat, or maybe I should walk more and take drive less. Then the more you make it smart, the it makes it a lot easier. To achieve, in my experience, you'll you'll succeed more at say, reducing your consumption of plastic by 50% per month than by a vague amount for a vague amount of time.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, that definitely makes sense. It gives you I think it makes you accountable to yourself, I have set a time and a target that I should achieve by that time, right? Also, are you seeing more people asking for or asking for help to change during this particular phase of lockdown during the coven? Are they actually saying yes, we want to change Do you see that more?
Unknown Speaker :Well, as I see it, a lot of people they're forced to change their behavior. I mean, they're locked down they're not flying they're shopping is a different experience. They're interacting with all their community differently. More by phone and Skype, I guess or video and less by in person. Now that's they're complying with orders that people are giving them well, that stick. Well, some they probably don't want to stick being they probably would like to be outdoors more and stuck indoors less. So I hope people don't want to change that too. thing inside more when they could be outside some, they might want to stick with certainly people, many, many people have said to me how not flying has led them to connect more with people around them. They'd like looking at the pictures of the Beijing sky and that seeing that Mount Everest can be seen from Katmandu or wherever No, but I figure anyway that you know, the air is less polluted that the the streams and or the canals of Venice are less polluted. And people happy about that. Will that stick? Not without I think for most people, not without deliberate intent. That's where the self leadership comes from. Do they right now their homes, they're making the best place and they very little alternative. So like, Oh, it's so great to be home. Well, I mean, that's too much. But it's so great to be able to create some of the things in the connections that I couldn't make before but what happens when flying is unrestricted again? Will they continue to find the great experiences the campground near where they live? Imagine a vacation riding your bike for a couple hundred miles. I did that once. I don't know if people stick with it. I I hope To help some people stick with it longer and find the joy,
Unknown Speaker :how do you work with people? Is it only through corporates?
Unknown Speaker :It's I mean, I do a lot of my podcasts as my books. So that goes out to the public. There is being on other people's podcasts that goes out to more communities. There's, well the books have to buy, then there's and the podcast is the podcast and blog are free, then it's been a while since I've caught it taught at NYU. It's not clear how teaching will happen at NYU. So I'm not sure when the next courses that I teach are, I'm creating a course with a friend on habits and how to create habits of people and all my stuff I end is one on one coaching is the other big thing and there were corporate workshops. That's not happening as much now as it corporate corporations are figuring out how to do that by video. But so yeah, at the upper end, there's there's corporate workshops. There's keynotes at speaking in corporate events. And then there's one on one coaching. There's I do a lot of one on one coaching. So it's often executives but it's also people who are just looking to change lives who read my stuff, and like how do I do that? And you're asking the question in general But they're like really like, help me do this help me, I want to change this stuff. And by doing with me it's faster to change, and generally more meaningful and more rewarding and more fun.
Unknown Speaker :So when you say that our listeners can start this by, you know, talking to a friend about what does the environment mean to you? Is there a set of questions that they can ask themselves starting with that one?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, the first TEDx talk describes it. So look up Joshua Skoda TEDx NYU, and it's on my blog somewhere, but it's also on YouTube. And I described the four steps and how to do them. And I think the second the third book, podcasts, TEDx talks, also describe it, and then listen to my podcast, listen to any of my guests. Almost not all my guests do it. But most of them, they go through the process, and you can hear me doing it with them so you can hear how it goes. And you can hear them, you know, do things like a C suite officer from a major global corporation, and she pledged not to buy any new clothes for a year. And then for that year, she's like, sending me all these executives that she works with through that she talks about it too, and they start doing it too. So it like spreads. So there's all these like senior execs So all these global multinationals who are not buying clothes for six months or a year, something like that, and so that filters back to me to her. So that's Luna Davis. She that episode is i'd love bonus episodes
Unknown Speaker :interesting. So do you know if they stick with these goals after that after the cross that deadline of theirs
Unknown Speaker :or some do, I'm not sure I'll do some accelerate. I mean, there's plenty who come back and they say now that I've been like the very first guy, this was before the podcast, even the guy that prompted me to start the podcast, he pledged to pick up 10 pieces of trash a day for 30 days. So very smart goal. At the end of the time, he came back and told me that not only was he doing that, and having an easier time, he said at the beginning, he felt weird picking up trash. At the end, he felt weird passing trash by without picking it up. He also changed his diet to reduce his meat intake because he saw that he was making a difference he saw he liked it, and he researched what more he could do. And that was at the top of the list of things he could do wherever he researched it. I never talked him about food. He did that on his own. And then Doug Barron, who pledged to reduce his car usage for a month. At the end of that month, he said, talk to me again, let's do a third episode. Because I might sell this thing. He hasn't sold the car yet, but he hasn't driven it in a year. I didn't ask him to not drive the car for a year. That was him. That's because you started with meaning not big or small, but with meaning. And then you want to do more because you found meaning and purpose.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. You also talked about self leadership. Can you speak to that a little bit a little bit more.
Unknown Speaker :Self leadership is I mean, it's grounded in emotional awareness, emotional intelligence of we have emotions that motivate us. And most of us don't really have a sense of how our emotional system works. We kind of get it, but we feel urges and we just follow the urges. Some would call it sleepwalking through life. Any self leadership is among many things is sensing how we perceive things and how our beliefs influence our perception to lead us to behave differently and feel differently. In the classic case, there's a story of, um, that I have in my one of my self published books remodel, it talks about the three stone cutters. Some may have heard this story before. It's like you're walking down, you're walking along you see three people cutting stones in a quarry, and one's unhappy ones kind of neutral and the other super happy. You go to the first one the first and you say, What are you doing? How can you look so unhappy? That one says, Well, I got to make a living, I got to cut these stones. It's really I don't like this work. You go to the next one, the neutral one, you say, How can we look neutral? What are you doing here? And the person says, Well, you know, I'm a craftsperson. And I've been doing this for a while, I'm getting pretty good at Look, if you look at how I cut this, it's as well cut and it's going to, you know, it's going to go and do a good job in the building. And you go to third person and this was the overjoyed one. I say, Why do you look so overjoyed? What are you doing? And this person says, I'm helping build the greatest Cathedral and all the land, same work, same project. One of them is drudge work, the other ones building a cathedral. That's a little piece of self leadership. You can expect if you're the, I mean, there's lots of ways to look at it. But if you're the one who's if you got a job to do, if it's a cathedral, you're gonna be happier, you're gonna make more money, you're gonna get promoted more. If it's something you'd like to do. That's another issue. You might want to change jobs, but that's one element of self leadership. So I don't look at not flying as drudge work. Look at not flying, as helping change the world to where we don't hurt each other just to get some adventure. Some people don't like when I say things like that. I'm not trying to hurt someone. That's the burden of science is knowing how nature works, is it? The pollution just doesn't disappear. It still stays.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I like how you brought in the emotional aspect of it. Because sometimes a lot of things are just intellectual when you're speaking like, Oh, this, if you do this, it has an IT HAS A consequence on the environment could be intellectual, doesn't resonate with the listener, but if it has meaning, if it has meaning to them, and if they're emotionally involved with it, then they are more motivated to change themselves. Right. This was great Joshi, you know, to sum it up, you have told us the importance of doing things that are meaningful to each one of us and not necessarily do what someone else is doing. What Josh is doing may not make any sense to me. So I should look for what makes sense to me what values matter to me in this case, and pick it up and start small. Make sure that it's time bound and meaningful, start meaningful,
Unknown Speaker :it you may start big, no reason not to start big. If you want To
Unknown Speaker :ever don't buy more than you chew. And don't set yourself up for failure that's more important. Don't be discouraged to start whatever is whatever looks practical to you what seems practical, you start there and meaningful, make it meaningful and make it time bound and specific and have someone you can share this with a friend or a family member. And so make yourself accountable to so that you continued and
Unknown Speaker :get the glory people are gonna thank you for it. People are gonna love you for it.
Unknown Speaker :And Jared with one more friend like you share Facebook posts out on social media, just share it and spread the word help lead the change in your community. Yes,
Unknown Speaker :exactly. Exactly.
Unknown Speaker :Thank you so much. You make that change, you'll lead that change. And then you'll be this will lead to promotions. This will lead to people wanting to be with you. This will lead to people wanting to follow you, and they'll like it, and you'll follow them to another race.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. Thank you so much for being on the show. We will share all of the links that you mentioned as well so that our listeners can go there and watch them that will help them to make this change. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker :You very much