Laura Dawn: Hi, Chris. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me on Dear Humanity podcast. It’s good to see you.

Chris Johnstone: Thank you, Laura. I’m delighted to be here.

Laura Dawn: You co authored a book alongside Joanna Macy titled Active Hope, How to Face the Mess We’re In with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power. And in the book you write, Active hope is not the same as feeling hopeful.

And so I want to lead into this question. Why do we need a new way of thinking about hope and how do you define active hope? And I think to get there, it might be helpful to lay the foundation of the conversation by sharing these three stories that you share in your book, Active Hope, to help just prepare everyone for.

What act of hope really is

Chris Johnstone: sure. So, uh, you can look at what’s going on in the world. Through different lenses in different ways, and one way of looking at what’s going on in the world is that things just carry on the same old way. Nothing really much changes. We have our way, we usually do business, and the story of business as usual is really just that, that we can carry on doing our business the way we usually do, but.

Link to the way the dominant ways of living in industrialized countries. We are in a state of overshoot. We’re pushing the planet further than it can sustain. And in all kinds of ways, we’re already seeing evidence of collapse, whether it’s collapse of our weather systems, collapse of ecosystems, collapse of trust politically.

There’s all kinds of ways that there’s a falling apart happening in a way that A lot of people, there was a big research study of young people, over 10, 000 young people were asked whether they how they felt about the future. Very high levels of fear about the future. And more than half agreed with the statement, humanity is doomed.

And that sense that our world is falling apart around us is so widespread. And that’s another story. It’s a story we can call the great unravelling, the great Great unraveling. It’s not just one little bit falling apart here or there, but there’s a larger pattern of different systems in states of collapse or approaching collapse in a way that are having rebound impacts on, on each other.

And a lot of people, they look at the future and just have this massive heart sink and just a sense of like, where are we going? And a third story, a way of looking at reality, I guess, is, is the. The idea of we are living at a time of massive and inspiring turning point. And just as in an adventure story, you can have a very gloomy beginning, but turning points happen throughout the story.

We could be living in one of those times now. And,  , we think of that as the great turning, and it’s not just A change in our approach to transport or approach to education or healthcare, that there’s a larger pattern of transformation in all these areas that follow the same kind of direction, which is really about how we live in a way that supports the flourishing of life, the flourishing of life in ourselves, in each other and in our world.

And we think of that as the great turning. And I think of it as an amazing, inspiring story. But when I talk to people about this idea of the Great Turning, a common response I get is, well, that’s a lovely story, but I can’t see it happening. And this is where we need active hope, because what I often reply with is the question, well, do you hope it will?

Do you hope that we could have this kind of massive turning and transformation? And if the answer is yes, then how can you be active in making that more likely? How can you play a role in this larger story? And Joanna Macy and I, when we first wrote Active Hope, it came out in 2012. And when it came out then, we had more of a sense of, , optimistic possibility, that the sense of approaching collapse, that if we acted in time, we could really prevent some of the worst things happening.

And just what’s happened in the last 10 years is, is really, gone further in more disturbing ways than we really could have expected. This sense of every year becoming warmer, records being broken, but also the impact of that in terms of wildfires and droughts and crop failures and the impact that that’s having on displacing people leading to a mass migration process, the tensions that that can lead to, the increased threats of war.

So this idea of the great turning. Some people think, well that’s just not going to happen. Active hope is saying, well, starting where we are, asking the question, what do you hope will happen? And then how can you be active in making that more likely? That’s what we mean by active hope. It’s different from, are you hopeful?

Are you hopeful is do you think that the things you hope for will happen? That sense of positive expectancy, but If you don’t have that, if you don’t have a sense of hopefulness, it can become a real blocker to action unless you find another approach. And this is what we mean by active hope and the story of the great turning.

The central part is turning up, turning up with an intention to play our part. And in that turning up, there’ll be things we turn away from and things we turn towards.

Laura Dawn: It sounds to me like there’s also a strong role of imagination in this process because we have to wake up an inner vision. You talk about that within a larger frame of how we take steps towards engaging in active hope.

Chris Johnstone: Well, what you’re pointing to is so helpful, Laura, because often people want to be fact based. Fact based, reality based. But the thing is, if you’re only fact based, you’re looking at things that have already happened. And there’s a lot of interest in history, and there’s so much we can learn from history.

But if you look at the amount of attention that’s given to looking backwards in time, as opposed to looking forwards in time, there’s a massive imbalance. Just think of what we teach children in schools. There’s a lot about teaching about history, but very little of future studies. How do we teach people to look forward in time?

And the thing is, when you look forward in time, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And so you have to rely on, well, several things. One is Information about already established trends. What’s reasonably foreseeable based on what we know right now. But also, because there’s so much uncertainty, you need imagination.

You need imagination to ask the question, what’s the best that can happen here? And that’s A lot of my work is around teaching resilience and I’m very influenced by a resilience training program developed at the University of Pennsylvania, the Penn Resilience Program, and they have this three question reality check or perspective check where they say, what’s the best that can happen?

What’s the worst that can happen? What’s most likely to happen? Wherever you are, whatever you face, and when I teach resilience, we do it with a hand gesture, like just like this hold out your hand and each digit represents different ways things can go. The palm is like us here now, there’s better ways it can go, worse ways it can go, and what’s most likely.

But also to know that this is something we can influence. That we cast votes of influence that can steer our lives and the larger systems that we’re part of, in particular directions. And if we don’t look where we’re going in time, then we end up where we’re headed, which is over the edge of a cliff. And so we need to look ahead in time at what’s reasonably foreseeable based on current well established trends.

And it’s very disturbing. And so we need to have a sense of imagination of, well, first of all, what’s the best that can happen here? What do we deeply hope for? But then also how can we come in behind that? How can we really give our support to our hopes? And there’s imagination, not just in what we’d like to happen, but also what are the pathways that help us get there?

Laura Dawn: I love how this whole conversation is really framed within the work that reconnects and viewing that work as so foundational because I think as you both talk about in the book, there’s such a knee jerk reaction to turn away from pain and you’re mentioning resilience. in As well, and I feel like and and this is part of the work that reconnects is how do we open towards the reality that we’re facing?

To me, that also speaks to a level of emotional mastery that we weren’t taught in school and emotional resilience. How do we sit in the middle of discomfort in the face of so many crises and catastrophes and increasing stress? climate change \ So I’m curious if you can speak to that as maybe the starting point here of how do we cultivate emotional?

resiliency to be able to face face the pain of what’s happening without shutting down, numbing out, turning away from, but really holding our center, staying open and curious to what’s happening. And I’m curious what you’ve learned through the years of supporting so many people in this journey in terms of how that facing towards reality is actually a source of strength and resiliency.

Chris Johnstone: It’s so important what you’re, what you’re putting on the table here, you’re putting a number of things on the table and say, hey, let’s look, let’s look at this, let’s look at this, and one of the things on the table is how do we relate to distress, to painful experience, and I, I trained as a medical doctor years ago, and a lot of my work has been about promoting well being, and there’s a common thread in well being, Well, being approaches and you can see it in self help books and sometimes on podcasts, this idea that when something’s too disturbing, You protect your well being by turning the other way.

And I think there’s a real difference between periodic pauses for strategic refocusing. It’s like, okay, I’m finding this a bit much. I’m going to step, take a step back and regather My, my, my sense of things before I step back and face it again and a habitual response of avoidance and, I worked , in the addictions recovery field for nearly 20 years and it felt like one of the core.

Patterns that people got stuck in was this sense of when something’s painful, that’s too much. I want to dampen it down. I want to squash it down and people using, I was working with people with alcohol dependence, using alcohol as a way of pushing those feelings away and it works in the short term. But the problem goes and then comes back with interest.

And so you get caught in this loop where the problem goes and it comes back with interest. And in a way, we have something very similar in relation to climate change. It’s very disturbing to look at. It’s much easier to turn the other way. I’ve had people say to me things like, Oh, Chris, don’t look at that stuff.

It’s too depressing. You’ll, you’ll just make yourself stuck in, in that anxiety and depression. And there’s something here about. The real strength, or one of the real strengths of resilience is simply the strength to face things. To face things as they are. Because when you face things as they are, and you also have this understanding that whatever you face, however you feel, it can go different ways.

Then you can start thinking about what do I hope will happen here and how can I support that and so this really was Joanna Macy amazing. She’s 95 now. It’s such an important teacher for me I’ve been working with her for over 35 years and she wrote an article. This was back in the late 1970s That was called despair work People in despair about what’s happening saying this is something we need to make space for and work with in the same way like grief work.

With grief work, we don’t say just forget about the people who’ve died or the pain and just avoid and distract. We recognize that part of grieving is feeling the pain of loss. It’s just part of the Work of grieving, as it were. It’s not the only thing, but it’s part of the landscape of grief. And so we find ways of supporting ourselves and each other, being with that and working with that and through that.

And so it’s similar with despair work, that when you make space to feel the shock and horror of what’s happening in our world, something different happens that wouldn’t happen if you just said that’s too depressing to look at. And that is what I call a transformative dip, a transformative dip where you’re going into the distress and feeling the shock and horror and the pain and sadness and grief.

But also there’s something deeply transformative there, a kind of alchemy that can happen. And what helps that happen is a different understanding of what’s going on. To pain is a somehow a symptom of a problem.

Laura Dawn: Yeah,

Chris Johnstone: if we see pain as a symptom of a problem, you think, oh, I don’t want to have a problem.

So I don’t want to have the pain. I’ll take something to get rid of the pain. But what Joanna Macy talked about and this lovely phrase, how do you honor pain for the world? I think if there’s someone knocking on the door and you want to honor the visitor, you’d open the door and you’d invite them in.

When we feel the, uh, pain, distress, anxiety, alarm about what’s happening in our world, when we feel it knocking at the door of our attention, do we slam the door shut and bolt it and say, no way you’re coming in here? Or do we open the door and say, hey, okay, I hear you’re there. Tell me what you have to say.

And tell me what you have to say is recognizing that there’s a message there. There’s a message there for us to hear.

Chris Johnstone: So what we’re looking at here is part of a larger journey. And we’re looking at one essential piece in that larger journey, and maybe it’s worth taking a back step here to looking at the spiral of the work that reconnects and just picking up an earlier thread, Joanna and I, we wrote Active Hope that first came out in 2012, but things have got so much worse in the last decade or 12 years that we wrote a revised edition that came out in 2022 to acknowledge that things have already gone further.

But at the same time, the same basic toolkit, the same basic set of understandings and practices that were useful even in the late 1970s when Joanna was writing about despair work, those are still helpful and valuable now. So the core of the book is the same, but the context needed to be updated. And, and we also added in a few, Enrichments that I’d love to mention here as well, because they’ve been things that I found really helpful.

But at the core, what we look at is the question, what helps us face the mess we’re in and give our best response? By the way, I love the email that I got from you, Laura, inviting me to come on this podcast because I got a sense that you’re on this, you’re on this journey of Active Hope. It’s what this whole podcast is about, that you’re inviting people to show up with presence and bring their very best self to the predicaments of our time.

And that’s the question that Joanna and I started with when we. Got together to first write Active Hope. And so holding the question, okay, what helps us face the mess we’re in and give our best response? And the work that Joanna had developed and has been used by hundreds of thousands of people around the world is a workshop approach called The Work That Reconnects.

And at its core, it’s saying we’re part of life rather than apart from life. And it’s like, how do we plug in and really feel our sense of rooted in the larger life that we belong to? Because when we do, it’s like we connect with something, a much wider web of resources. It can bring us more of a sense of aliveness.

And also it opens up a way of thinking about our power to make a difference that creates a different set of possibilities when we’re looking at our very worst fears of what’s happening in the world. And so this work that reconnects is a transformative journey that moves through four stages and, and stages.

In fact, you can begin anywhere because it’s like a spiral. It just keeps on going round, but we tend to start at the first one of gratitude. And the reason I find gratitude so. enormously helpful is that I want to acknowledge that it’s hard to look at what’s going on in the world. And I can really understand people who say it’s not just that I don’t want to look, it’s that I, I fear what will happen if I do.

I fear that somehow I’ll get sunk into this hole that I won’t be able to climb out of. And recognizing that it’s scary and difficult to face what’s happening, we need to prepare ourselves so that we approach the difficult realities from a stronger starting point. And beginning with gratitude does that.

Gratitude, uh, I think of, uh, three aspects of gratitude and I have this kind of little motto of 42 plus that’s what I call it 42 plus is like the magic formula of gratitude so four is what am I grateful for and that’s really about appreciation and you can have the words I love dot dot dot Do you see what follows that?

I don’t know if you, what comes to you, or if I was to say, what follows the words, I love? I

Laura Dawn: love the rivers that flow around me, and I love this land that I live on, and I love my beloved so much, and I love my kitties, who bring me so much joy every single day, and I love the work that I do.

Chris Johnstone: How do you feel when you’re talking like that?

Laura Dawn: Oh, it feels good. It feels like It makes me think of the the broaden and build theory of positive emotions like we express what we love and then we feel better and then we’re more resourced to navigate what we’re facing.

Chris Johnstone: Exactly that. And, and this sense that this is a resilience tool, this is a resilience practice, and invite everyone listening that, to build this into your day, just these words, I love dot, dot, dot, see what follows, because what it does is it, uh, it guides our attention, think of it as hunt the good stuff you hunt the good stuff, you’re looking around you and noticing what you appreciate, what you value, What you love, what you like, uh, and when you do that, you get reminded that actually there’s resources around you, but also it’s because we love so much.

that we would want to act for it. But there’s another part, so 42 plus four, what am I grateful for? Then two is who am I grateful to? And if we have an open sentence that begins like a sentence starter, I give thanks to, and it’s another great one to begin the day. I loved, that’s a four. I give thanks to, that’s a two.

We call it the gratitude 42. And I don’t know what comes to you when you think. I give thanks to

Laura Dawn: I give thanks to my mother. She is such an ally in my life. And I give thanks to the Great Spirit and the spirit of inspiration that blesses my life every day.

Thanks to and thanks for, how do you differentiate what I give thanks for and what I give thanks to?

Chris Johnstone: So appreciation and thankfulness. appreciation. What do I love? What do I appreciate? And sure, there’s people there too. But when I give thanks too, I’m acknowledging that I’m receiving in some way.

And that is a, it’s not just that there’s beauty I love chocolate. But it might be the, actually it was my friend who made a chocolate cake. And so I might love the chocolate cake, but I might give thanks to my friend for making it. And then I might go a bit further and I think, where did all these ingredients come from?

I give thanks to all the people who played a role. And it wasn’t just people, that whenever you’ve got fruit and things like that, you’ve probably got pollinating insects. And I give thanks to them too. And you can trace it, you can follow this as a practice in a way that connects you with the world.

So, uh. I find it helpful to have this distinction, but also there are different facets of the same larger thing of, Leaning into the cherishing, the appreciation, the savouring, it’s a bit like when you have a really lovely taste and you let it linger in your mouth and you let your tongue just gently dance around that and you take it in that’s I love, that’s the four.

But then who’s played a role in this?

Laura Dawn: Okay.

Chris Johnstone: Who have I received from? That’s the two. I’m, I give thanks to. And then there’s something else too, because research shows that when people, uh, do things that increase gratitude It also increases their desire to give back and to give forward. These, these two terms, give back is like someone’s given to me, I want to give back to them.

But give forward is like some of the people I’ve received from they’re not around anymore, but remembering what I’ve received increases my desire to pass on to others. And there’s this thing about the great relay race in life, that we’ve received life from ancestors, but we pass it on to the next generation.

And when we really get a sense of valuing what we’ve received. Then when there’s a kind of responsibility and desire that comes with that to pass on, to, to, to give on. And particularly in relation to climate change or something like that, that fear, grief are powerful feelings that also motivate us. But if that’s our only motivation, it gets a bit wearing.

And gratitude is another, another. guiding emotion. It points us in particular directions. It’s a saying that gratitude is a social emotion that points our attention outwards. It reminds us we’re not alone. It reminds us that there’s a powerful network of support out there that we’re receiving from, but it also increases our desire to give back.

And so the plus here is how can I express my gratitude. And express in a way where I’m adding something. So, uh, it might be okay. I’m really grateful to you for inviting me along. Thank you. Thank you, Laura. And so one thing I can do is I can show up I can really carve out some time here, really make sure I’m undistracted, that I’m here to be with this.

There’s all kinds of other ways that when I’m really take in the gratitude. It makes me feel more inclined to and motivated to bring some value back to the table. How’s this sounding to you?

Laura Dawn: It’s beautiful.

Chris Johnstone: We could stop there we could just spend the whole hour and a half talking about gratitude But I also really love this phrase.

The whole is more than the sum of the parts

Laura Dawn: Yes, yes

And the

Chris Johnstone: whole is more than the sum of the parts when you have a number of different elements and you bring them together That creates something New and different that wasn’t there before That’s what this spiral is. And so gratitude is just the first step.

And it’s a lovely thing to do with groups of people. It builds trust between people. It’s a lovely thing to do as a personal practice. It’s very restorative, very good research around protective impact of gratitude on our emotional or mental health. And also once you’ve done that, you’re in a stronger position to then face the hard stuff, to face the storm that is happening in our world.

And this honoring our pain for the world, it’s not making people feel pain. It’s providing space for people to hear and be with what’s already there. And so just as simple, we did a, we did sentence starters, I love, I give thanks to, and a sentence starter for honouring our pain might be just something like, looking at the future we’re heading into, concerns I have include.

And there could be another one, and feelings that come with that are, that that could be an extension, but it could just be looking at the future we’re heading into, Concerns I have include, what, what comes up for you there?

Laura Dawn: Pollution of our drinking water and the impact that microplastics are having on our bodies, on the earth, on disrupting so many natural cycles and the use of single use plastics that are devastating our environment.

I’m concerned about climate catastrophes increasing and more and more people becoming climate refugees and being displaced from their home. I’m concerned about the degradation of the Amazon rainforest and activists that are being killed to protect the natural environment.

Chris Johnstone: I hear you. I really hear you. And we do this as a practice where we’ve experimented with different forms of doing this, but one is just to have one minute each way. Where we, one person speaks just for a minute, have a minute timer and just see what comes and the same with the gratitude and the the other parts of Spiral that we’re going to be looking at.

So it might be we’ve done two minutes on gratitude because we had two different sentence starters. We might have two minutes just to hear ourselves. There’s something very powerful happens when we hear ourselves name our concerns. I don’t know how that was for you. How are you left feeling after that?

Laura Dawn: Yeah, I mean, I feel just present to it.

Chris Johnstone: And so there might be some times where you remind yourself the tasks that you face. where as well as the beauty and the joy and the richness and so much you do to help people touch into that there’s also well as well as that there is also this there is also well what are our concerns and concerns particularly there’s looking at what is happening but there’s also looking at the future we’re heading into and if we don’t look at where we’re heading We’re more at risk of crashing into some of the things that are already on the way.

And it’s this idea of alarm is part of our threat detection system that can lead to changes in course.

Laura Dawn: I

Chris Johnstone: Have really been deeply touched by working with Jonah Macy over many, many years. Well, many years, several decades, and one thing she talks about is that in the workshop approach, the work that reconnects, there can be a real intensity of people being with grief.

I’ve been in circles of 100 people together, really sharing the depths of their despair about what’s happening in our world. And there’s something, a phrase Joanna, she says, it switches on the base chakra. It activates the base chakra. There’s something about our deep survival energy That when we’re not aware of any threat, it’s easy to kind of complacently stroll through life but when we become aware of the threat to our Existence it switches on this deep desire to survive That wakes up a whole new level of presence and aliveness and that’s something I’ve experienced and seen happen So many times, I did a one year follow up study of people who’ve been at workshops where a significant number, about one in four people, said that they found this deeply life changing.

But also what can happen is that when you make room for the pain, you can also be left with the question, what can we do about this? And it’s not even just what can we do about this. Sometimes it comes out as what can we do about this anyway? The sense of, well, what can we do about this anyway?

That there’s research done, the Mental Health Foundation did a big survey a dozen years ago. They asked people about how they felt about concerns about the world and the commonest response was powerlessness. Powerlessness where the feeling of, well, what’s the point of even looking at this because we can’t do anything anyway.

And. What I find so helpful is the next stage of the spiral. So we begin with gratitude, we honour our pain for the world, we make room for the distress, the alarm, the being present to what’s there. But then the next stage is really about how do we open to a sense of possibility? And one of the ways we do that is we look in a different way, look in a different way to the conventional way.

And there’s two layers of this. And so one is seeing with new eyes that’s looking differently, but also another way is when we see with new eyes, we can also see ourselves as part of the living earth. That’s one of the deeper shift and that’s, uh, Not just a new idea. That’s an ancient idea held by many indigenous land based traditions all over the world.

And so that’s also seeing with ancient eyes. So it’s like seeing with new and ancient eyes. But if we do the new eyes, just to begin with, of question I ask people is whether there’s ever people had an experience of believing something was completely impossible. But then see it happen. Have you ever had that sense of there’s no way this is going to happen? It’s just not in the picture, And it might be something to do with yourself. It might be me do that No way, no way it can happen or it might be looking out the world, you know The idea that they’re going to do that.

No way that’s not going to happen But there’s something about being surprised and this is why I love this term unexpected resilience It’s the idea that sometimes we can surprise ourselves.

I used to be hooked on cigarettes and I struggled and struggled and struggled to give up smoking and I I actually would buy cigarettes and have a cigarette and then soak them all under the tap because I think no, I’m not, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that.

And then I would fish them out the bin and put them in the grill and heat them up and dry up the tobacco and smoke them again. And there was something that was really out of control and, uh, I mean, tobacco is so widespread, but actually nicotine is so incredibly addictive. And I reached the point, I thought, I can’t do it.

I was really reached the point, I thought, I, I, I’m, I can’t do this, which was extraordinary for me because I was a medical doctor, really committed to the holistic approach and it flew against everything that I really held dear. But somehow I was still really struggled with this. And I’m so pleased I gave up.

This was like more than two decades ago now,

and then I worked in the addictions recovery field for nearly 20 years. And, and a client said to me, he said, Chris, I’ve given up giving up. Because I don’t believe it’s possible for me. And yet I saw that same person some while later really step in an inspiring way into recovery. And whenever people say, I can’t see that happening, I love this growth mindset idea where you just add the word yet can’t see it happening yet.

And I’m not saying that everything is possible. I’m saying that I don’t know for sure. What’s possible and if I accept that I don’t know for sure what’s possible because I’ve had the experience of things being seen as Impossible yet still happen and that’s happened historically lots of things have happened that people thought oh that can’t happen Then I know that my sense of possibility is an assessment Based on what I know.

And that sometimes that assessment is wrong. A lot of people have the assessment that we can’t change the world. And actually, I think it’s a very dangerous idea, because if we think we can’t change the world, then there’s a way in which it might seem to matter less what we do to it because we can think well if we can’t change the world we can’t really harm it too much.

Uh, and I think of ties in with resilience because if you imagine holding a tennis ball and you squeeze it it kind of springs back into shape, squeeze it hard it springs back into shape. And that’s how resilience is often thought of, you squeeze hard it springs back into shape, we can spring back into shape.

Earth can spring back into shape. There’s this kind of trust in, oh, it will be okay. And if we have too much of a sense of, oh, it will be okay, we can not pay enough attention to the real threats to things being okay. And life is different to a tennis ball.

It’s a bit more like a tomato. And I often in resilience training, get people to hold a tennis ball in one hand or imagine holding a tennis ball in one hand and a tomato in the other. And you might like to try this too. You can hold imagine what’s it like to squeeze a tennis ball hard and then let go.

And you can feel it springing back into shape. And then if you were to squeeze a tomato, there’s a point at which it gives and it moves to a state of mushy mess. and that’s an example of overshoot and collapse. When you over squeeze a tomato, you get collapse. And some people might think with tomatoes aren’t very resilient, but I like to play around with this as a thought experiment.

And this is part of seeing with new eyes. It’s seeing with resilience, with new eyes, that if you were to imagine just stepping back, I’m seeing your vista and the plants in the distance, you could imagine going outside and squeezing a tomato outside and then putting it in If this was a thought experiment, you think, what if I had a time machine and I could travel forward in time 10 years, you could imagine seeing tomatoes growing.

If it was quite a powerful time machine, you could go 100 years or 1000 years or even 10, 000 years into the future. it could still be conceivable that there will be tomatoes growing around you. And that’s a different kind of resilience. It’s the kind of resilience in life where collapse is not the end of the story.

Collapse is sometimes even necessary to release the seeds of future possibilities. And where I find that helpful in terms of emotional resilience is sometimes in facing what’s going on. We can be like the tennis ball. We can be squeezed and we can hold a steadiness and spin back into shape. But there might be other times where we’re more like a tomato when we just collapse in a mess on the floor, that we collapse in tears and collapse in defeat and despair.

And if we think, OK, I’m having a tomato moment here, then it’s a sense of how could this be a transformative dip. Maybe there’s a necessary letting go of hopes that are past their sell by date. There’s something here about adjusting to new realities involves recalibrating hope. Some of the things I hoped for ten years ago are no longer supportable now.

That’s why Joanne and I wrote this book. rewrote Active Hope because some of the hopes that we had in 2012 were no longer supportable in 2022. But this tomato story is one of the new things that we brought in because it’s a way of acknowledging the unexpected resilience and creative power of life.

That when we really see that you can see a forest can be burnt down, yet you can come back some while later and see lots of little green shoots sprouting up. And the forest

Laura Dawn: regrown.

Chris Johnstone: There was a time when this massive asteroid hit Earth. It’s a called a period of time called the Great Dying. It’s the largest mass extinction event that we know of where upwards of 70 percent some people say even 90 percent of life at the time was destroyed or the species destroyed.

But what followed that was Not just a mass extinction, but there was also a mass recovery event. It took a huge period of time, but there was a way in which life grew back into the niches that had been vacated, that there was this explosion of new species that you can see in fossil records. And if we know that this is part of life, I think of resilience as a powerful force of nature that can happen through us.

That if we kind of sense, well, what if what if. We’re looking here at how we face the mess we’re in with unexpected resilience. It’s just leaning back into our birthright that we are part of life. And life has this amazing ability to spring back, to grow back, even after devastating declines.

And so then it’s a different story of what helps us. Face the mess we’re in. It’s something about a different story. This is a story of the great turning, where part of the great turning is saying, well, okay, if there’s a collapse of this, how can we find new seeds of that? How can we find new seeds and new shoots of a way of living that supports the flourishing of life?

Laura Dawn: I think you’re familiar with Margaret Wheatley and her work. I think I read it in, uh, you quoted her in active hope. I had a conversation with Meg for this podcast and one of the things that I have been struggling with and I’m really curious to hear your perspective on this because you’re speaking to it directly is this idea of going beyond attachment to the outcome.

And I heard Joanna when she was speaking. I think it was Bioneers 1993. It was a long time ago and I was watching a replay of her talk on on YouTube and she used the example of David and Goliath. where David’s going to fight Goliath and someone knocks on David’s shoulder and says, how are you feeling?

Are you hopeful? And David says, get out of my way. I need to go fight Goliath. ? I’ve been grappling with it And thinking about this for months since I had this conversation with Meg because from her perspective the turning is so cyclical, and she holds the perspective that there’s nothing that we can do to quote unquote save the world or prevent this, this turning into what has become self destructive collapse.

And what I’ve come to from that conversation was regardless of what happens, what’s important is to do work that I find meaningful, to find meaning in the action that I’m taking. , when you asked me earlier what do I love and how do I feel about what I’m concerned about?

in the future that does motivate me to do this podcast. It is literally what is the underlying force and motivation that gets me out of bed every morning. .

And I know that this is such a deep and also loaded question , from your perspective, are we in a turning that is unavoidable? And , is it part of the natural cyclical nature of reality?

, where do you land in this things are going downhill and regardless, I’m still going to show up and do this work because that’s what I find meaningful and is this idea of going beyond and Hope for an outcome beyond hope and despair beyond attachment of what we think is going to happen is that part of active hope.

Chris Johnstone: So I want to come back to the journey that we’re on of beginning with gratitude and honoring our pain and acknowledging that when we make room to feel the hurt, of our hearts being broken sometimes. That’s how it can feel when we see what’s happening in our world. There’s some things that we can bump into and powerlessness is, is, is one.

And, and also linked to powerlessness can be a sense of defeat. a defeat of, well, okay, we can’t do it we lose the sense of possibility. And the seeing with new eyes is how do we open to perspectives, ways of looking at things that help us show up and play our part. And I think that the first two parts of the spiral is facing things as they are in both their beauty and their horror.

But then the second two parts of the spiral, which we. We’ve entered now with a seeing with new eyes or seeing with new and ancient eyes. The third part is about how do we open to perspectives that encourage, inspire and give us a sense of possibility. And what you’re pointing to here is one that Meg weekly offers.

And it’s something here about Is this a winnable thing? So for example tackling climate change is it a winnable thing? And winnable being certain if we’re gonna really succeed with this. So just thinking, for example the Paris A goal of 1. 5 degrees to keep the rise of temperature not more than that averaged over a period of time.

What happens when we get past that? If we’re too attached to the outcome, you want to have enough enthusiasm for an outcome to head towards it. But not so much that it becomes a show stopper if you don’t get there. If you become too attached to an outcome and then you experience a massive disappointment, do you think show’s over, we give up?

You know, I used to think I could change the world and I was very attached to this particular goal and I worked for years and years. I worked my socks off to get there and then We all, in spite of all our efforts, we failed, and I just thought, what’s the point? And I come across this, I work a lot with activist burnout, and this is one of the stories of activist burnout.

People work hugely hard for a particular goal and then experience disappointment, and then one of the features of burnout is not just loss of energy, but also loss of sense of meaning in what you do. And if you feel like I was, I was on this story and then this story collapses, what is left? And so this is where the idea of letting go of being too attached to a particular outcome is a helpful shift in perspective.

, and, and we had something similar because in a way, In the version, the 2012 version of Active Hope, we talked about the great turning as this historical moment, a bit like we might look back on the Renaissance or other periods in history, where there are lots of smaller parts that added to a larger whole.

And that somehow we made this historic shift and yet roll on 10 years and we’ve gone backwards in so many different ways in spite of so much awareness about climate change. 2024 is like, is, is all set to have higher levels of carbon dioxide emission than any year previously. And you kind of think like, haven’t we been listening?

Haven’t we been on, on this? It’s like we are, uh going backwards in, in so many, so many ways. And, and if we’re too attached to that’s the success we want. then we can lose hope in a way that becomes a obstacle to further action. What I really like is this idea of how do we rekindle hope when the spark of hope goes out.

And if we see it not so much hope full ness as hope full ness.

Laura Dawn: Hopefulness versus hope for ness. Okay, I get it. Like hopefulness versus what do I want to happen? Which kind of comes back to the imagination piece and the vision.

Chris Johnstone: Exactly that. So there’s, am I hopeful?

Which is, do I have a sense that the things I hope for are likely to happen? And if I lose hope, there’s a sense of defeat and collapse and the kind of resignation that leads people to think, oh, humanity’s doomed. But if we kind of go, okay, what do I hope for? Hope for ness. What are you really deeply for?

Then how can you be active in support of that hope? That’s what active hope is about. And this leads to, this is part of the seeing with new eyes. It’s a whole new story about what we mean by hope. And I love this idea of activating hope or hope activation. What if hope activation is a hope is active when it happens through you or through others.

If you can help hope happen through you or through others, then you play a role in activating hope. You play a role in hope activation. And what you’re activating is a process of movement in a particular direction. And there’s something different here. This is where in the second edition of Active Hope, we Recast the story, recast the narrative about the Great Turning, not so much from this big historical thing, but to a live process that happens through us in any moment, we can say, what would it look like if the Great Turning were happening through you?

What would you be doing? You’d probably be doing exactly as you are this kind of thing. This is one of your pieces of work, your gift of active hope. It’s what you, you think, what’s my part to play? This is what you do. You show up with the podcast and say, this is what I’m doing. One of the things that you do.

And so if we ask that question, if, Hope could happen through me today. What would I do? Now, that seems a big thing big. My hopes are really big. I hope that we have world peace. I hope that we really seriously tackle climate change. I hope that we find a way of living much more harmoniously with ourselves, each other and our world.

There’s all kinds of things I hope for. And I might think I’m so tiny, what can I do? We’ve been working on this as a kind of movement practice, and in the movement practice I have a hand that goes round in a big circle. And then makes a little square. And what I’m doing, there’s an image of Active Hope of a whole load of squares arranged in a circle.

And the key thing here is when you’ve got a whole load of squares arranged in a circle, the circle happens through the squares. The larger pattern happens through the pieces. And it’s a way of thinking about influence and change where big happens through small. Larger processes happen through smaller processes, the great turning, this big wonderful story that I’m so inspired by.

It happens through lots and lots of people showing it up in all kinds of different ways and recycling might be part of it, podcasting might be part of it. Might also be, how do I look after myself when this is such a difficult time? Self care is part of it too. And all these different elements, but the circle happens through the square, larger happens through smaller, there’s a number of different elements that act together as a larger whole, where the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

And in the same way, the work that reconnects happens through these four elements that we’re moving through. So, Uh, whenever you come across an idea that you find inspiring and I’m describing one, uh, I, this, I, I find just so helpful, this idea of bigger happens through smaller hope happens through us, and when hope is activated and you feel that sense of activation inside you, for me, it brings me more to life.

I, I feel somehow like there’s a whole level of my being which is switched on at a more engaged and, uh, able level in a way that’s very satisfying. It’s much more much more enjoyable to live this way. I’m seeing you nod like you recognize this. I’m

Laura Dawn: curious if you’ve come across any research that links together hope with intrinsic motivation.

Chris Johnstone: Yes, I’m not gonna, I’ve not got something that I can pearl out, but we’re looking at here, what is the basis of intrinsic motivation? Intrinsic motivation has directionality, and whenever you are looking at directionality, you’re looking at not just where you are, but also what you’re moving into, what you’re moving towards, and the fact that you have choices there, and that you have an intention to favor some options over others.

And that’s the basis of what hope is. I hope for this rather than that. But I want to come back to what we’re doing here, which is we’re exploring perspectives that open up possibilities. And The second sentence was looking at the future we’re heading into, concerns I have include. When we move into seeing with new eyes, a simple sentence starter I really like is looking at the future we’re heading into, what inspires me is. I’ve been talking a bit about what inspires me. I wonder, Laura, what, how would you take that sentence starter, looking at the future we’re heading into?

And by the way, I’m offering this as a tool of practice for everyone listening here. These simple sentence starters, and we had two at the beginning, I love, then we had, I give thanks to, then we had, looking at the future we’re heading into, Concerns I have include and now we’re moving to seeing with new eyes looking at the future.

We’re heading into What inspires me is over to you.

Laura Dawn: What inspires me is Community resiliency. I feel like more and more people are waking up to remembering the power of What it means to be a good neighbor

I’m inspired by the creative, innovative solutions coming through people. I’m inspired by witnessing people wake up to possibility and to see this time as a time of experience. Remembering and reconnecting to what really matters to what’s important to seeing ourselves really belonging to the web of life belonging to this earth.

And all of that inspires me immensely.

Chris Johnstone: And when you have that, you don’t need to be so attached to an outcome. It comes back to Meg Wheatley’s point that because if we’re very attached to a business as usual way of living, when it falls apart, it becomes very scary. But when we have a trust in community resilience, in our creative abilities to find new ways of doing things, it helps us face the uncertainty of old familiar ways falling apart.

with unexpected resilience and creative power. That’s really what we’re wanting to develop is a sense of, okay, the tomato is squashed. There, there’s a whole mess on the floor, but there are new seeds. We’re trusting in our creative ability to plant seeds and grow new ways of doing things. And, and that’s really what’s needed in our times because in a way that when there’s, Attachments who it must be a particular way and I’m thinking here particularly like living standards, you know that there are ways in which as resources get consumed that energy, for example, may well become more expensive, that some of the things that weren’t, we’d hoped would be affordable are less affordable for larger numbers of people.

If there’s an attachment to a particular way, it just creates a lot of resentment, envy and anger that we can’t have what we had hoped to have.

Right.

Chris Johnstone: And to be able to move safely into a future where we can live alongside each other rather than just fight each other.

We

Chris Johnstone: need to find a way of adjusting our expectations, our views of what’s possible, that we need to recalibrate our hopes and let go of the hopes that are no longer supportable and then say well okay what is it then we deeply hope for and this is where we come to the Going forth part of active hope and in the end of chapter two we have this seven sentence start as this process that guides people around the spiral.

So we’ve been looking at gratitude, honoring our pain, opening to new perspectives, we’re seeing with new eyes and there’s also this deeper level of seeing with ancient eyes, seeing ourselves as part of life. That’s, there’s a real richness there and also I’m going to suggest that we move on to the going forth because the going forth is finding our part to play.

And finding our part to play, some people can think like what can I do? , but if we see that it’s a piece of work to do, to find our part to play, and it won’t happen straight away, but if we give it attention and keep coming back to it, we get a clearer sense.

We might try some things that’s not quite right, we keep coming back, we’re holding the question, keeping coming back to the question, what’s my part to play? And Someone who’s been an important teacher for me, David Shan. One thing he says is, stay true to the impulse, but flexible about the form.

Laura Dawn: Stay true to the impulse and flexible about the form.

Chris Johnstone: I wanna play my part. That’s an impulse. What part I play and may try something and then find it completely nose dives into disaster. But rather than think, oh, it’s no good, I can’t do anything. I come back to my impulse. I wanna play my part. I let go of that form, this is the non attachment, flexible about the form, it doesn’t have to be a particular way, I do the best I can, sometimes it works better than other times, and then I’m open to the feedback of what seems to work well and what doesn’t, and how I keep coming back to this coming back to the impulse, I want to show up and I want to play my part.

Laura Dawn: And to Meg’s point, that uncovering of our gifts. in a way that we’re aligning our strengths and we’re offering what is ours to give is really the foundation of what is a meaningful life to live.

Chris Johnstone: Exactly that. What’s mine to do? What’s mine to do? That’s a guiding question. What’s mine to do? And the journey before that is about how do I get myself to a state where I’m really best resourced and able and present to find and do what’s mine to do.

That the gratitude is part of resourcing. But honoring our pain for the world is being with

the

Chris Johnstone: alarm signals in a way where I’m not incapacitated by them or not incapacitated for too long by them.

But

Chris Johnstone: then opening to the seeing with new eyes is about opening to perspectives that encourage, inspire and open a sense of possibility in a way where then when I come to play my part, I’m doing it from a different place.

I’m doing it from a place, and I think of active hope, like Tai Chi you know, Tai Chi is something you do, and it’s a healing martial art, it’s a healing martial art that you can do every day, and the more you do it, the more you sink into it at a deeper level, there’s a kind of level of skillfulness that grows with regular practice, and training, and it’s something similar with active hope, it’s not just something like, I’m just active in support of my hopes, that’s it, end of story, but it’s that the process of being active.

active in support of my hopes is something I can get better at. It’s a process I can support. I can give time and attention to exploring questions. What helps me show up for this in the best possible way? And this is where the spiral comes in because the spiral is a set of understandings and practices that help resource me to show up and play my part the best way I can.

And so, with the going forth stage, we have a whole load of practices around planning, around getting clear about dealing with some of the blocks. But a very simple one is just a three stages, uh, three open sentences, where the first one is just in the sense of what I deeply hope for is. So it might grow out of, uh, looking at the future we’re heading into.

What I deeply hope for is, I don’t know, do you want to say anything to that? Looking at the future we’re heading into, what I deeply hope for is

Laura Dawn: Peace on earth amongst people. What I deeply hope for is for everyone to be able to have access to clean water and for everyone to be able to wake up without fear that their lives are at risk.

I deeply hope for creative solutions to

overconsumption and finding new models to replace the old ones.

Chris Johnstone: I hear you. I hear you. I feel alongside you as well. We share hopes. But in terms of a practice that we might do as partners, where we might take it in turns with these sentence starters, it’s a wonderful thing to do. We’ve got a YouTube video just moving through these seven sentence starters.

And we are at number five now. We’ve come to the fourth. fourth stage of the spiral, but we’re doing these sentence starters, what I deeply hope for is. But then what follows that is one that just goes, a part I’d like to play in support of that is. So some of the things that you’ve been describing, what’s a part you’d like to play in support of that?

There’s what you deeply hope for and then thinking, okay, what part can I play? A part I can play in support of some of that is.

Laura Dawn: hosting the Dear Humanity podcast and also offering my training programs that I really truly feel are such a devotion of love. And over the years, I’ve been getting more and more clear on this question of like, what is love?

really mine to do and what has been coming through, especially in the past few years and looking at my unique path. Ultimately, I think the, the thing I was really born to do is helping people work with altered states of consciousness through plant medicines in a ceremonial way to unlock creative cognition, to help find, innovative solutions to the bigger problems that we face and presencing the context that we’re speaking to here.

And that’s one thing that I just want to name too, is that and recently I put this out on social media where it’s like, I don’t want to talk about health or healing or business or psychedelics or anything, unless it’s in the context of the crisis that we face. And everything that you’re speaking to is that and that was really the purpose of Dear Humanity was how do we presence all of these conversations around how we can engage and how we can support and how we can bring our gifts through in the context of this conversation of the turning.

Chris Johnstone: Yes, yes. I feel I’m with you and on the same team. And what I’m really struck by is how clear you sound naming the part you’d like to play. And I just wonder, how was that? Hearing yourself describe that?

Laura Dawn: It feels really good. And I will just, Just say for people listening, this is a question that I feel like I still, I still presence in my morning practice every single day.

It’s actually part of my foundational practice. And for many, many years, I felt like it was really painful and a struggle to become more clear around what is mine. And it’s been something that I’ve, I’ve actually just like deeply longed. to know. So I, and I want to say that so that people listening and a lot of people follow my journey online and you might think I exude clarity and this has been a deep process.

And that has required actually a lot of efforting, a lot of deep inquiry, a lot of listening, a lot of tears, a lot of trying different things, a lot of moving closer and then moving back and then moving closer again. It’s really actually taken everything I have to really come to this place now where I, and maybe this might evolve and change.

So right now I feel very clear that this is like really. what is mine to do and that might evolve and it’s taken me decades to get here.

Chris Johnstone: Yes, I really hear, I think of it as the journey approach to change. There’s a journey of moving in a direction that the way towards clarity is often through confusion.

And it’s when we step into confusion, we’re stepping out of an old way of knowing. And to find a new way of knowing, we need to step out of an old way of knowing. So confusion is just part of the journey. And that’s what this Going Forth stage is about. It’s about acknowledging that the process of gaining clarity is exactly that.

It’s a process. It’s a journey. And it’s helped by certain understandings and certain practices. And so how do we support each other in this journey? And doing this, just getting to know this spiral as part of it, saying that there’s a transformative strengthening process that helps us find our part to play and helps us find our capacity to play it better than we might do otherwise.

That’s the

work

Chris Johnstone: of the work that reconnects and it’s what Joanne and Macy and I describe in Active Hope and I think of it as Active Hope Training. Active Hope Training is saying that there’s a training process and training both in terms of developing new capacities, but also training. A bit like fitness training.

Fitness training you do on a regular basis to maintain and develop capacity. You are not necessarily doing something new. You are doing something which is familiar, but in a way that deepens and strengthens

And so this. Spiral we’re going around is an example of that, just these simple sentence starters, and we’ve now come to the last one.

So the last one is just looking at the next week ahead of you, and just saying something like, Okay, something I can do, or a specific step I can take in the next seven days to move this forward is. And you might have, when you’ve heard yourself describing some of the things that you’re really clear about, you might have something in mind that you think, Oh, yeah, okay, a step I’m going to take is.

Do you want to see what just follows that specific achievable

Laura Dawn: step? I’m going to

Chris Johnstone: publish

Laura Dawn: another podcast episode and just share more of these conversations with my audience. And that feels like a small way that I can play my part.

Chris Johnstone: It’s so good hearing you and also being a witness and also partner in the work that you’re developing.

What I’m really struck by is the difference between the idea that we need to go somewhere and hear someone to be inspired. As opposed to, which is also incredibly valuable, not saying we don’t need to do that. But if we only need to do that, we miss out on such a major, important source of inspiration, which is hearing ourselves speaking.

I trained a trainer in an approach called motivational interviewing, which is a evidence based approach in health psychology, much used in addictions recovery work, but also much more widely than that. And it’s about how do you have conversations where people hear themselves speak their own motivation in a way that reinforces it.

Where people make their own argument for change, where they talk themselves into taking the steps. And it’s called change talk, or evoking change talk. And it’s what we’ve been doing in this simple process of having a few beginning sentences. Uh, I love dot dot dot. I give thanks to. Looking at the future we’re heading into.

Concerns I have include. Looking at the future we’re heading into. What inspires me is. Looking at the future we’re heading into. What I deeply hope for is. A part I can play in support of that deep hope, or these deep hopes is, and a step I can take, a specific achievable step I can take in the next seven, uh, seven days is.

And just doing that as a regular practice, this is what I mean by, uh, the practice of Active Hope, where we’re supporting hope activation. Supporting hope activation is something we can engage in every day. Every day we can do this. We can just remind ourselves of, of what concerns us, what where we resource ourselves by giving attention to gratitude, remind ourselves of what’s inspiring, but also what we deeply hope for and the role that we feel called to play.

And if answers aren’t clear, That’s fine, because we can come back another day we can say, okay, this is a work in progress, and some of it isn’t there yet, but I wonder, do I hope for greater clarity? And if I hope for greater clarity, how can I be active in making that more likely, in moving that way, in supporting that hope?

And that’s where we can apply active hope even to the process of active hope.

Laura Dawn: I want to speak to the word reconnect. It’s embedded in the fabric of the spiral and the work that reconnects. If someone is asking, well, reconnects to what? And I want to share just very briefly. I also struggled with addiction many, many years ago, and I had a catalyzing moment when I was listening to Pema Chodron and an audio series, getting unhooked or getting unstuck.

And I remember Laying in a hammock and I was really struggling at this point and she said something along the lines of if you want to heal, if you want to find your way out of this cocoon, the self absorbed cocoon that you’re just going round and round in with self. And I remember like perking up and thinking to myself, please tell me I’m willing to do anything.

And her solution and what she said next was, well, it’s really about reaching a hand out and connecting to a sense of common shared humanity. And I’m curious if you can speak to reconnection on a couple of different levels here, because there’s one that’s really this concept of interbeing. And there’s another of shared humanity that we’re reconnecting to other people who are feeling pain and the resiliency that we gain by this perspective shift, because you’re also talking about the perspective shift required to actually do this work.

And one of those big perceptual shifts that I think is going to take us a very long time to wake up from the illusion of separateness. But what kind of strength and resiliency is remembering our inherent connection to each other and to this earth? This concept of interbeing or deep ecology, what is that offering us in terms of strength and resiliency?

Chris Johnstone: There’s a practice we do in the work that Reconnects called the Council of All Beings. And it’s imagining ourselves coming to like a gathering, almost like a special session of the United Nations. But it’s not the United Nations, it’s a united species of people. Planet Earth, the different species come together and what happens is we, as part of taking part in this practice, we agree to speak for or let another being speak through us.

So we each person in the workshop has either chosen or been chosen by another life form to speak on their behalf at this gathering. And there was one time where. I spoke for Ivy, the plant Ivy, and I was doing this workshop, facilitating it. And I just reached the point in the middle of the workshop about despair, where I just collapsed in a heap of despair.

I just thought, like, what is the point of this work? Coming out to the middle of the country to feel completely miserable about the state of the world. What a waste of time. What a stupid thing. And I just. was stuck on this phrase, I can’t do it. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do it. It’s too big.

I can’t do it. And there was a sort of somehow in that dip of, I can’t, I looked up and saw all this ivy just around me and wherever I looked there was more ivy and it was really difficult to tell what was one ivy plant and what was another because they all just kind of merged into each other like this massive kind of collection of sea of ivy all around me and there’s something about I had one of those kind of like flash moments where the problem and the solution were the same but just seen in different ways You know, of course I can’t.

This is too big for me. But if I, it’s, it’s the kind of shift from I can’t to we can. It was just that sense of when a problem is bigger than we are, there’s no way that we can expect ourselves to sort it out. And there’s a real shift from make something happen to help something happen. But I can only help something happen if I am alongside other helping factors.

I come back to this a load of squares arranged in a circle. Each square can’t make the circle happen. But each square can help the circle happen. And so what I reconnect with and what I reconnected in that moment was a sense of it’s not just me as a separate square, but I am part of a larger circle.

And when I see myself as part of a larger circle, a whole new set of things become possible that just aren’t possible in Squareland. And so, this, this question, what do we reconnect with, what do we reconnect to, is not just going to be one thing for everyone all the time. There’s going to be different things.

It’s partly connecting to deeper levels of ourselves. It’s partly connecting with finding that we’re not alone in thinking and feeling the same way. That’s one very common experience. People feel an immense sense of Reassurance that they’re not the only person who is as disturbed as they are about what’s happening in the world It’s very reassuring to hear other people voice how horrified they are how heartbroken they are how just at the end of their tether and beyond it to know that you’re not alone in that.

So connecting with others too and finding common purpose. I find that listening to you listening to what you said here, I feel, yes, I’m part of the same larger circle as you. , and I think there’s something about withness. A sidedness. And also there’s a um, Joanna Macy uses the term, a onic shift.

A harmonic shift. It onic a onic

onic. So

Chris Johnstone: a holon is a, is a new word that’s come outta systems thinking uhhuh. And it was developed by Arthur Kler, the writer he, he wanted a word that was both a whole and a part. So like a proton or electron, these are small particles, so he wanted it to end in on, because it was just a small thing.

But he wanted it to begin with whole, because it is whole in itself. And so, systems thinking is a way of seeing the world in layers rather than pieces. I think of my medical training, we used to chop up bodies and we’d have like some weeks where we’re focusing on the liver and some weeks where we’re focusing on the heart.

And when people come into hospital, it’s like one of the big questions is which bit of you is wrong? So that we can send you to, there’s a ward that deals with heart problems and a ward that deals with liver problems. And so which bit is the sick bit? It’s breaking people into pieces. Whereas the system’s thinking is like, okay, organs like hearts and livers they do have a way that they hang together as a whole.

They are a whole. That’s more than the sum of the parts, but they’re also just one layer in a ladder of different layers. The whole person is also a whole, but part of a family or a team or a group. A group is part of a larger structure, whether it be a community or an organization or society. Each species is part of a larger living ecosystem.

And so, That’s the seeing with ancient eyes, it’s like a deep knowing that we’re not separate from life, that, that life as a whole is alive, is a larger whole, and in modern scientific expression of this is in Gaia theory, which I just find so amazing as a way of understanding our world. And the biggest insight from Gaia theory, from my perspective, is how it leaves me thinking about myself.

That not just as a separate little bundle of me in some rat race to get what I can competing against other little bundles of, of selfhood, but more like, okay, I’m more like a, I’m separate on one level, but I’m also like a cell within a large organism. And that when I can feel myself as part of this larger being, I think of it as part of Of ness, when I can feel that part of ness, just holding the question, what am I part of, what do I belong to, and really kind of feel that, it becomes a shift in identity.

This is what the term holonic shift, so holonic shift is where, is another way you can get it with a group that really gels. A group that really gels, you probably see this in workshops, at the beginning of the workshop, there’s a collection of individuals. at the end of the workshop, there’s been a shift that happens where people reach a sense of part of ness, that there’s a larger whole that’s formed.

And that is really at the heart of the work that reconnects. That’s what I’ve been deeply transformed by. And active hope is more like how do we be active in support of our hopes? The work that reconnect supports a very deep level shift. Active Hope part of the reason Joanna and I wrote the book was that we wanted to bring the practices and understandings from the workshops to a much wider audience where you can get bits of it.

Without needing to have it all, you can take it in piece by piece. And just to support being active in support of your hopes, just to have that shift from hope as in, Oh, I don’t have much of that. There’s not much I can do. So hope as in something you do and you can do on a daily basis. daily basis, and you can have practices that help you do that.

That’s what the Active Hope is about.

But

Chris Johnstone: what really helps support that shift at a deep level is where people plug into the sense of being part of a larger circle of life rather than just a separate square.

Laura Dawn: When you’re having these collapsing moments into despair, or when you’re holding space for someone else who’s in that.

How do you balance being with it and feeling it through to completion without feeling like it’s going to swallow you whole and shifting into remembering our reconnection, looking for active hope, drawing upon the tools, finding ways, like, where do you find that dance in that balance between just like being in it and just letting it be and then shifting?

Do you find that there’s a, a discerning moment for you?

Chris Johnstone: Yeah, I think it’s a sense of what do I bring to my experience. So okay, I can have an experience of complete desolation. I can have the experience of really losing confidence that things are going to work out anywhere near what I hope would be.

And also what I bring to that. It’s an experience of going around this spiral hundreds and hundreds of times, perhaps thousands of times, I don’t know, , but it’s been something I’ve been involved in for many years, working as a practice with groups in conversations and something about also trusting the process of the transformative dip.

That the story of the tomato squash and it’s like, okay, I’m having a squash tomato moment. But just because I’m having a squash tomato moment is not the same as the end of life.

Laura Dawn: right.

Chris Johnstone: And so there’s something about what I bring to the experience is, is something about a story. And maybe when Meg, you mentioned she had a kind of trust in a cyclical story.

It’s something here about. recognizing that there is a process of dying back and also re growth and I love this term regenerative. How do we plant ourselves, engage in a regenerative process? culture, regenerative practices, regenerative ways of being, so that what we’re bringing to whatever’s there is something that supports a transition from where it is to where the best of where it might go.

And I think this is where the non attachment comes in because active hope is a process. It’s what I bring to bear with whatever I face. It’s like saying, start from where I am, facing what I face, feeling what I feel. recognizing it can go different ways. What’s the best that can happen here? What do I hope for?

Best or better ways it might go? And then how can I be active in heading that way or making it more likely? And if I don’t know, and if I feel at a loss, I think, okay, that’s where I am just now. That’s where I am just now in the story. There’s a larger story that includes chapters around lostness, chapters around defeat.

But

Chris Johnstone: I know that that’s a chapter rather than a permanent state. And so then what helps me rekindle the spark of hope as a sense of possibility that I can actively support. Mm hmm.

Laura Dawn: In that same vein of non attachment, one thing that I also find really helpful, and it was another thing I was reflecting on after that conversation, was with Meg and reading Active Hope and diving deeper into the great turning in this This narrative is not being attached to whether we think this turning is good or bad and just staying open to, I don’t know, I don’t know what ultimately this means. And so sometimes I’ll just try to zoom out. And do we know if that meteor hitting the earth, as you mentioned, was that good or bad? I, after going through the volcanic eruption on the big island of Hawaii in 2018, in the moment, that was a devastating traumatic experience.

And through that, I mean, I was in active participation in the narrative construction of what that experience meant to me. And ultimately it turned into one of the best things that happened. Because I’m here where I am now. And is that something that you also play with? Like non attachment to defining whether this turning is good or bad.

We just don’t know what the outcome is going to be. Is that present for you in this process?

Chris Johnstone: Yes, what I hear in what you’re saying is a distinction between short term and long term. There’s what the immediate consequences of something are, and then there’s what will happen later on.

And this is where I think of hope as a bit like a guiding star, because And, and what I’m interested in here is, what do we bring, what do we bring to whatever’s there? I don’t know how things will work out, but I do have a sense of definite preferences, and there are definitely some things that do seem like really backward steps and really ouch there.

And, and I think it’s, it’s, it’s not so much, is it good or bad? Because everything probably has elements of both. But it’s also, what do I put myself behind in a way where I help it happen more? And so in the resilience training I do, sometimes it’s helpful when something’s difficult to look for a silver lining, to say what’s good about this.

But sometimes what’s good about this is a really awful question , if your child’s just died. You don’t want to say what’s good about this, but a question that can be useful at some point is what good might, can come from this.

Laura Dawn: Right,

Chris Johnstone: And I, I think of Lucy Hone, who is one of the leading psychologists around grieving.

She wrote a book called Resilient Grieving, and her work on that, She wrote came out of her own experience of losing her daughter in a horrible car accident and she had already done a master’s in positive psychology with the team at the University of Pennsylvania and so was very familiar with the kind of resilience work and she was able to Use that to say, okay.

Well, here’s me facing this. How can I approach it? in a way where I really bring to bear all that I’ve learned. And, and, and there’s something here about the hero or heroine’s journey of going into something difficult, finding and learning lessons where you, there’s a phase return with Elixir, where you kind Find something and you bring it back.

And it’s a very common story, the story of the wounded healer, somebody who in their own journey into something very difficult, find something value and brings it back. And who knows what value will come Out of the collapses and difficulties right now. What I can say is that I really feel for the torment of people who are having their homes destroyed in warfare.

Just, I was reading a story this morning and I’m working with a group in Beirut around um, resilience building , in Lebanon. And just, it. Tears my heart apart. Just what has been happening just really unbelievable tragedy And I wouldn’t want to say well who am I to say whether it’s good or bad, you know This is awful that that’s the way it seems to me.

But what good can come from this? That’s a different exploration because it’s something about Acknowledging how we feel we feel how we feel but we also have choices about What we do with that and where we take that. And this is what Active Hope is all about, directionality. It’s like saying, how do I have Active Hope as the guiding orientation in my life?

Where whatever I face, I recognize that there are better ways it can go and worse ways it can go. And I come back to saying, okay, starting where I am, acknowledging the realities that I do face in their beauty and their horror, What do I deeply hope for? And how can I be in service of that hope? Because when I’m in service of that hope, that hope can happen through me.

Even in the same way that circle happens through the squares, it’s not just happening through me, it’s happening through lots of other people too. But I’m showing up in a way where I’m part of the patterning of that hope, part of the story of that hope, in a way that makes it more likely to happen. Develop in a way that I hope for.

Laura Dawn: Does this connect to this term that you emailed me? It was the first time I had heard this term through Topia. What is the connection to what you just said with this term? And maybe you can share it for people who had never heard it before.

Chris Johnstone: Yes, I love this word, Thrutopia, and I only discovered it in the last couple of years.

It’s developed by a friend of mine, Rupert Reed, who’s written a lot around climate change and climate activism. And it’s been picked up by Amanda Scott, who’s a novelist, and talking about there’s utopian novels as a genre, there’s dystopian novels and films, and there’s lots of those, there’s all the Mad Max movies, and Et cetera.

What’s needed is kind of like utopia can feel a bit too far away, and people have lost hope in that lost confidence that the utopian visions are achievable. And so there’s a sense of, well, what’s the point of that? And the dystopias are just all too present. So A thrutopia. The starting point is us here now.

And it’s in this reality that I currently face, what helps me make it through what helps us make it through in the best possible way. And in particular, in response to people who think like, well, humanity is doomed. We’ve lost it with the climate crisis. We’re on a downhill slope. It’s basically the end of the world.

end of time as far as humanity goes, but in a way that becomes like a story of resignation, where people withdraw from steps that would support, could have supported really great positive change. A thrutopia is say, well, what What is it we want to make our way through? What’s our active hope? And thrutopian storylines, a closely bound with active hope.

It’s starting where we are. What do I hope for? How do I make it through that way in the best possible fashion? What’s the best version of this? And so that’s us here now. It’s like saying, well, okay, there’s a lot of things that are really, So distressing. But in terms of the version of my life that I bring to this time that we’re in, how can I find the best version of that that supports us to make it through?

Not just me to make it through, but us to make it through. And so my work is really about Thrutopian well being. It’s like, what’s the kind of well being that helps us make it through? And it’s not just about feeling good or functioning well. It’s also about having a deep sense of belonging in our world, having a deep sense of purpose is calling us to play our part, to show up and play our part.

it’s a, it’s an expanded, more meaningful and a better fit for the times that we’re in than what I think of as business as usual well being, which is often about what just what makes us feel good and function well within a conventional society.

Laura Dawn: I feel like you’re really speaking to the importance of becoming more aware of internal stories.

and using the creative practice of storytelling on an individual, but also you’re doing this with groups. So you’re creating collective narratives too. Do you feel like that’s an intentional part of your process?

Chris Johnstone: Absolutely. A term I love is restoring. Mm.

Laura Dawn: And what

Chris Johnstone: I love is that restoring is so close to restoring how do you restore wellbeing? How do you restore wellbeing? It’s just. And I see that I guess I’m thinking of Viktor Frankl the work he did around recognizing that one of the deep choices that’s still available to us, whatever’s going on is the meaning that we give to events.

What does it mean to me? And when we say, what does it mean to me, really, another way of talking about that is, what’s the story I tell myself? Mm-hmm .

Laura Dawn: About this. Mm-hmm .

Chris Johnstone: When this happens, this means that.

When we see the, climate emissions carbon emissions rising, what does that mean?

It means that the great unraveling is on, on is further on its way, is already here, but there’s more to come because of the delays in impacts of rising, carbon emissions. But does it mean the end of life? Does it mean the end of human life? It could do, and I think what’s the best, what’s the worst?

The worst that could happen we really could reach the end point. But could is not the same as will. And it’s, it’s, and this is where active hope is the guiding orientation. It’s like saying, okay, of the different ways it could go, what is the way that I deeply hope it will go? And how can I use my life, use my actions, my choices, so that that hope can happen through them?

That, that hope can guide the way that I show up in the world.

Laura Dawn: It’s just beautiful. Thank you so much, Chris, for all the work that you’ve done. I want to end on inviting you to speak to humanity, and this podcast is called Dear Humanity. So in closing, is there anything you would like to share in summary of really what your core offering, your core message is to humanity?

Chris Johnstone: Yes. So there’s something about we start by facing what we face, feeling what we feel. And when you’re doing that, you have your eyes and your heart open. And that’s the first step in showing up. But then the second step is I just is to listen for your deep hopes is to listen to, if you had a sentence that went, what I deeply hope for is.

And just really listen, a kind of a deep listening, and learn to listen to your deep hopes. And then it show up in support of them. That’s what I do. That’s what I do is what you do. It’s what listeners of this podcast do and it’s what brings us together because there’s larger shared hopes That have us having a sense of all we’re not alone

we’re

Chris Johnstone: part of a larger team the team of active hope a circle of active hope and that when we really Have that sense of haha.

Hope is happening through me It breathes life into us. It nourishes us. It energizes us. It inspires us. So um, that’s, that’s what I’d love to put out and support and give myself to.

Laura Dawn: And maybe I could just ask you, in closing, what do you deeply hope for?

Chris Johnstone: So, I deeply hope for a sense of expanding belongingness. That we feel an expanded sense of we belong to life in ways that reinforce and nourish our showing up for it.

Laura Dawn: Thank you. I hope for that too. I see you in all of your efforts and all the ways that you’re really showing up to take action in alignment with that vision and that hope. So thank you so much for being such a wonderful role model and for leaving a legacy and for more people to be able to access your work and Joanna Macy’s work and just saying a deep bow of gratitude to Joanna Macy in this moment to what a beautiful legacy she is leaving as well.

From my heart to yours, Chris. Thank you. Really deeply grateful for you.

Chris Johnstone: Well, I feel with you, Laura. I feel alongside you.

I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for holding this space and the work you do and the invitation you put out that we can feel we’re not alone in this we’re showing up together that there is work to be done and we know that and we can support each other in it.

Laura Dawn: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Chris Johnstone: Good. Hey, with you.

Laura Dawn: Okay, have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye.