Sustainability – feeling the stretch?

After a lot of work and with much fanfare, the United Nations agreed on a new set of global development goals.  And it means a big stretch. As the Ethical Corporation observed “eight big Millennium Development Goals have become 17 super-sized ones”. These Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “are monumentally ambitious.  Take, for example, Goal 1: “End poverty in all forms everywhere.” Or Goal 16: “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development.”  And now we have only a decade to reach them. It is the #decadeforaction.

The goals are daunting. Not at least of all because of the existence of current dysfunctional governmental and business structures. But they are compelling in their aspirations.  As humans we are born to stretch ourselves in mind, body and soul.   By its very nature stretching can be uncomfortable. And it is the only way we can enter new realms of possibility.

Stretching. It takes us to somewhere new, untested. And unknown and unfamiliar. We go up to those limits and exceed them.  Leaning into the discomfort, we also notice the leeway.  As we breath into previously fixed boundaries, we see them dissolve.  And as we notice the pain, we also notice the potential.  We accept the awkwardness. And the clumsiness and tension. In doing so, we move through it. To find new areas of ease and flexibility. And most of all, opportunity.

Organisational stretch

As an organisation, what are you doing in terms of setting stretching goals? Big Hairy Audacious Goals as Collins and Porras termed them.

What are you doing to stretch, in terms of knowing about, understanding and contributing to the UN’s SDGs?

Individual stretch

And where in your individual day to day actions, moment to moment choices can you stretch?   It can take unlimited forms.  It may involve…

• choosing to do more to look after your health in terms of exercise, diet, meditation
• changing your lifestyle and consumer habits
• undertaking nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action
• expanding your understanding of the world through new perspectives, interests and networks
• delving into understanding yourself and your deepest truths
• having that courageous conversation
• doing what you have never done or not doing what you always do
• ….

Decide what the stretch is for you, go into it and feel it.