Boosting your Lifestyle: The Power of Self-awareness in Individual Climate Action!
This article focus on self-awareness as a driver to a sustainable lifestyle. It looks at self-awareness and sustainable lifestyle from the context of immediate action required to support the secondary or global climate, which is more or less institutionally driven. In essence sustainable lifestyle is one of the actions needed at a personal level to save our planet.
What is an Individual climate action?
Individual climate action is a step or an action taken to address, adapt and mitigate the effect of climate change within the personal sphere of influence and beyond. It entails taking action in your behaviour, attitude and actions. It means reviewing and sustainability boosting the stuff you eat, the things you do, and how you move around and relax. These are core elements of your life.
Self-awareness plays a crucial role in determining your lifestyle. Duval and Wicklund (1972) defined self-awareness as the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards. They further see self-awareness as a means to objectively evaluate yourself, manage your feelings, align your behaviour with your values, and understand how others perceive you. Self-awareness is the question of how you see yourself and others.
There are different tools guiding individuals on how to develop self-awareness. A notable example is the Values in Action Inventory of Strength (VAI –IS), developed by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in 2004. However, to understand self-awareness within the context of nature and climate action, we will use a tool I designed from a climate action point of view. The device is called the SACII Matrix (Self-Assessment Category and Impact Improvement Matrix).
The SACII Matric of Individual Climate Action
The SACII Matrix of Individual climate action helps you to assess and nurture self-awareness toward a sustainable lifestyle that supports immediate climate action. To create self-awareness, you first must identify where you stand through self-assessment questions. The Matrix gauge what you know and how you feel about your external environment. It also tries to understand your capability to improve the state of nature. The Matrix categorises individuals into four self-assessment questions, bands to categorise and 4Rs boosters to re-educate, reorient, refocus and revamp your lifestyle. They guide you to develop and or strengthen your self-awareness and lifestyle within the climate action realm.
The Matrix has four (4) bands; A, B, C and D. The band ‘A’ individuals are individuals who are not aware of the threats and opportunities around them. They see climate change as a normal environmental response. If you belong to this category, engage yourself through re-education to bring yourself up to speed on the changing climatic conditions.
Band’ B’ comprises people aware of the changing climatic conditions but pessimistically do not care about how the change is unfolding belong to band ‘B’. These people believe that our anthropogenic activities have little to do with climate change. This category of people required deeper persuasion due to their pessimist nature. They have already formed an opinion about climate change and its associated processes. If you belong to this category, engage in learning, unlearning and re-learning to reorient your views.
Conversely, people fully aware of the changing climatic condition, including the threats and opportunities, belong to band C. These are people taking personal or participating in collective measures to reduce their carbon footprints and save the planet. If you belong to this band, you engage in continuous improvement to reach the highest level of awareness and impact. It would be best if you had support from family, friends or professional networks to make your journey easy and inclusive. The aim is to acknowledge and appreciate that we are not alone in the fight against climate change.
Moreover, suppose you are a learned expert in the field of climate action. In that case, you belong to band D. These are people working on improving the state of the earth through research, advocacy and innovation. They are constantly engaging, influencing and impacting person to person and community to community. Your ultimate goal is to make a difference in the climate action crusade. Band D is the highest level of personal achievement, enlightenment and dedication to planetary values. If you belong to this category, engage yourself in activities and networking to keep yourself motivated and avoid falling into eco-anxiety and climate distress.
It is recommended that irrespective of your band, you have to work on building your skills to keep progressing to the next level in the Matrix. The final section of the Matrix is lifestyle boosters, and the 4Rs ensure that you continuously reinvent yourself and boost your lifestyle for impact.
Relevance of the Matrix
Without self-awareness, your journey will be like a house without a foundation. The Matrix brings out your climate action potential to improve and impact global climate action. Remember, the Matrix is called SACII, meaning Self Awareness Category Impact Improvement. So, it is about continuous improvement with 4Rs lifestyle boosters for impact. Whether starting or refuelling your climate action, take your SACII Matrix with you to take care of your perspective and others while pursuing your vision for the future.
References
Shelley Duval S. and Wicklund R. A. 1972. A Theory of Objective Self Awareness, Academic Press, Michigan University.
LaFollette, Alison M. 2010. The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths: A Test Summary and Critique. Graduate Journal of Counseling Psychology: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/gjcp/vol2/iss1/3
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