How to turn people into permaculturists--8 week mindset shift workshop in the Spodek Method

Do you feel alone in your permaculture passion, and wish you could communicate it to other people in your life or in the world?
Does it drive you nuts that other people aren't taking our planet's wellbeing seriously, how they go right back into denial a few days after yet another major flood or fire?
Do you wish that spokespersons and activists were leading by example instead of doing the opposite of what they preach?

The Spodek Method is a simple tool to lead others to connect with their intrinsic motivation to act individually as responsible stewards.  You can find the basic steps below.  You can try it out right now with a friend or coworker.  It's free

Minutes to learn, a lifetime to master.

The workshop is a space for having a community to go through learning process with--having even more of your own mindset shifts, seeing how other people are struggling with the same strongly emotional differences with the other people on your planet, and getting a new perspective on yourself in the mirror of others.  You will get to meet the side of people that cares about nature and connect in a unique way with people in a common purpose.

I've cut my negative impact by 50% from where I started, and about 25% more since taking the workshop last summer.  I've felt able to communicate with the rest of the human race, and be more amazed than ever by the beauty inside people.  Although people may not be doing formal permaculture processes, they've had some, or a lot, of "the click," the shift in perspective to seeing that this is what's been most important all along.

I will be teaching it for the first time, after being a teaching assistant twice.

Please purple mooseage me for more info.  Thanks for reading.

The next workshop will be held in March.  It is 2 hours a week, with about one hour of homework each week.  I am asking $500 for the course but you can choose what you pay.  By offering these as paid workshops we're allowing people to be able to afford to take the time to teach them and spread the model more quickly.

You can find a lot more information about the Spodek Method at JoshuaSpodek.com, and listen to his podcasts while you're doing dishes.  He has cut his energy usage by more than 90% and lives off-grid with only a camping battery in Manhattan.

Just re-posting what I wrote to my local permaculture community about why I'm doing this and what I believe it offers--and also the method itself so you can try it out.
It's hard to find on-line so now you can just read it and do it.



Hello Western Mass Permies,

Did you come home from your PDC loaded with enthusiasm and bouncing off the walls to act, only to meet indifference and wooden support?  (Or maybe worse—me, I got in a yelling match at  house meeting, only time that ever happened.). How can something feel so right and then be so alien to everyone around you?

Well, there's a tool for communicating across this gap, it's 10 parts listening and 1 part talking, and helps the person take slow and small steps toward where you are starting from where they are, from their emotional center.  It helps them get one taste of the emotional arc of a PDC without the technicalities.  Mollison studied human behavior before he studied nature, and permaculture is a human-behavioral entity; something that can really focus on just the emotions and be as simple as possible is a really essential tool for the post-PDC plunge, especially in the wealthier US context where it’s easier to avoid consequences.

I never thought of myself as a leader, and really was mostly focused on getting my own house in order, but the increasing difficulty of doing that with the weather so volatile pushed me to take a course in sustainability leadership skills, and now after being a TA for it twice I am going to be teaching a round of the workshop (in March).  And one thing I learned is that leadership isn’t the same as being in power, it can be taught and anyone can learn it, by practicing it a lot anyone can develop it, and it's pretty much 100% permaculture-principle-compatible.

To get the word out about the workshop I'm having a mini-workshop, everything I can fit into one hour.  But more than getting the word out it’s a chance to share this tool and experience it in community.

Tuesday Jan. 14
7-8pm
on Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/4431219719?pwd=ms8Z4SrburFd9gwjnSwLRRyGA1SG3s.1#success

It's called the Spodek Method—for the sake of having a memorable name—created by Joshua Spodek, and it's a way of supporting someone in connecting to their intrinsic, emotional motivation to be a steward of nature and then support them in making a commitment to an action.  The action is then pleasurable, reinforcing the desire to do more, and the person has a mindset shift to feeling that they _want_ to steward, rather than being guilted into it.

I'll paste the whole thing below, no need to take the workshop or even come to the intro to test it out with someone and get into action.

I am not saying this will magically heal our whole planet in 8 weeks, but every bit we can do to improve our communication over this very fraught, emotional issue is important and time-sensitive.  Anything that helps us act from our full awareness instead of from fear brain is really important.  I believe we can reduce the suffering and death.

I’d love to have a lot of you at the intro call, and even if you can't make it, please pass this email on.  Maybe you know someone who feels really filled with dread right now and is wearing out their friends with their angst.  Maybe someone whose spouse or family member is a burnt-out activist and needs to have their own journey with sustainability.  

Many people immediately focus on "individual action doesn't matter, only governments and corporations have an impact.". As permaculturists we know we're starting with our zone 00 and can't count what others faraway do--hopefully they change course also, but we have so much we can do individually.  This tool is a basis for helping people understand the core of permaculture even if they don't understand the first thing about nitrogen or soil webs.

Please come and support this mission and have a bit of community around learning it.

(The steps of the Spodek Method below)

Thanks for considering it, please reach out if you have any questions, please try it out with a friend right now if you possibly can and tell me what results you got, and best wishes for your 2025 growing season.

In community,


Joshua

Try the Spodek Method right now with a friend, enemy, or stranger:



Intrinsic Motivation for Sustainability Method (Spodek Method) (Joshua M.’s Version)

1 What's an experience of nature you had in childhood that made an especially strong impression on you?
(What were the colors, sounds, smells, any other sensations?)

2 What feelings did you feel then? can you name the emotions?
(Speak the names of the emotions back to the person, 2 or 3 is plenty).

3 For the next question, there are three constraints and I'm going to tell you those before I ask the question.
a) something new that you're not already planning to do
b) something you do yourself, vs. paying or making someone else do
c) something that leaves nature some bit better than you found it--or some increment less harmed--by your own standards, in some physical way that could be measured.  Again, just some tiny bit is enough to meet the constraints.
The question is this: What's something you can do in your life today that can give you some of those emotions you had in your childhood experience in nature?  (name the emotions again)

This step can trip people up, and if the person says "let me get back to you" I offer to help them brainstorm if they wish for 10-15".

4) Chunk it down to a manageable commitment they'll make to themselves, and schedule it on the calendar

5) schedule a follow-up call to find out how it went, if it gave them the emotions they wanted to feel again, and to support them in carrying through on it.

The most important thing is the emotions, not the size of the commitment.  If the person has a "win" the first time then they'll want to do more, and from tiny first steps can come bigger and bigger ones.
 


The Spodek Method Quick-Start Guide
(original method by Josh Spodek)

The Four Steps:
0. Break the ice: “Is the environment something important to you, enough to act on it?”
1. What does the environment mean to you?
2. I invite you to think of something you can do to act on that meaning.
3. Make it a SMART goal
4. Schedule second conversation
Steps 1 and 2 are leadership: evoke intrinsic emotions and motivation, then help them come up
with a way to act on them. They’ll feel inspired.hh
Steps 3 and 4 are management that help them do the commitment.

More Detail
Step 1
Sub-steps of this step
• Evoke quintessential moment. I like to start with “Different people think of the
environment differently, depending on where they grew up, for example. Can you think of
a quintessential moment of yourself in the environment?”
◦ I find the younger they are, the more meaningful.
• “Can you describe what you see, taste, smell, touch, hear? What’s your sensory
experience?”
• “Can you name the emotions you feel?”
This step is done when they’ve named some emotions that sound genuine and meaningful.

Step 2
• Build on the emotions from the last step: I usually say “Based on the emotions you felt in
nature, I invite you to think of something you can do to act on them in your regular life.
• Make sure to say “I’m not saying something that almost everyone hears, which is to do
something to fix problems. This is for you to act on what you value” before they respond.
If they say “But individual action doesn’t matter,” it’s hard to get out of that mindset.
• Three constraints: Something
 a. New, that they aren’t already doing
 b. They do themselves, with their own hands, not for someone else to do
 c. A physical component. They don’t have to measure, but it should feel they left the
world better than they found it.
• Tell them it can take five or ten minutes to come up with something
• Don’t let them get away with “I’ll get back to you on it.”

Steps 3 and 4
It’s easier to avoid, say, meat for dinner five days a week for a month than “to eat less meat.”
The second conversation adds accountability. When people are effectively led, accountability adds motivation. Plus you communicate that you want to hear their results.