Radical Relocalization


A relocalizing mind sees that it can either prop up the old world - and have hardly any fun - or get on with the new
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A relocalizing mind is the mindset that sees the need for a transition to simpler, smaller and more local. It goes about making a more resilient local community for everyone, starting from where you are. It's an outrageous possibility of personal and community transition to something that works better for us all. A relocalizing mind has it's own way to find the part in this change that really works for you.

It loves cooking up mutually enriching projects with neighbors. It imagines more local interconnections making more good stuff happen and it takes delight when they do. It's evolution's edge. It kows that its own fulfillment is tied up with that of others.

If you're here you're likely already exploring that mind.

One easy and versatile tool to tickle the relocalizing mind is the Transition Storybook, a Mindmap in time in which you use a "dollar store" notebook to dream up the future you want, and change it in real time as the future gets nearer.  It's a way of externalizing and juggling the possibilities that float around you. Don't let the simplicity of this approach dissuade you from having fun with it. It's effective.

My job is to encourage you to get started, offer you the most powerful tools I've found and to offer support if you want it.

Your job, should you choose to take it, is to create, uncover, recover, or discover a story about your future that's more clear, more powerful, and m``````ore juicy than the one you have.

If you want to get started right now, go to the Transition Storybook page now and  buy the dollar store notebook later. Or you can write a page on the future you want. Just let it come best as you can - write without thinking too much and get something down. Getting something down that excites you doesn't have to be the final thing (though it will probably have strong elements of what actually happens).

By the way, this is not an avoidance strategy, burying your head in the sand. It's an act of courage to envision and inhabit a future that really deals with the reality of our situation.

Tips and suggestions for developing a relocalizing mind:
  • Develop a playful sense of some possibilities for your relocalization or transition.
  • Do one action a day that will take you closer to the transition you want. No guilt if you don't get this done but if you don't have a sense of momentum and success, consider getting some new input: a book, process, or coaching. Something probably needs a little shaking up.
  • Most of us are more often in our old habitual mind than our new and growing mind. We're more in our past than leaning into our future. Strive for some balance!
  • Work on the energy not the people. That is, focus on what you're doing to be straight with things, and don't get concerned with what others are doing or not doing, especially don't try and fix them or convince them. People can and do change and grow, but when and how and if they do is their business.
  • The shadow, the thing you don't see well, is going to be there, regardless. It's always part of the issue. As Leonard Cohen said, "There's a crack in everything, that's where the light comes in."
  • Your state of consciousness is a process and can rapidly change. Your stage of consciousness underlies that, takes more time but it evolves as well.
  • LIfe is moving and dynamic and uncapturable. No personal work that isn't moving and dynamic can work well for long. 
  • Your job is to create clarity around what you want, a clear place for your future to approach. You modify it as you go "If you build it, they will come."
  • Meditation is experientially and statistically shown to help overall development. It's  like listening to the highest wisdom - unfortunately in a different language. As you spend time you gradually learn the language. It's worth it and every failure is instructive.
A relocalizing mind sees that local futures grow out of nervy individuals - and  small groups - who find that studying problems and assigning blame is less interesting and less powerful than developing the emerging possibilities. We can blame, analyze the problem up the yin-yang, expect leaders to fix it for us (or be very mad at them) - or we can create something new, our own relocalizing story.

A relocalizing mindset likes to:
  • explore open-ended questions
  • leave room for listening as much as speaking
  • focus on emerging possibilities rather than problems
  • bring out gifts - its own and others' - rather than faults
  • see change as starting with us rather than the imagined them
  • see our multiple crises as the paradoxical emergence of a new possibility (Did Peter Block say that? He could have!)
Make the time to create a Transition Storybook. It can set all kinds of good things in motion. And one step leads to the next.

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Much more to come about working with the relocalizing mind, the evolutionary mind. One of the characteristics of which could be called Serious Play.