Believe

In this episode, Katie continues last week’s conversation with Tamu Thomas a renowned transformational life coach, dedicated to guiding women towards achieving work-life harmony by embracing holistic well-being practices that align with their nervous system. 

Katie & Tamu explore:

• The term ‘high-functioning freeze’
• Defiant hope & rage 
• Activism v Martyrdom 
• And of course, the final quick fire round of season 4!

You can connect with Tamu here

Website: https://www.livethreesixty.com/ and https://www.womenwhoworktoomuch.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamu.thomas/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livethreesixty/

Learn more about Tamu’s membership here: https://live-three-sixty.mykajabi.com/membership

Here are some highlights:

I learned that it was unsafe for me to express rage 

“Rage is part of the human experience, rage, emotion, energy in motion, rage is energy in motion that says you've got to make a change, whether it's externally or internally, but instead, we hold on to it, and have a lot of like, bitterness and resentment inside. And we get sidetracked with that. So we avoid the real issue. And we make it all about the anger or the rage.”

Empowerment to build momentum

"My life is mine, square with a life of service means that your life has to be of service to you too. Because if your life is not a service to you too, if you are giving away all of your lifeforce energy, you're not actually doing activism, you're doing martyrdom. Our planet doesn't need any more martyrs. Social justice causes for human beings, animals around the world doesn't need any more martyrs what they need, or what these things we believe in need, is for us to be and this word, sometimes it gets on my nerves, but it is for us to be empowered. Because when we are empowered, rather than doing things in fits and spurts, we can actually build momentum and have a compounding effect. And I say this to my clients. And I say to myself all the time. Social justice is not just if it's not just for you too, we don't need any more martyrs. "

Books & Podcasts mentioned:

10x Is Easier Than 2x, Benjamin Hardy

Upstream Podcast

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie talks to Tamu Thomas a renowned transformational life coach and the author of "Women Who Work Too Much: Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy." She is dedicated to guiding women towards achieving work-life harmony by embracing holistic well-being practices that align with their nervous system. 

Tamu's groundbreaking book sheds light on the systemic pressures that force women into a cycle of over-functioning, often leading to significant workplace stress and an imbalanced share of emotional and domestic responsibilities. Drawing on her extensive background in social work, she has a profound understanding of the systemic roots of these issues, particularly the disproportionate impact they have on women. 

Tamu's unique coaching methodology is deeply influenced by somatic practices and Polyvagal theory, focusing on helping women rebuild a connection with their core selves, establish healthy boundaries, and forming a strong sense of self-trust. She is especially attuned to the nuanced challenges faced by Black women and women of the global majority, navigating what she terms ‘the trinity of oppression’: patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. 

In her own words, Tamu asserts, "We don’t need more self-improvement; we need systemic change.” Her approach is not just about personal transformation but about sparking wider societal shifts. Her insights and guidance are invaluable for those seeking a life filled with fulfillment, deep connections, and genuine joy, amidst the demands of our fast-paced world.

Linked with the “nurture” pillar of the Making Design Circular framework, Katie & Tamu discuss:

• The new book Women Who Work Too Much – Break Free from Toxic Productivity and Find Your Joy!
• Toxic Productivity
• Our connection with nature and why it’s so
• Why it’s so important that we reconnect mind and body
• Simple ways we should be honouring our basic needs
• Why we shouldn’t be adopting a belief that we’re broken

You can connect with Tamu here:

Website: https://www.livethreesixty.com/ and https://www.womenwhoworktoomuch.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tamu.thomas/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/livethreesixty/

Learn more about Tamu’s membership here: https://live-three-sixty.mykajabi.com/membership

Here are some episode highlights:

Recognise we’re not designed to go it alone

“The beauty is as human beings we're not designed to go it alone. So it can feel really daunting when we feel like oh my goodness, the system is rigged, for most of us to be at fault, for most of us to fail, when we recognise that we can start to embody the genius of our species, which is connection, and compassion, and all of that stuff. And we can start to work together to create systems and structures that care for us and our planet.”

The Idea of Toxic Productivity

“We don't just breathe in, we need to breathe in, we need to exhale. And in fact, something I say all the time is, the rest is quite often more important than the race. The rest is what sets us up. And we often talk about being part of nature. Actually, no, we are nature. We are all children of this earth. Whilst we were born of our mother's wombs, we are all children of this earth, there is nothing on this earth that is productive, that is producing all the time. Even our evergreen trees have times of rest and dormancy. We're not supposed to be doing that all the time. It is unnatural. So as we stepped into the industrial revolution, we started making all of these machines to make our life easier. But once we identified that we could create mass, and people could consume more. And that mass would result into profit it was profit and growth above everything else. So it shifted how we experience ourselves. And generally speaking, we started to compare ourselves to the machines we created to make our lives easier. And that's when we started talking more about consistency.”

Capitalist Conditioning

“let's be real, there are many times in life where we do have to go beyond our bandwidth sometimes. But it's about recognising the difference, so that we can make choices and we can do that for finite periods of time. We have a sympathetic nervous system for a reason, we go into states of fight or flight for a reason, they're not all bad, but it's a finite period of time. What happens in our culture is that the rules of capitalism say, actually, you should always be beyond your capacity, that's a good work ethic, that's being efficient, that is being somebody who is reliable. And it just conditions us, if you think of us like a piece of elastic, it conditions us to always be overstressed over stretched elastic. And so we have situations where people use anxiety as a motivational tool. None of this stuff will happen overnight, but over time, we can start being motivated by what feels good, what's in service of our long term good, as opposed to constantly being motivated by anxiety, which is our body's warning signal for terror.”

Books & Podcasts mentioned:

10x Is Easier Than 2x, Benjamin Hardy

Upstream Podcast

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie explores “Grow” – the third and final pillar of the Making Design Circular framework which is all about:

• Learning so that you can make informed decisions, and curating trusted sources of information so that you can avoid greenwashing
• Walking (not running) so that you can break down your sustainability journey into manageable steps and take them one by one
• Nurturing yourself as you go, because to look after the environment, you need to look after the environmentalist

Katie also shares her super-juicy 5-stage Path to Sustainability in which you will find out whether you are an Acorn, Seed, Sapling, Tree or Forest and take away 3 x actionable steps to get you moving towards the next stage. 

The link to the workbook is here: Shake off the Shoulds Workbook.pdf (dropbox.com)

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

The membership is open from 22nd November – 3rd December 2023 so if you are listening before 03 December, you can find all the details here: https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/

If you’re listening after 03 December, you can join the membership waitlist here https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/ to be the first to hear the next time we open doors to the membership.

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

The Seed, Self-paced 4 part course: Sign up to Katie’s self-paced course to help you find your unique contribution to environmentalism - have fun, play to your strengths, work in alignment with your values and make a big impact in the process.

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie dives into “Plant” – the second pillar of the Making Design Circular framework which is all about:

• Believing that you can make a difference because hope is the precursor to change.
• Defining your unique contribution to environmentalism so you can stop trying to save the planet single-handedly and find the (probably tiny) area in which you can make a big impact.
• Playing with curiosity, creativity and experimentation, because that is the soil in which creativity thrives

You will start to identify the work only you can contribute to the environmentalism movement, which plays to your strengths, aligns with your values, and is something you love doing.

The workbook link is here: Shake off the Shoulds Workbook.pdf (dropbox.com)

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

The membership is open from 22nd November – 3rd December 2023 so if you are listening before 03 December, you can find all the details here: https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/

If you’re listening after 03 December, you can join the membership waitlist here https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/ to be the first to hear the next time we open doors to the membership.

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

The Seed, Self-paced 4 part course: Sign up to Katie’s self-paced course to help you find your unique contribution to environmentalism - have fun, play to your strengths, work in alignment with your values and make a big impact in the process.

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie explores “Release” – the first pillar of the Making Design Circular framework which is all about:

• Absolving yourself from guilt, because the climate crisis is not your fault
• Releasing yourself from perfectionism so that you can actually make progress
• Letting go of the idea that there is one “right” way to do environmentalism and instead making informed decisions that align with your values

This episode will help you define your values and learn how to apply them to day-to-day sustainability decisions, and articulate those decisions with confidence.

You Can find the workbook here: Shake off the Shoulds Workbook.pdf (dropbox.com)

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

The membership is open from 22nd November – 3rd December 2023 so if you are listening before 03 December, you can find all the details here: https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/

If you’re listening after 03 December, you can join the membership waitlist here:  https://makingdesigncircular.org/membership/ to be the first to hear the next time we open doors to the membership.

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

The Seed, Self-paced 4 part course: Sign up to Katie’s self-paced course to help you find your unique contribution to environmentalism - have fun, play to your strengths, work in alignment with your values and make a big impact in the process.

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie talks to Lucy Hawthorne. Lucy is a campaigner at heart and Founder of Climate Play. Through play-based training and facilitation for adults, she helps make it safe, light and fun for people to face climate change. 

Combining a lot of LEGO with climate psychology, she creates conversation on the topic that teams actually want to have, rather than only feel like they should. Her serious play approach helps people to engage more honestly, deeply and creatively, identifying ways to build alignment and shared action within their organisations, whether they are getting started or have gotten stuck on their sustainability journey. 

Climate Play was born after Lucy spent a good while in the charity and NGO-world and became concerned the heaviness of the conversation was affecting energy to act. So now she challenges the norm of serious seriousness as always the best way to get things done. She is a qualified coach and LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator. 

During this Katie & Lucy discuss:

• How Climate Play came about
• Understanding what Play is and how its defined
• Where Play comes in to a topic such as the climate crisis
• How to use her safe, light, fun form of engagement with environmentalism
• intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. 
• The overlap between choice, wonder and delight as well…
• Play archetypes and how they help us engage with environmentalism

You can connect with Lucy here:

www.climateplay.org

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/climate-play

lucy@climateplay.org

Monthly Climate Play Meetup (first Thurs of the month 1300 – 1400 GMT) https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577

Here are some highlights:

Origin of Climate Play

“Climate play is in essence, trying to find different ways of really tapping into people's motivations and really trying to create spaces where people can engage in subjects that they don't really want to and that feels very different to a very hard hitting strategic approach that I spent many years, many years doing.”

Become the best version of yourself

“How many people actually fulfil their own moral compass? Very few, even people who are very dedicated, we're not perfect beings. And therefore, there's something about what will you always want to do. I'm not saying that if everyone suddenly untapped their playfulness, then climate change is going to disappear into a puff of smoke. But I think there is just something about reframing the way we engage with things. Whether that is thinking about and understanding (your audiences) motivations? What are they doing? If you're thinking about how you run initiatives in your company, or you're trying to think about how your family considers sustainability, there is just something about finding a combination of the things that you love doing, the things that you're good at doing, and the things that the world needs some support on. It's not a magic silver bullet, but I think there's something about understanding your sense of playfulness, you are highly likely to be more engaged. And when you are engaged, you're likely to be a better version of yourself.”

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

The Art of Peace by John Paul Lederach

International School of Billund

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Play by Stuart Brown

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

You’re Dead to Me, BBC Radio 4 Podcast

Using Play to Rewire & Improve Your Brain, Huberman Labs Podcast

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie talks to Ella Wiles and Andres Roberts from The Bio-Leadership Project. The Bio-Leadership Project’s mission is to change the story of leadership by working with nature. A movement of people and organisations, changing human systems to be more resilient, regenerative, and designed to protect our planet.

Bio-Leadership is about challenging an outdated story of progress, about building organisations and communities that protect and replenish our world. Most importantly, it is about reconnecting human progress back into our planet’s web of life. Working at this deep paradigm level, growing a culture of interconnection, is where we support the greatest change. 

During this episode, Katie, Ella & Andres discuss:

• How the Bio-Leadership Project can to existence
• The importance of nature connection
• How environmentalism isn’t about sacrifice and punishment and how we can actually be more helpful as environmentalists if we're well resourced and taking care of ourselves
• The three circle model: Self, our community and our work
• The idea of ecosophy – deep experiences, deep questioning, deep commitment 

You can connect with Ella & Andres here

https://www.bio-leadership.org/

IG: @bioleadershipproject

Here are some highlights:

Collectively shifting what the story of human progress can be

“The Bio Leadership Project effectively says there are there are different stories of what human progress looks like, and they can work with nature, and they can be inspired by nature. And even more than that, they can place people or humans back into being part of nature. Its about validating as many different stories as possible and needed. What we’ve seen is that there are just hundreds, if not 1000s, of amazing, inspired, courageous people saying, Yeah, we can change the story, we're going to do it. And it's just that they're all still swimming against the tide, you know, including ourselves, and nobody can do it alone. So the bio Leadership Project and the bio leadership fellowship are ways of helping these people and projects to connect, to share learning, hope and encouragement, and hopefully helping collectively to shift what the story of human progress can be, to care for life.

A change is needed in how we measure leadership

“We as individuals, but collectively, and then sort of as human society probably need a different set of qualities around how we navigate this moment in time and how we bring a positive change to the world. And you could argue that we're all a little bit conditioned by a way of acting, a way of being, a way of behaving that's about pushing, it's about driving, it's about achieving outcomes. And so if we were to just continuously repeat those behaviours, we might just end up with the same outcomes, even if the intention is to do good things in the world. What if, as humans, we had a different dashboard, what if we measure our progress in a different way? What qualities would that require? We need more resilience, we need more connection, we need more systemic awareness, the capacity to understand how things work as whole systems and flow as whole system. We need to be able to navigate and adapt better. What if leadership was measured by those things?

Books, Podcasts & Articles we mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thích_Nhất_Hạnh

Ecology of Wisdom by Arne Naess

There is no point of no return by Arne Naess

Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman by Rebecca Tamas

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Good to Great by Jim Collins

Sky Above, Earth Below: Spiritual practice in nature buy John P Milton

The Spaceship Earth Podcast with Dan Burgess

BBC Radio 3, Unclassified

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie digs into one part of her Making Design Circular framework, the methodology that underpins everything she does. She talks about walk, and walk is short for walk, don't run. It is this idea that you don't have to do everything all at once you can take things step by step. And to support you doing that she has developed a path to sustainability, taking of all the things you could possibly do and put them into an order. By the end of this episode, you will be able to work out whether you are an acorn, seedling, sapling, tree or a forest, and take away at least one action you can do this week to help you move towards the next stage. 

Here are some highlights:

One step at a time

“There's 100 different ways to become more sustainable. But what I've done is interviewed hundreds of designers and makers and craftspeople at different stages of their journey and tried to understand what they did when, so that I can put all of the stuff into some sort of order for you. And I think that just takes some of the overwhelm out of it. Because it enables you to take this one step at a time, it enables you to walk not to run.”

Replicate what we celebrate

“…recognise and celebrate how far you've come. In fact, for anybody make a list of 10 things you're already doing really well. And I think it's so important. Positive psychology shows that our brains seek to replicate what we celebrate. So yes, it's important for your well being and your just general sense of joy, but also, celebrating your success and giving yourself credit where it's due actually means you're more likely to achieve more of those things”

Books mentioned:

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

In this episode, Katie talks to Tom Curran, a World Leading Expert on Perfectionism. With an eye on politics, economics, and society, he takes a cultural lens to the study of perfectionism. His work is groundbreaking and has uncovered a frightening trend of young people breaking under the strain of perfectionistic pressures. Tom brings perfectionism to life and makes it relevant and understandable to the widest audiences. He is a TED speaker and Thought Leader, a regular contributor to high-profile podcasts and has been featured in the national and international mainstream media. With the objective to put perfectionism on the map as a public health concern, Curran draws on his unique sense of wit and self-depreciation when he travels the globe speaking on the topic. 

During this episode, Katie and Tom discuss:

• How he came into the field of social and personality psychology and what that actually is
• His findings from the first systems-level cohort study showing that perfectionism is on the rise in American, Canadian, and British college students
• The damaging impacts of perfectionism
• The difference between perfectionism and the pursuit of excellence
• How to navigate perfectionism
• How we can tap into failure as a strength
• How can craftspeople, makers, artists, and designers contribute to a culture of imperfect progress

You can connect with Tom here

LI: @thom_curran

https://www.thomcurran.com/

Here are some highlights:

Seeking approval and validation

“Perfectionists are really concerned about how other people appraise them, whether they're valued and approved and loved by other people. This is a huge part of perfectionistic psychology because deep down, they believe that they're flawed, they're imperfect, that they're deficient. And in order to feel a sense of self-worth, they go about the world trying to hide those deficiencies from other people and seeking their approval and validation all times. Well, that's okay, but what tends to happen is that perfectionistic people are so scared of rejection, so scared of criticism that they can move themselves away from people and away from situations where they feel like they might be judged. That can create some social disconnection which can lead into things like loneliness and there's a lot of data to suggest that perfectionistic people experience quite a lot of loneliness and social disconnection. That's the first reason why it has an impact on mental health”

Pushing past human fallibilities

“Perfectionism has quite an aggressive, aggravated vulnerability built into it, and perfectionist people push themselves to the max and then some, it's this idea of, well, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, I've got to keep pushing through the pain, I've got to keep grinding, I've got to keep going, I've got to keep my head up and keep moving forward, and that that's an unsustainable way to live. You just don't let yourself rest. You just don't let yourself recuperate. You don't give yourself permission to accept that life sometimes defeats us and that's okay, that's a part of parcel of being human being. Perfectionism is really pushing past those very human fallibilities and vulnerabilities to try and project at all times a perfect persona. But of course, that's not, that's not possible and left untreated, left unchecked, that can be quite, quite different.

Exposing ourselves to failure

“You just got to get comfortable with it. You know, failure is such an intimately, human experience. Look, we're going to fail way, way more than we're going to succeed. That's the first thing to remember. We're fallible, we're exhaustible creatures. I think it's such an important way to go through life acknowledging that failures of this beautiful thing that we shouldn't be afraid of, it's very humanizing. The more we put ourselves out there and the more we can expose ourselves to failure, the more comfortable we get with it. Like taking a sledgehammer to perfectionism. Just putting yourself out there and feeling the fear of doing it anyway.”

Books, Podcasts and articles we mentioned:

The Perfection Trap by Thom Curran

Our Dangerous Obsession with Perfectionism is Getting Worse, Ted Talk with Thom Curran

Nassim Taleb

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek

Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth

Listen, Liberal by Thomas Frank

Chatabix with comedians Joe Wilkinson and David Earl

Resources for Mental Health Support

Whatever you're going through, a Samaritan will face it with you. We're here 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Visit https://www.samaritans.org/ or call 116 123 for free.

Mind provides supportive and reliable information to empower you to understand your mental health and the choices available to you – take a look at https://www.mind.org.uk/

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.

This week Katie is doing something a little different.

As you may have heard her mentioned in the previous episode, her latest book, Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world came out in April of this year, and she will be reading you the wonderfully. Thought-provoking  introduction to give you a flavour of the book. 

Here are some highlights:

Making a statement

“Although any form of mending or repair could be seen as a form of activism in today's single use culture, many of today's artists, menders and remakers are choosing to make a statement with their work. A broken object delivers frustration because it doesn't achieve its functionality says Paulo Goldstein, on page 122. But the same principle applies to a broken system that people profiled in repair as activism are deliberately using repair to point a finger at what is broken.”

Broken World Thinking

“If we want new and better stories, and world orders, ones that are better for all of us, not just a tiny minority, we can't look away any longer. We need to hold the stare with what is broken, with what can be repaired or remade, and what needs to be cleaned up and let go. The act of noticing, of paying attention and asking questions enables us to hold space for two radically different realities. Realities that Jackson describes as a fractal world, a centrifugal world an almost always falling apart world on the one hand, and a world in a constant process of fixing and reinvention, reconfiguring and reassembling into new combinations and new possibilities on the other. He describes our broken world as a world of pain and possibility, creativity and destruction, innovation and the worst excesses of leftover habits and power, and suggests that the fulcrum of those two worlds is repair. The subtle acts of care by which order and meaning and complex socio technical systems are maintained and transformed. Human value is preserved and extended, and the complicated work of fitting to the varied circumstances of organisations, systems and lives is accomplished.”

Broken: Mending and repair in a throwaway world

Katie’s sixth book celebrates 25 artists, curators, menders and re-makers who have rejected the allure of the fast, disposable and easy in favour of the patina of use, the stories of age and the longevity of care and repair. Accompanying these profiles, six in-depth essays explore the societal, cultural and environmental roles of mending in a throwaway world.

Cultivating Hope, 3 part mini course: Are you ready to cultivate hope in the face of the climate crisis? Sign up to Katie’s three-part free mini course that will help you move through feelings of helplessness, reconnect with nature and take aligned action.

Making Design Circular membership: An international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople – join us!

Spread the Word:

Please share Making Design Circular with Katie Treggiden with wild abandon — with your friends, family, and fellow designer-makers or wherever interesting conversations about creativity happen in your world! 

If you love what you’re listening to, show us some love by following Circular with Katie Treggiden in this app and leaving a review. All that good stuff tells the ‘algorithm Gods’ to show the podcast to more people, and that can only be a good thing, right?

Sign up for our my e-newsletter ‘Weekly(ish) Musings for Curious, Imperfect and Stubbornly Optimistic Environmentalists’ - just click here.

And find me on the Interwebs:  @katietreggiden (Twitter, TikTok), & @katietreggiden3908 (YouTube) & @katietreggiden.1 (Instagram) – and if you’re a designer, maker, artist or craftsperson, join me on IG @making_design_circular_

About Katie:
Katie Treggiden is the founder and director of Making Design Circular – an international membership community and online learning platform for environmentally conscious designers, makers artists and craftspeople. She is also an author, journalist and podcaster championing a hopeful approach to environmentalism. With more than 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, Crafts Magazine and Dezeen. She is currently exploring the question ‘Can craft save the world?’ through her sixth book, Broken: Mending & Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023), this very podcast.