The good news about how disastrously troubled our world is is that it needs so many sorts of talents and passions in order to help it that there is a place for every one of us. In other words, if you care about world problems, you don’t have to fit yourself into someone else’s idea of how to […]
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Taking Care of Yourself
Sometimes, when we finally get a taste of meaning and purpose, we pursue it without taking care of ourselves. But helping the world is not about denying yourself. How can you take care of the world if you are too tired or too hungry or too stressed or too depressed? If you can’t sustain yourself, […]
Be Stupid Enough to Try
People in my past have asked me if I was “too stupid to know that one person can’t make a difference in the world.” This is a meme in our culture–that cynics and skeptics are the smart ones. That the idealists and the optimists are too dumb to realize there is no point trying. Think […]
Using Selfishness to Power Your Purpose
People sometimes imagine that you can choose to take care of yourself or you can choose to take care of the world. You can be selfish or you can selfless. That is not true. Each of us have been blessed with personalities that come with particular wants and desires. Wanting and desiring is human. It […]
What’s Happening Here?
Hello! Thank you for visiting and–hopefully–coming back over and over to take part in a conversation about finding the Good Life. My name is Colin Beavan, who some people know as No Impact Man. If you want to know more about me, you can check here. For now, let me tell you what’s going on […]
No Impact Man Runs For Office
Please check out my article on the Atlantic Monthly’s website about my activist run for Congress and how citizen politics can help do something about climate and other problems: My unlikely course in activist politicking started with a May call from a member of the executive committee of the Green Party of New York State. The […]
Forget outer heroes; bring out your inner ones
I got a piece of fan mail from a young woman at Goldsmith College in London calling me her “idol.” I’m not so comfortable with being anyone’s idol and I actually don’t think it does us much good to worship outer idols. Instead we need to give our energy to bringing our inner idols out. […]
What to do if the world is scaring you
Here is a post I wrote after Hurricane Sandy hit NYC and made is all realize climate change was not a far-away thing. It is just as relevant every time a world event scares you as it was then… Dear friends, I don’t say this often but I am scared. Not scared to the point […]