This post is dedicated to my friend Amy Wilson. Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of talks and answering a lot of questions and, often times, people ask how they can help. This is a wonderful question, but waiting for someone else to answer it is not quite as wonderful. Let me say why. The […]
Happiness and Life Satisfaction
Michelle’s lessons from No Impact
This is a guest post by my wife, Michelle Conlin, who bravely joined me in the No Impact year. The post appeared on BusinessWeek.com, where there are a full sweet of features to do with No Impact. Check them out! My author husband, Colin Beavan, decided in late 2006 that he wanted to stop writing […]
Treating anxiety and depression could save the planet
Something a regular reader of this blog may have been able to guess about me: I suffer, at times, from anxiety and depression. I’m not talking about the worst kind of anxiety and depression. I’m talking about the kind that takes the edge off the gratitude I should be feeling for a good life. Not, […]
When what you have beats what you want
I thought I’d repost some of the thoughts I had during the No Impact year itself, so here’s one that suits the season… Lest I get too heady with all my talk of radical political acts and trusting wisdom before science, I thought you might like to know where No Impact Man goes body surfing while the […]
Health care and the environment
You’d think that the environment and the debate over universal health care weren’t connected, right? But what I’ve been thinking is that for all of us to begin to choose lifestyles that might be both better for us and better for environment, we have to be able to unplug from the Matrix. We have to […]
Why living No Impact contributes to happiness
I have a college professor friend and today he conjectured as to the reasons why choosing a life with less impact contributed to my family’s happiness during the No Impact year. He said that important contributors to happiness are: Meaning: I got a lot of satisfaction out of living a life that seemed connected to […]
How to get your child to eat almost any vegetable
Ask my little girl Isabella what she wants to eat and it’s either a. grilled cheese sandwich or b. peanut butter and jelly. Suggest that she should eat her spinach, broccoli or brussels sprouts first and you get an encyclopedic explanation of why she can’t eat it–it doesn’t taste good, it’s too hot, you have […]
A sad observation I had on a mountain
See that picture? That’s where I stayed last week for some quick R & R in the countryside. An incredibly beautiful place. At lunch one day, I briefly met two women, sitting at the next table. While I was eating, I overheard one say to the other, “Do you think there will be enough shops […]