Enthusiastically Yours
The Climate Influence Secret
How many of you remember biking around your neighborhoods when you were a kid? Or, building a fort with your friends? Remember that joy - and how you were pretty pumped to then tell other friends or your parents about it? Your eyes lit UP. You talked really fast! Your smile was huge.
Where did that go?
I’m asking because sharing our own, natural enthusiasm for the little things in our days can play a huge part in our Climate Influence. I’ve talked about this as joy before, but wanted to dig in on this version of that to make the idea more accessible. In other words: if you are someone who doesn’t think in terms of joy - and, by the way, I’d like to help change that - think about it as “enthusiasm”.
When DO you enthuse? Is it about a band you saw live (don’t get me started on my love for Idles…)? Is it about how much your solar panels are saving you in energy bills? Is it about a new video game? Is it about a new coffee shop in your neighborhood?
I want you to analyze your enthusiastic moments and then ask yourself about the things that jazz you that you don’t yet publicly share. Why aren’t you?
I ask because the collective of the little messages that come across when more of you talk about, say, how much you love your plant-based lifestyle or how much you LOVE riding your bike for short local trips, equals humongous untapped climate influence storytelling!
Today on Bluesky I reminded folks who are vegan that just putting the Ⓥ (vegan emoji) in their profile copy is a signal that this way of eating is more normalized than you think). When you notice that more and more of the people you like to follow have that in their profile, it is more likely to get you thinking…
In the same way, when you hear and see evidence that more and more of the people you follow are loving riding a bike or ebike for some small trips in their cities, it also gets you thinking…
Your enthusiasm is not a climate action baseball bat. It’s a subtle message-sharing mechanism. You just let the joy of these moments and great restaurants or health benefits slip out. You show the occasional smiling-face-in-bike-helmet image. You mention that you were blown away by the amazing meal you just had at the new vegan spot. That’s it. The story gets across, friends.
Influence is not the “on high” or fancy, ginormous, celebrity platform you think it needs to be. It’s the “ambience” - which I wrote about here. It’s the sense someone can get from your sharing and real life visibility over time.
People often say to me that seeing me arrive on my ebike and sharing about the gorgeous views I have as I bike around Seattle spurred their research and decision to start biking a bit for transportation, too. The same goes for my sharing about how great I feel and about what (and where) I eat since I went plant-based.
The ambience of my online and real-life presence is joy in those two things. It’s not that I hammer on about climate action.
The impact comes from the joy I express. My enthusiasm. My hype-woman-ness. The joy in the means gets us to a collectively amazing end.
Where do YOU have enthusiasm that could translate into climate influence? What can you authentically express joy over that might get others to explore the same? How can your personal “yays” contribute to incredible momentum for emissions reduction, even in these times?
Because they can, no matter how “influential” you consider yourself or see your social platforms as being.