I believe that when communicated well, and co-organized smartly, new ways of economic activity are possible to be implemented. Many examples, such as solidarity economy systems or cooperatives already exist in the small scale, and their success shows that this is indeed possible. 

I’ve seen seniors working in business and industry being positively struck when hearing about postgrowth ideas. Their response was: how come I’ve worked in a growth economy forever? How come I didn’t realise this was doing harm? Seeing such reactions drives me to teach more about alternative economic possibilities to people who are new to the concept. 

Unfortunately, I’ve seen groups working towards a socioecological transformation getting stuck because of personal conflict, disorganized meetings, burnout, and lack of leadership skills. Their brilliant ideas get blocked in their implementation. This drives me to bring my facilitation skills in support of organizing systems, such as to prevent burnout and increasing a visionary group’s potential and active agency.

I believe that for any transformation, collective work as much as individual work and reflection is crucial. This is where my motivation to work with contemplative methods comes in: from a neurobiological perspective, our minds need a shifting in perception and a cleaning-up process in order to work wisely and collectively towards new systems.

I deeply believe in the well-meaning intelligence and creativity of humans, individuals and groups, when under the right conditions. It is therefore that I created Shifting Ways, the attempt and effort to allow for and to bring about these conditions.