Announcing an Important Partner… United Nations Environment Programme

For those of you who regularly read my blogs and Twitter posts, you know that this year, my mission is all about Climate Change. Very soon, I’ll be officially unveiling my initiative for Stage 2 of the Pacific crossing – which I am so excited to share with you when the time is right – but not yet. Today, I have some very exciting news to tell you: I am pleased and honoured to announce an exciting partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). They have created a campaign called Climate Heroes, and yours truly has been named one of them.

The concept is born out of the UN-wide call for the world to UNite to Combat Climate Change in the lead up to the critical negotiations taking place this December in Copenhagen.

According to the UNEP team, “the Climate Heroes platform supports a select group who are undertaking exceptional personal feats, high-profile expeditions and other innovative acts of environmental activism to demonstrate their commitment and to raise awareness for one simple idea: Your planet needs You! These projects highlight environmental “hot topics” like CO2 output, plastic usage and tree planting.

“The ultimate goal of the collaboration between UNEP and the Climate Heroes is to build interest, inspiration and momentum to motivate action. Participating under the global banner, UNite to Combat Climate Change, their acts, and the attention they generate, will give voice to the movement of individuals and organizations across the globe who care about the state of our planet and want to see real change and real commitment. This commitment should be demonstrated by governments with a ratification of the proposals set forth in Copenhagen. The call to action for this outcome is called Seal the Deal.”

Ultimately, this is a call for each of us to do what we can: from adopting the simplest habits, like taking a reusable grocery bag to the store or a reusable mug to the coffee shop. Part of why I’m so thrilled to be partnering with UNEP is because I’m a firm believer in the accumulation of individual choices and actions. Through our united efforts, we can all be Climate Heroes and together, we can make a world of difference!

UNEP World Environment Day…the 30 day countdown begins now!
Commemorated yearly on 5 June, World Environment Day is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

On World Environment Day, UNEP endeavors to:
• Give a human face to environmental issues
• Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development
• Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues
• Advocate partnerships which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future

So this year, in honor of World Environment Day, UNEP is joining the Twitter revolution! They are pledging to plant a tree for every follower that they reach until 5 June, with a goal of at least 100,000 people. Tree planting is an important way to help recapture CO2 emissions – Prince Charles is a big fan of this method, and so am I!

You know how much I love to Twitter… So, let’s all pull together in this effort. It’s easy: just visit www.twitter.com/UNEPandYou and add them to your Twitter feed. Spread the word to your friends and family and help us blow that goal of 100,000 followers out of the water!

To reward you for your efforts, for the next 30 days Team Roz will be Tweeting “Do Something Tips” – ideas and suggestions for ways you can take simple actions right now to green your daily routine, reduce the amount of waste you generate and the amount of carbon you emit.

So, come on…join us! And spread the word…


Other Stuff:

Tonight I went to an event run by Jack Johnson's Kokua Hawaii Foundation at a local school here on Hawaii's North Shore. It included a screening of the film "Message in the Waves", featuring various local Hawaiian heroes - and some shocking footage of plastic pollution killing animals and polluting the oceans.

But it ended on an upbeat note, with Jack Johnson singing "Reduce Reuse Recycle" - leading the way and telling us all what we can do to stop the problem at source. It's not rocket science - so here's something we can all do starting now. On my one-hour walk this morning I was able to pick up about 10 pieces of rubbish and put them where they do the least damage - in the bin. It all helps...

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The Ocean Rower's 5-Step Programme to Zen Acceptance

After I spoke recently at Google in Mountain View, CA, a Googler from the audience sent me an email with this thought-provoking opener: "As you can tell from my questions, I'm interested in the process of reducing stress by reaching that level of "zen acceptance," as you called it. I'm not necessarily looking for an easy way to get there -- I'm not sure there is an easy way. But it would be fascinating to find out the thought process you went through as you worked your way to zen acceptance (kind of like the 5 stages of grief?) Reading about what you went through may give people ideas of how they can create experiences for themselves (probably short of rowing across an ocean!) to work through a similar process toward the goal of zen acceptance. I really think this is an area that people can "train" themselves in, and there are so many mental and physical benefits that it's worth spending some energy on."

So I have duly spent some thought and energy on it, and although I think my answer still has some evolving to do, I'd like to post my thoughts here to stimulate some debate. Maybe you have a story to share so we can benefit from your experience? If so, please post it as a comment to this blog, so we can work on this together.

So here goes...

For me it was a combination of factors - and here I am talking about the Atlantic row in 2005-6. By the time of my 2008 row from San Francisco to Hawaii I had moved much closer to a state of zen acceptance - largely by doing things the wrong way on the Atlantic. I talk a lot more about this in the book that will come out on October 6 this year - Rowing The Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean. But for now, here is a summary of what I went through on my zig-zagging journey towards some lowly level of enlightenment:

1. Several months of creating endless frustration and internal conflict caused by fighting reality ("the weather shouldn't be doing this," "my shoulders shouldn't be hurting" etc) until I realized that I could fight reality all I like, but reality wins!

2. Ditto when fighting the ocean. In the early stages I thought the ocean was being deliberately malicious towards me. I took it personally. Then I realized the ocean was just doing what oceans do. It wasn't trying to teach me a lesson - it was just obeying the laws of physics. The ocean was doing its thing, and I had to do mine, i.e. just carry on rowing!

3. Demise of satellite phone - when my access to weather forecasts was cut off for the last 24 days of the Atlantic row, it ended the seesaw between two extremes:
a) good forecast --> expectations of good progress --> disappointment and more frustration;
b) bad forecast --> fear and anxiety --> forecast usually wrong anyway so fear and anxiety a needless waste of emotional energy.
It forced me to live in the present moment, and accept things exactly as they were.

4. Recognition of the perfection in everything. This created an attitude of positive thinking that became self-fulfilling - the clouds had a silver lining, because I had decided that they would! So I sought the positive in everything. e.g. when my satphone broke, I realized that this was my perfect opportunity to truly test my self-sufficiency.

5. The "Retrospective Perspective" - putting the present experience in the larger context of my life, and knowing that it would all be worthwhile in the end. It really helped when I learned to project myself into the future, and know that even the worst adversity would one day make a great story to tell my friends in the pub. (Hmm, not sure pubs are very zen. Enlightenment/sobriety evidently still a long way off!)

So if I was going to try and break this down into something analogous to the "5 stages of grief" that you mention, they might be:

1. Indignation that "it shouldn't be this way!"
2. Frustration and anger as fight against reality escalates
3. Crisis and catharsis (yell therapy is good for this - and in the middle of the ocean, nobody can hear you scream...)
4. Grudging acceptance
5. Recognition that there is something positive to be found in every situation, and that the greater the suffering, the greater the learning. To grow you have to get outside your comfort zone, and getting outside your comfort zone is (duh!) UNCOMFORTABLE!

And that invaluable sixth stage.... telling the story over a pint of beer afterwards - which we can call celebrating one's achievements, and saying, "Well, hey, haven't I come a long way."

Ocean rowing was my crash course in personal development. But how to replicate this in a non-rowing environment? To be honest, I don't know. This is where I need you to help. What have you experienced that has pushed you to what you thought was your limit - only for you to continue beyond your limit and experience some kind of enlightened acceptance?

Over to you!

[Photo: on the ocean, no one can hear you scream....]


Other stuff:

As those of you who have been following my Twitter feed will know, I am now in London for a couple of weeks of meetings and PR. At last Nicole and I have some breathing space to regroup and consolidate. The clock is ticking, and much remains to be done, especially around the launch of this year's green initiative.

Meanwhile, packages have been arriving in Hawaii - tea tree oil, wet wipes, a newly-serviced Winslow life raft, Aquapacs. Work continues on my boat, in readiness for my launch on May 24.

Ocean Rowing Update

For ocean rowing afficionados, there are two rows currently in progress you may like to follow. I am especially proud to link to Sarah Outen, who I have been informally mentoring for the last couple of years, and who launched her attempt on the Indian Ocean a few days ago. She is a fantastic writer/blogger as well as a mature and impressive young woman, so please check out her blog and join me in wishing her well.

And Oliver Hicks continues to battle his way through the Southern Ocean. Good luck Olly!

Are you Stupid or Not Stupid?

I'd like to make special mention of an important film I went to see last night at its premier in London. The Age of Stupid has been tagged the natural successor to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour - moving the emphasis from information to action. Powerful, informative, potentially life-changing. Recommended. More than recommended. Positively encouraged, urged, compelled. Please go! (Have I made my point?!)

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