How Compassion Can Help You Complete Complex Projects

Compassion Wednesday

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Episode Transcript

Hey there and welcome to the innovative mindset podcast. My name is Izolda Trakhtenberg. I am your host, and I’m really happy that you’re here. I want to talk to you about thinking differently about compassion today. This is compassion Wednesday. I’m super, I’m super excited about this because I’m going to talk to you.

I’m going to bringing back a, a topic that. Addressed a few weeks ago with the co-founder and the director of the wild tomorrow fund Wendy Hapgood. The wild tomorrow fund is, uh, an organism, a nonprofit organization that does wildlife conservation and habitat reclamation in South Africa. And what their goal is, is to provide habitat for the species, especially endangered species, but the, the indigenous species of animals that live in Southwest.

And they’re not just going, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to fund or support anti-poaching efforts because yes, that is important. And in fact, Wendy told me that the very first thing that they ever did was that they were at first raising funds to buy. Replacement boots for the Rangers that are trying to keep the animals safe, which I think is an incredible thing.

You don’t think that they’re going to need boots, but yeah, of course they do. They need boots, they need clothes. They need whatever Rangers need in order to do that very important job. But then when he talked about how they thought, when they were developing, while tomorrow fund even further, they thought, okay, saving the animals is great, but we need to say.

Uh, and reclaim land for these animals to live. Right. So that’s one of the reasons. Wildlife conservation. Isn’t just about wildlife conservation or as, as in saving the animals, Wendy and John, her co-founder decided that what they were going to do was figure out a way to reclaim habitat, to reclaim land, to make sure that there was dedicated land for these animals to live.

They have, they have a habitat, they have a range, these animals that they need to have a freedom to move. In order to thrive. And one of the things that Wendy told me recently was that they’ve just had baby giraffes, born, and animals do not reproduce if they feel stressed. So, uh, if they don’t feel stressed or threatened, they’re more likely to reproduce.

So that should tell you that having enough habitat for these drafts means that these drafts are reproducing on their own and they’re getting to live the way they were meant to. And so in order to look at, at this, we have to look at things differently. We have to sort of turn things on their head, right?

You can’t just go, I’m going to just save animals. That’s my entire goal, because just saving an animal, it means nothing. If that animal doesn’t have. Water, fresh water, clean water, a food supply of some sort, whether it’s a, a predator or an herbivore, doesn’t matter, they’re going to need food and, or access to food, I should say.

And they’re going to need that range that I was just talking about that, that place to live. Right. So without those. The animals will not survive. And so Wendy and John and their team at wild tomorrow fund went, okay, we need to think of this differently. And when you have compassion, your tendency, your instinct, I think, is to just go fix the thing, right.

Let’s save the animal. And that is a very important part of it. But if you’re going to look more long-term, you’re going to have to look at how. That compassion needs to ripple out into different ways of assessing and acting on the. So when you feel the need to look, uh, to look into something like we talked about yesterday, with curiosity, when you feel the need to look at something and you have an idea, the idea, can’t just be the one thing.

It, you have to end up looking at what kind of infrastructure you’re going to need to establish and foment in order to. Let this compassionate idea that you have grow, right? You don’t, it won’t grow in a vacuum and it can’t be single-minded. You’re going to have to look at different ways of doing what you’re trying to achieve in order for it to work.

And so. Compassion is a great motivator. Absolutely. That feeling the feelings that, that you want to help in some way, especially those who are less fortunate, uh, endangered species, children, uh, abuse survivors, so many different, uh, beings, the habitat itself, the environment. There’s a lot of, oh my goodness.

Just thinking about it as a little overwhelming. You know how I like to say small steps are still steps. So even taking a small step is a, is a good thing. Uh, and sometimes especially a small step is a good thing because you don’t want to overreach, but yet you want to be sure that you’re paying attention to the, the rivulets to go out, not just in the straight line of I’m going to go save that animal, but all the way around.

To habitat to food supply, to access, to clean, fresh water, uh, to being free from being hunted. If, if it’s a critter, there are lots of different things that we need to look at as part of our compassion up as part of our purpose driven mission. And you have to think of it in those terms, it cannot be the straight line you’re going to need to have, you know, the straight river goes on one direction, but there are lots of tributaries and you need to pay attention to that.

And that brings me to the notion of visionary versus implementer and specialist versus generalist. If you’ve, if you’re a longtime listener of the show, you’ve heard me talk about this before. It’s really important. And I want to address that a visionary will have the one vision, the implementers, the person who’s going to have to go figure out all the different rivulets, right.

Specialist will have, uh, uh, the one talent and the generalist will have the capability of doing multiple things at once, or at least have, uh, at least. Expertise of a number of different, um, factors in what you’re trying to achieve and the way those, those interplay with one another is what’s going to make projects succeed.

And I’m going to talk a lot more about that tomorrow when we do communication Thursday, but I wanted to at least put that bug in your ear. So you come back tomorrow. And we can go delve deeper into the difference between a specialist and a generalist and a visionary and an implementer, and how those working in concert, we’ll get you in from the spark of an idea, to being curious about how it could work to developing a plan and then implementing that plan.

And having a go to fruition and tomorrow we’re going to talk about mindfulness mindful. Friday’s going to be about how you build the awareness, not just the curiosity, but the awareness that the idea is there to begin with. Now. All righty, I am super excited that you were here. If you enjoy this episode, drop me a line and let.

And, uh, and, or leave a review of the show. I would love it. Tell a friend, all of those things. I am giving you a 42 things that I’m asking you to, but it wouldn’t have seriously. It would, it would mean the world to me. If you were to leave a review for the show, I would really appreciate it until tomorrow.

This is Izolda. Trakhtenberg reminding you to listen, learn, laugh, and love a whole lot.

 

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