- Ruth Achillah
I think we need to remember softness and kindness and patience and gentleness, all the things that we think are okay to give up when we are at war. I think we just really need to get back to understanding what it's all about.
- Katie Hodgetts
we're connecting the dots more between inner development and mental health. And when you offer people a solution that will enable them to live their brightest and boldest lives, that's what feels attractive. And I feel it's really come from a need.
- Tamsin Walker
Welcome back to the Inner Green Deal podcast with me, Tamsin Walker. As we've been exploring in this season of the podcast, there are a lot of NGOs and other impact organizations currently facing political uncertainties and financial tensions that could stir a feeling of needing to push harder and to do more. But as we've also been hearing over the course of past episodes, it can in fact be a moment to invest in inner development as a way of remaining grounded and building trust and kind of collaboration that's needed for deeper, more systemic change. And this month's episode taps directly into that. Recorded at the Inner Development Goals Summit in Stockholm in October, it features two women from different parts of the world. They're working on different projects, but are united by some common themes, not least how communities understand and build resilience and where inner development comes into that picture. My guests are Ruth Achillah, Global Lead for Learning and Development at the One Acre Fund, which works with millions of smallholder farmers across Africa to make sure they have the tools, knowledge and innovations needed to prosper. And also Katie Hodgetts, a British changemaker and author who founded the Resilience Project as a way to offer psychological and inner-led support to young people affected by burnout and climate anxiety. Her first... book will also soon be hitting the shelves. Act, rest, reset,
- Katie Hodgetts
repeat.
- Tamsin Walker
Welcome to you both and thank you so much for joining me for this conversation.
- Katie Hodgetts
Happy to be here. Yeah, what a pleasure. Thank you.
- Tamsin Walker
The overarching theme of the conversation, that's why I wanted to bring you both together, is resilience. I think it's one of those words that's been woven into certain narratives but has so many meanings and so many potential meanings. I learned, for example, that there isn't a word for resilience in every language, but that doesn't mean that it's not a lived experience just because there's no word for it. And in that spirit, I would ask you both what resilience looks like or feels like to you. Do you want to start, Katie?
- Katie Hodgetts
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to. For me, resilience is how we weather storms, not the absence of storms. A, I think resilience was the absence of storms. But it turns out that that is sometimes denial. It's sometimes naive hope. And there's a really beautiful quote, ships are safe in harbors, but that's not what ships are for. There will be storms. And my friend Chris Johnson, who co-wrote Active Hope with Joanna Macy, he once said to me, Katie, what's more resilient, the tennis ball or the tomato? And I obviously said the tennis ball, because when you squeeze it, it bounces back. And he said to me, no, it is both of them. Because sure, the tennis ball, you squeeze, it bounces back. But the tomato, when you squash it, the seeds hit the floor and things grow. So for me, resilience is the mountain and the puddle.
- Tamsin Walker
Nice. The mountain and the puddle.
- Katie Hodgetts
It's both. It's how we build ourselves back up, how we talk to ourselves when we are at the puddle, how we grow, how we change, how we act with self-compassion and empathy.
- Tamsin Walker
Okay, thank you.
- Katie Hodgetts
Ruth?
- Ruth Achillah
I think it is very much the same thought, what you're saying about the tomato and having the ability to evolve beyond what it originally was or to multiply. It's not from. the practice of the tennis ball hitting the wall, but it's more so I have something in me that's worth the investment. And for me, what I think about resilience is somebody valued me enough to plant something in me that makes me feel that. When this difficult thing is happening, I'm not the difficult thing. I'm not limited in my perspective to the circumstances, but I know that I have it in me to be more than what I'm experiencing because I have been before.
- Tamsin Walker
There's a lot to get into there, isn't there? But if we go to what I said in the question just now, that resilience need not have. a definition, me having asked you to give your take on it, but it need not be defined as a thing, but can be a lived experience. Is that something that you, either one of you, have witnessed? Kind of the absence of a word in inverted commas, but the presence of the lived experience?
- Ruth Achillah
Yeah, absolutely. I think about the privilege that I have being from a country in the global south where community is still so central and so valued in the way we define ourselves, the way we build relationship with self. And to your point, the absence of defining words like resilience, because it is a community-orientedness that we dig into to wade through grief, through difficulty, through complexity. There's a crowdsourcing approach to those big moments, the highs and lows. And I think about my own experience with grief and with loss and how I never felt that I had to close the loop on my own. There was always an arm extended out, a willingness for somebody to pick up the load, and implicit knowledge that... I would do so for that person as well. And I do do so. So even in moments where it does feel like there is lack and absence and a need to, you know, dig in to pull from what feels like nothing, the experience of knowing that it is a communal act and it's not an isolated process is such an edifying and relationship building experience, that it continues to teach and expound on who you are, even beyond the survival of that particular experience.
- Katie Hodgetts
Wow. I love that we have two perspectives here, right? Uganda and UK. And from my context, I really feel like I inherited an understanding of resilience that was rooted in individualism. It's not that the systems are broken or that they're failing. It's that you aren't resilient enough, which is why maybe resilience has become this massive multi-million dollar industry, because it's been something that we have begun to sell and buy rather than unlock in community, which I think is such a warped way to access resilience. It's not something you add on or you buy. It's something that all of us have inherently. And then going to Kenya. So I was there with young Kenyan changemakers. And resilience was not a word that we used much. And what I saw resilience be was this beautiful breaking of people in community. And knowing that they were still just as loved and valued in the beautiful breaking. That wasn't a a fault of them as individuals, which is maybe how I would perceive it with what I've inherited from my lands. But it was a shared experience of shared holding. And it was so inspiring. I just learned so much from being there.
- Tamsin Walker
I think I was educated in much the same way as you, Katie. Resilience is kind of like a plug-in. Get resilient. But how do you start to do that? I'd like to go... back in time a wee bit with you, Katie, to when you became a climate activist and you're quite young. Was resilience something that was on your mind back then?
- Katie Hodgetts
No, resilience was self-indulgent. Self-care was self-indulgent. Rest was a distraction from not a central part of change-making. And I do find that resilience very quickly becomes a topic. if you are in climate or if you are in change making because you need to learn to take hits like the soil takes the rain. There will be so many losses. And in my activist group, when I was in my 20s, it was about three months was the turnover rate for our organisation. So people would come in, they would learn a different catastrophic fact from every single person in the group, because we were all very passionate, right? They would feel so much fear and urgency that they'd give themselves 100% to the movement, and then they would burn out. and crash. And it would be this cycle of boom and bust, which was really the inspiration for, well, first of all, becoming the wellbeing officer and running workshops to try and illuminate these patterns. Not that I had any answers, but just to start talking about it.
- Tamsin Walker
That was within your group.
- Katie Hodgetts
Yeah. And then going on to realise that one wellbeing workshop is not going to speak to our relationship. with ourselves, with how we relate to work, our relationship with discomfort. And actually, we needed a deeper solution. And that's when I set up the Resilience Project.
- Tamsin Walker
So you set that up, but had you firsthand experienced the need for something that was going to nourish you more than adrenaline-driven activism?
- Katie Hodgetts
Absolutely. And it was really when I was 23. which is when I experienced my first burnout. Or I like to say something which feels like burnout, because burnout has become quite clinical and a checklist. But it's again, like resilience, a very embodied feeling. So I experienced something which felt like burnout when I was 23. And I ended up with an eating disorder to find ways to cope. And to me, the eating disorder was almost resilient. Because it was a way for me to carry on. And I thought that resilience was how do we carry on? And now I think resilience is how do we flourish? Which are two very different answers. And when I experienced that burnout, the question for me was really just who cares for the carer? That was so my story.
- Tamsin Walker
Thank you very much. All right, Ruth. So you work with small holder farmers. And I always think farmers, and particularly small holder farmers, amongst those who are really feeling the first impacts of the climate crisis. And I'm just wondering whether you call it resilience, or you call it something else, there must be a need for incredible strength to keep on. Can you give an insight into the programs that you are working on at the One Acre Fund, the learning and development, and whether there is something that's sort of resilient-like that's built into those.
- Ruth Achillah
So to give you just a snapshot into the organization and how we work, we have over 9,000 staff. And a lot of the work that I do is focused on supporting the staff who support the FAMAs. And so... When we think about farmer resilience, we kind of think about staff resilience as well by extension and how sustainably they can be able to support the farmers in terms of making the best decisions for their farms, when to plant, what to prioritize, etc. The interesting thing, though, as we do our work, and I think it is across the development space, we... oftentimes gets us stuck in the loop of saving the world. How many people have we helped? How are we tracking our social return and investment? How are we scaling? How does that reach, impact the farmers at the end of the day? From the farmer perspective, there is a lot of benefit to be in relationship with us. you know, from the usual markers of success. But I think there is so much that we learn from our farmers in a way that we can't teach them, which is to balance that almost insatiable need to be impactful with the faith that what they're doing is sufficient, the pace at which they're going means something. So it's less how much we can support in a a holistic sense, but how Well, we're able to partner in shared learning through this journey and this process. We say farmers first because it's not just an idea. It's something that we do in practice. We center them because they are who are moving the needle forward and they're who we are learning from.
- Tamsin Walker
There's a common element that's emerging here as well, this learning from each other, right? That seems to be very central and community. very central to living in a healthy way, mentally healthy way, and in heart health and communal health.
- Katie Hodgetts
Yeah, I mean, feeling seen, heard and understood is a core human need.
- Tamsin Walker
Back to something inner then, on that note. So I guess I'm also really interested to hear from each of you where you might have seen aspects of of inner work showing up in the respective work that you do. So there is an activist narrative. And yes, I think it's changed a little bit over the last few years. I'm getting the feeling and hearing, you know, little whispers that the inner work is becoming much more part of that. And I'm just wondering from your own experience, how that narrative has started to unfold.
- Katie Hodgetts
Hmm. Interesting. I have... definitely seen a shift over the past five years that I've been running the Resilience Project. Now with inner development or initiatives like the Inner Development Goals, we're seeing it perforate the mainstream and people, I believe, are starting to realise that inner development doesn't just mean a bubble bath or a massage. It is about human flourishing. We're connecting the dots more between inner development and mental health. And when you offer people a solution that will enable them to live their brightest and boldest lives, that's what feels attractive. And I feel it's really come from a need, right? So inner development has become more prominent, but so has community. So has collective healing. So I think this is... increase in inner development has come from a response directly to the staggering rates of burnout. But at a much deeper level, I do feel a sense that we all are touching into now this crisis of connection. You know, we're the loneliest we've ever been and the most connected. We are not reaping the fruits that modernity promised us. So there is a return inwards to find the fruits that we can bear ourselves and in collective. and in communities.
- Tamsin Walker
I've been reflecting on just how much of what you know where community exists and where that kind of trust maybe that you were talking about before where that comes from is actually is having a faith and just to return to something that is in there it's a belief or it's a feeling it's whatever it is so personal but that can be very beneficial.
- Katie Hodgetts
And there's this idea of collecting collective effervescence which is in short collective fizzing and it is something you might feel when you sing in a group which is why i think things like the inner development goals is so powerful because there is some kind of call it spirituality call it collective effervescence that you feel in your sense and you connect to which has this very therapeutic benefit because I think deep down. existential, our most primal parts, we realize that we are in community. We aren't alone.
- Ruth Achillah
Yeah. I mean, I think that there is something so grounding about that feeling of belonging. So kind of to your point about the farmers, even in relationship with them, it's the creation of community of belonging and they build a relationship with us and are very proud to be attached to us, not just to benefit from any singular resource, but to be a part of that shared community. And I think a lot about the idea of faith. I mean, for the most part, people think about it in the context of spirituality, but outside of that context, in being plugged in and belonging to a community, you have faith. in the people most proximal to you. You have a trust that you'll be held up. There is that gratification that... we experience in community when that need is met. So I think that when we think about community, investment, fear, faith, etc., whether it is as an organization or in relationship to our farmers or as a community collective, that moving past that hesitation to actually lean in and trust that I don't have to be alone in this experience. And someone has me at the end of this road. And I have them at the end of this road as well, is just such an edifying experience.
- Katie Hodgetts
And I think you've really hit the nail on the head there with this belonging piece, right? And I really, really resonate with you from my own experience of there being these deep parts of me, these deep unnamed parts of me. that my mind doesn't even have words for, that being in community, it does something. And the work that I do is often described as life-changing. And when I ask why, it's so hard for people to name. So their mind goes to, oh, it was the course. It was the things that we learned in the course. It was the community. And we don't go that one step further, which is because I remembered that I'm not alone.
- Tamsin Walker
Well, that brings me actually quite neatly to something that I was thinking while you guys were just answering those questions there about the farmers and about this being alone and that we have separated from ourselves, from others and from nature. And I wonder to what degree does the act of working with the land to continue living in harmony with the natural world, to what degree does that serve? as its own form of nourishment. Do you have a sense of that?
- Ruth Achillah
From the stories that I've heard, I think from both extremes, when things don't work out and there's an extremely bad outcome to when things do work out and there is abundance, a real keen sense of the symbiotic nature of that relationship and an awareness that nothing can really exist in isolation. So you're tilling the land, you're planting a seed, which you don't see, right? You're watering the ground and you're hopeful that what you're doing is going to yield an outcome. And, you know, on the other hand, the land might be present, but unless you till it, nothing is going to really happen. And so thinking about that connectedness kind of circles back to the idea of faith, where it is just a built-in practice to let the reins go and trust that you've done the best that you can on your end. And the cycle has to be completed in a way that you can't necessarily control. And I think it does then inform. the inner world in a sense, and creates a somewhat regulating aspect. And my personal takeaway is how much patience I learn from farmers and how well they can trust and just wait for the cycle to play out.
- Tamsin Walker
Thank you. I just want to switch gear now a little bit and Katie, ask you about your book.
- Katie Hodgetts
Act, Rest, Reset, Repeat.
- Tamsin Walker
create change without burning out okay so is that is that sort of a guide for younger activists or activists of any age or is it sort of a things you wish that you had known when you were starting out yeah part part manifesto part memoir mostly
- Katie Hodgetts
guidebook so i take the learnings that we have from the eight to ten week course that i deliver with the resilience project that we've scaled now different parts of the world and offer eight guideposts of how to, yeah, create change without eventually getting to that point of burnout, including a whole chapter on burnout if you do end up in that position. And the idea of act, rest, reset, repeat is there's been a lot of energy put into why we should act. And of course, that's so important. We need to act. And there's a more of a movement now that says that we need to rest. So if act is to say that this matters, to rest is to say, so do I. You need to realize that you're of value when you are resting, when you are not doing. And knowing that you're resting will enable you to go again. It's not leading the fight. It's fueling yourself to return. But really what's been crucial for my journey is the reset. And in the reset, we think about how did I get to this place of burnout? What needs to change in me? What needs to change in my life? How could I do this act and rest portion with more joy? with more connection, with more aliveness, rather than it being something which just feels like a duty or an obligation? How do I make activism or change-making feel like a posture I move from, rather than a project that I take on? So the reset is less about self-care, and it's more about self-change. And then we repeat, because life is an endless cycle of act, rest, reset, repeat. We will never be a finished project.
- Ruth Achillah
Interesting, because as you're talking, and even thinking about the title of the book, that is a farming cycle.
- Katie Hodgetts
Yes.
- Ruth Achillah
Because you act, you till the soil, you plant the seed, and then you just have to let it do its thing. And you have to trust that the work that you've done is sufficient and that you need to give it time to breathe and wait out that particular cycle as you rest. And then you do a reset and you think about... what the next season entails, and then it's a whole repeat. And I think it's so interesting you reflected from your own perspective to get here, but I'm always so astounded about what nature teaches us that we ignore for so long and then have to get to one way or the other by force because our path hasn't played out in the way that we hope or isn't sustainable. And how much humility sometimes it takes to just let go and let nature take its course.
- Katie Hodgetts
100%. And even, you know, the concept of the fallow year or crop rotation to allow things to breathe. Why do we not offer ourselves the permission to have a fallow year, a fallow season? The lessons are everywhere around us.
- Tamsin Walker
It's also something that's... that's relatively recent. I would say even throughout my lifetime, that's been an exponential increase in how busyness over time has become this insane competition. Who's the busiest? I think that things like joy and fun, they sort of become collateral damage in the race to be the busiest. And I did want to ask you both about fun and joy. And if there is something that you have to share along those lines.
- Katie Hodgetts
Okay, introducing pointless joy. Pointless joy is an evolution on joy, because sometimes it's hard to untangle because we are in this enormous web of social narratives and meta narratives of what am I actually doing for joy? And what am I doing because it improves my dinner conversation, my... social standing or it makes me more interesting. An example from my own life is I used to go to do bouldering, you know, rock climbing. And I would say, if someone says to me, what's your joy activity? I'd say, oh, bouldering. And I did enjoy it, sure. But also it made me a more exciting potential person to date. So there was still some element of attainment that was baked into my joy. So pointless joy is detaching joy. from attainment or progress or accumulation and doing things for joy just for the sake of them a really great question to ask yourself is what did i enjoy doing as a child because then and you were doing things just for you so my invitation is for people to explore and get creative with their pointless joy i don't know about you ruth you want to say anything on that on joy i think about this a lot.
- Ruth Achillah
the difference between a game and play, and how a lot of the times when we think about a game, we think about a thing that has rules, definite rules, definite outcomes, and play being something that kind of evolves as it goes, and that is adapted to what feels the best for the people participating and As somebody who has a young child. It is a constant re-education about the nuanced differences of play in a game because I like it. And in the work that we do, we can often get so caught up in driving for this outcome, a world that's more intentional about climate change, a world with people who are doing X work. and What I've been reflecting on as an intentional practice is about being the version of myself I'd want to save. Because if we expend all our creative energy in a fight, do we even like the version of the world that gets saved in the end? Do we like the versions of who we are and the liver for That shift is joy, is finding silver linings, is pleasure, care, love. I think that for me is the ingredient that makes it all worthwhile because who wants a world of heartless humans that's saved after all?
- Katie Hodgetts
You've probably just already answered the last question without me even posing it, but... It is also the question that everybody gets asked to wrap up, which is if there were one inner quality that you believed the world needs right now more than ever, what would it be?
- Tamsin Walker
There are many. The first one which sprang to my mind was gratitude. But I'm not sure gratitude fixes all our problems. I see so many of our issues at the core of it coming down to the psychological safety of identity and the challenge we have with accommodating difference because it feels like a psychological threat. The inequality for that in receding the ego, in de-veiling ourselves of all of the stories that we make up about ourselves so we can see each other as humans. What is that? Is that humility? Is it compassion? Is it empathy? Maybe we need to think of a new word for that, but it's this de-layering of ourselves to meet more people.
- Ruth Achillah
Well, I think we need to remember how to be gently held and to extend our arm and do the same for somebody else. I think we need to remember softness and kindness and patience and gentleness, all the things that we think are okay to give up when we are at war. I think we just really need to get back to understanding what it's all about. And for me, love gets to the core of the disease instead of fixing the symptoms. Because if we care deeply for ourselves and for each other, how much easier would it be to do the little things that push us in the direction we would all want to go?
- Katie Hodgetts
Thank you both for your time. It's very interesting.
- Tamsin Walker
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
- Katie Hodgetts
If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about Ruth and Katie, You'll find the relevant links in the show notes. And if you want to hear more inspiring voices from the field of sustainability and inner development, you might like to have a listen through our archive of past episodes. And as always, if this conversation captures your imagination, please share with others who you think might be interested. And of course, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. That's it for this time. Thank you for listening and bye bye.
