A couple of weeks ago, I found myself crying in my car after listening to a podcast about a change to how the Trump administration interprets harm under the Endangered Species Act. It got me thinking about responsibility, unintended consequences, and what it means to cause harm without meaning to.

That question led me somewhere unexpected: to a conversation about the things that stop us from making the changes we know are necessary in our lives.

I think a lot of it comes down to three things: capacity, capability, and confidence. Do we have the time and emotional space to care? Do we have the skills and knowledge to do something about it? And do we believe that our actions can make a difference?

In this solo episode, I explore how those three things connect, why a history of small successes can help us build momentum, and how our attempts to solve problems can sometimes make them worse when we're too afraid to admit we've got something wrong.

I also tell a story from my time working with a community in Ahmedabad, India, and a young woman who found somewhere to belong when she had nowhere else to go. It changed the way I think about security, and what it means to have enough to share with someone else.

We can't all solve the biggest problems in the world. But we can start by scaling them down to something we can understand, learn from, and act on.

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00:00 What Stops Us From Taking Action?

01:38 Trump's Endangered Species Rule and Responsibility

05:43 From Anger to Islands of Sanity

10:03 The Three Cs: Capacity, Capability and Confidence

10:51 Capacity: Time, Mental Space and Emotional Bandwidth

19:10 Capability: Learning Practical Skills

21:40 Confidence, Mistakes and Shame

26:27 The Flywheel: From Small Wins to Agency

28:59 How to Scale Big Problems Down

32:45 Community, Security and Belonging

39:56 Climate Carnival and What Comes Next

40:41 A Challenge: Find One Small Thing You Can Do

42:21 Support the Show

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