Designing Your Life Based on Permaculture Principles: Applying Small and Slow Solutions

Very few events in nature happen instantly. Everything takes time. If you stand in a forest, it may appear that nothing is happening, but in reality the forest is always growing and always changing. Small and slow changes lead to more positive and more sustainable results.

As you adapt and make changes to your own way of life, do not hesitate to apply principle number 9 – Use small and slow solutions. Prepare yourself mentally for the fact that changes will not happen immediately. The important thing to remember is that everything needs time to shift, so do not give yourself a hard time if you do not see results right away. Remember that you have already begun your journey of change.

In today's article, let us join GreenU in exploring how to apply small yet sustainable solutions to the changes in your own life!

1. Work

If you are trying to change your job and wish to run your own business, the stable solution is not to quit your job immediately, but rather to take the time to figure out what you will do with your free time the next day – you can keep working while also beginning to learn about the field you want to enter or how you will manage your own company. Just like using design patterns to work with nature, the best step is to observe the current situation, see what suits you best, and then find ways to carry it out through small changes that, over time, will lead to greater change.

2. Lifestyle

If you clear a forest to plant a food forest all at once, you will see the natural system "strain" under the changes – the soil is severely eroded and devastated, and the water source is heavily polluted. Your lifestyle is no different. If you abandon a habit immediately and try to deal with the changes abruptly, it can lead to financial instability, stress and disappointment. Similarly, trying to run a long marathon before you can run 5km is very likely to lead to prolonged injury and exhaustion. Plan small steps to create big change; this will be more sustainable and healthier over the long term.

3. Conclusion

There are cases in which the natural world takes a truly remarkable approach to change. In the most difficult situations, when the original design does not work, the forest chooses to reset the system. A natural forest fire is the forest's solution for change and redesign on a large scale. In our own lives, this may relate to ending a partnership with a long-term partner or quitting a job abruptly without a plan, so sometimes we need to reset our own lives – this will take a great deal of time and can at times cause stress and exhaustion. Although the choice of change depends on each particular situation, unless it is truly necessary, choosing slower, more mindful changes will bring more joy and a better, healthier final outcome over the long term.

Reference source: Designing Your Life with Permaculture, Josh David [online], available at: https://www.permaculture.co.uk/Small-slow-solutions

This article belongs to the Permaculture section – sharing methods for designing lifestyles and practising enduring agriculture according to Permaculture principles.