Designing Your Life Based on Permaculture Principles (Part 4): Applying the Rules to Yourself and Accepting Feedback
Taking time to make self-adjustments and to accept feedback about what is working or not working is the key to growth in the natural world. This is how Mother Nature corrects the imbalances that can occur when changes in the climate appear. Permaculture is a consistently evolving system that continuously receives feedback and makes changes to keep designs suited to the changing conditions in a garden.
We can apply this lesson to our own lives in a number of ways below.
1. Self-awareness
All of us are influenced by the environment around us. This is how the natural world works. It is important to understand whether your beliefs, preferences, viewpoints, and values are created by you or by the people around you. When we become more aware of ourselves, we can better understand why we see the world in a certain way and decide whether that way of living is suited to our own circumstances. Being influenced by others is entirely normal, but you must have the resolve to become a distinct individual and to be clearly aware of yourself.
2. Developing self-reliance
The natural world does not need "gardeners" to help keep plants and animals healthy and abundant. It can sustain its own system through ecological systems that interact closely with one another. Human beings can learn much from the way nature develops. Instead of using money to buy goods and services, we can learn to provide some of our own necessities. Growing our own food, repairing household items when breakdowns or problems occur, and making our own furniture, pottery, or works of art. We do not need to do everything, but we should begin to become more self-reliant. This not only makes life more sustainable but also brings personal satisfaction, which in turn contributes to better mental health.
3. Community
Can people create more self-regulation within their communities? If we support and consume locally produced products, or products from social-impact enterprises, then those enterprises will develop better. By choosing to shop locally, you help build a sustainable community. If you think of money as a nutrient, you will easily see that the way we spend money can also directly affect our own lives and our community. If we spend money on products that are made unethically, this will help harmful enterprises grow. These enterprises will become ever larger and play an increasingly negative role in our ecosystem. Conversely, if you support and consume green products locally or from social-impact enterprises, you are contributing to helping the community develop in a more sustainable and stronger way.
4. Feedback
Let us take the time to examine all areas of our lives to see what is working and what is not. It could be a small project, a side source of income, an exercise routine, relationships, studies, or anything at all in life. Be open to accepting feedback on how these areas are working. This does not mean that you must give up the things that are not working well. Instead, accepting feedback allows us to step back and observe, and to find solutions to redesign our habits in order to improve productivity. We do this very often in permaculture gardens, but we rarely take the time to apply this method to our own lives.
Reference: Designing Your Life with Permaculture, Josh David [online], available at: https://www.permaculture.co.uk/Designing-Your-Life-Permaculture?fbclid=IwAR3o5P5yfJ09U-9CzclJTi5lmiJKgaLxIMjguGJbuEDn_Gb4jsjIyXBsHfI
This article belongs to the Permaculture section – sharing methods for designing lifestyles and practising enduring agriculture according to permaculture principles.
