I can’t express the emotion that this video evokes in me. The name Gen Why says it all. We are a generation that questions the world. That asks why things have to be the way they are. As the video says, “it is foolish to assume that my generation is apathetic and lathargic.”

Read further down Gen Why’s Story page and you will see that they started from a discussion over coffee (like us! Though it was tea…) about generational theory, where every four generations a ‘hero generation’ is born. Is that us? Is that what we are doing now? With all the negative press that the young ones get these days, is it the younger generation who are in fact inspiring the ones before…saying it doesn’t have to be this way?

“But I can change the world and I refuse to believe that I am a part of the lost generation.”

Sentences are impossible: Raw. Passion. Commitment. Determination. Sacrifices.

Discuss…

… and see more of the amazing Mickey Smith here. #feelthelove

“We are going to make an invisible bike helmet.”

Think about the reaction in the room when someone first said this out loud. What do you think this was?

– “Sure, go for it!”

– “Hey, where do I make my investment?”

– “Sign me up for your first product launch!”

Somehow, I don’t think this was the first reaction…

Take a look at this movie, which I found over on Brene Brown’s blog, Ordinary Courage:

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, watching this story unfold before my eyes, and having my breath taken away at the end. The courage and determination of these women is exemplary and inspirational all at the same time.

“Easy, only took us seven years!”

“We’ve been good at raising venture capital. Ten million dollars”

“Once a man wanted to tell a story about female managers. Get a rooster, and there will be order!”

“If people say it’s impossible, then we have to prove them wrong”

“Creating an invisible bicycle helmet, people said it was impossible. If we can do that, we can do anything”

These are all incredible statements, in their own way, and spoken with such assurance and humility. How would you motivate yourself to achieve “the impossible”?

When was the last time someone told you, “that’s impossible!”? What did you do?

I can’t wait until my breath is taken away like this again! If you have any similarly inspiring stories of the impossible becoming possible, please post them here.

My long-time partner / newly wed husband joined an album club. This seems like a pretty old-fashioned idea; you pay a subscription, and you get sent a CD every month.  It’s also a pretty neat idea – you end up listening to music that you just might not otherwise come across. One CD that came was called Europe, by the band Allo Darlin. There is a particular lyric that is resonating with me at the moment:

“These days it’s hard not to measure by what you’ve lost,

            But what you can find”

The Letter – Allo Darlin’

• Getting married to the love of my life, my childhood sweetheart, and having the most fun it is possible to have in one day with amazing contributions from family and friends
• Music, music, music – whether it’s all the amazing new music I found at Green Man (Tuneyards, King Charles, Treetop Flyers) or seeing my new husband jamming on funk bass with his new band, the Africelts
• Resilience – my Gran had an old-fashioned, grin-and-bear-it type of resilience. My resilience is a little bit different… but there are some times when you just have to keep on going, and I found this from my Gran
• Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability – the message that courage is not about not feeling vulnerable, but that vulnerability is where your courage comes from. And the title of her blog, Ordinary Courage. This year I have really found my own vulnerability, and not run away from it
• My superpower, which is exploring opportunities, asking questions to help others gain clarity in their thinking, and see a clear way through that meets with their values and belief. How cool that I can name this now, thanks to my fab colleagues from The You Can Hub. I can’t wait to get on with the important business of sharing this strength with others, with greater awareness!
  

In these times of economic uncertainty, it’s hard not to focus on the loss – loss of jobs, loss of funding, loss of services for vulnerable groups. What do you do to counter this? What have you found lately?

Last month, Mel and I attended #ccbbq2012 – The Creating Cambridge Big Summer BBQ, an event founded with the aim of bringing together the many different networking groups in Cambridge for more cross-pollination (and guess what, it rained!). Mel and I usually find that if you get us together in a space where there is also ginger beer or cider, we end up talking about changing the world. And this night was no exception.

It’s funny how an event with so many people wearing name badges taking over a beer garden can change the feel of the space, and what we found was that it actually made it easier to start conversations with complete strangers. And this is how we started a conversation with two people who weren’t even wearing name badges, and were just there for a leisurely Friday evening pint.

We joined a table with Dai and Mike, two researchers who are interested in sustainability. Since the beginning of You Can, we have talked about ideas of making sure that we are sustainable, and tried to explore what this means:

– projects that start with us but also build to have a sense of momentum that gives them a life beyond You Can

– working patterns that mean we have time for self care; pacing ourselves

– being aware of the potential impact of our work and trying to promote others’ awareness of their impact on their environment

To be honest it was pretty hard to find a way to put this into words. That’s where Dai and Mike come in. As soon as we started chatting with them, it turned that they are researching sustainability – not in the conventional environmental sense, but in three areas:

• Economic
• Environmental
• Social

Economic sustainability – Most people can get their head around this, given the amount of time in the media dedicated to banking decisions and so on…Making sure that we’re finding a way to make money that is sustainable in the long term… trying to avoid things like the recent economic crisis.

Environmental sustainability – what most people think of as sustainability. Reducing our use of environmental resources, reducing our impact, carbon quotas and footprints, solar power and composting toilets.

Social sustainability – heard this term before? I didn’t think so.

We’re only just trying to get our heads around this. But how I understand it is this:

There are an awful lot of people in this country, in the world. And a lot of them are doing a job where they’re told what to do. There are people who have paid work. And there are people who are “living off the state” – receiving support in their income because they’re not able to do paid work. What if all of these people were actually motivated by doing what they wanted to do? What if they were all able to pace themselves in their work, so that they reduced the risk of burnout and were able to manage their own stress? What if they really understand their strengths and skills and could adapt their offer to bring value – economically, environmentally, and socially?

Then I saw this video from Chris Guillebeau, and I think the actions in it speak to all of these issues:

Thirteen minutes of your time – but well spent! This video speaks to the three types of sustainability as follows:

• Economic – a “real” (hard cash) investment in the people who came to the conference.
• Environmental – encouragement to those people to think about the impact of the investment made by each of them (although I’m not sure how all the plane fares to the conference factor in here!)
• Social – not just a hard cash investment, but a “belief” element – investing in the people that came and encouraging them to “pass it on”

I’m still working on a definition of social sustainability. But for me, it’s about knowing myself, knowing my skills, and working out how to bring them to the world in ways that are both paid and unpaid, and in a way that promotes a connection between me and others. Creating social value.

What about you?