How do you come by your greenness?

On Fathers’ Day, I wrote a bonus entry for the blog, to honor the memory of my Dad (and to set me up for today’s post). That post is about how Dad was the catalyst for me thinking about sustainability and for my working toward living a more sustainable lifestyle.

He wasn't the only reason I'm the way I am -- far from it. But he's probably the most important factor for my green leanings. Next week, I'll write about what I think is the first runner up.

If you’re reading this, you likely also aspire toward a sustainable lifestyle. I want to know why you hold those aspirations, and I want to know if you think you’re making headway toward living up to those aspirations.

I want you to comment on this post. Or at least think about commenting.

There are two reasons I want you to comment. I'll state them simply and then explain each in just a bit more detail.

1. 1. To help you. Commenting makes you think about your sustainable inclinations and thinking about them helps deepen your understanding.
2. 2. To help us. You can help us reverse engineer understanding of sustainability – If you're motivated to live an environmentally sustainable lifestyle, you must have done something, seen something, or read something that brought that about. Maybe we can incorporate some of those things into our programming or resource development that can help motivate others toward more environmentally friendly ways of being.

Commenting helps you build your own understanding:

There’s compelling research on how people learn (and see this and this), and one of the key findings of that work is this:

A "metacognitive" approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.

In other words, if you learn about how you learn and think about how you think, you'll be a better learner. In asking you to comment, or at least think about commenting, I'm asking you to be metacognitive. Where did your passion for and understanding of sustainability come from? Crafting a sentence or two has the potential to help you better understand how to deepen those understandings.

Commenting to help us build understanding in others:

Giving us some feedback also has the potential to help others do what you've done. If you can tell us the things you've done and the things you've read or watched or created that deepened your understanding and catalyzed your actions, then maybe we can help others do the same.

So, why are you green?