Freda Wells

on Post-Tragedy

“Post-Tragedy”.

It may sound dramatic, but it’s actually the light at the end of the tunnel. A concept that resonated deeply with Freda Wells, as coined by Daniel Schmachtenberger. 

Her curiosity about human behaviour, the invisible forces between things, and her tendency to daydream and sympathize with the underdog have carved a winding life path around many countries, conversations and adventures. She has always loved exploring the meaning of life itself through psychology, philosophy, design, environmental science: “We can let dark experiences break us, steal our faith, trust and hope. Or, we can transmute. Follow the thread of that negative emotion to its source, to what you value, and use that to remind yourself what you stand for, what you fight for. And then act from that place.”

In 2004, friends Annabel Wilson and Freda Wells knew what they stand for: creativity and inspiration. They decided to inject a little bit of Kiwi flavour into the classical “diary”. An idea designed to showcase Kiwi culture, to put the Aotearoa people and their creativity on the global stage.

19 editions later, The Kiwi Diary has become a fusion of journal, art book and intelligent magazine that overflows with art, poetry, history, photography, and even recipes. What began as a fun project has been embraced by New Zealand’s creatives who contributed with photos, quotes, or articles. A vehicle for good social and environmental values. Stories that encourage bringing us back to seeing and thinking with the heart.

No wonder she felt the need to promote New Zealand, an amazing playground for regenerators, “God’s own country”: “I encourage people to carve into their lives, to get away from headspace, from doing, to get outside and just be with nature. To observe and notice how it all works in harmony, without interpretation, sans judgment. Just sit with, observe, and notice how it makes you feel to be around anything living. A plant, the earth, the ocean, wildlife. When we allow ourselves to slow, our body, heart and mind come into coherence with nature.”

Currently, she is also the Communication & Engagement Advisor for the Wellington Regional Leadership Committee and a Yoga Teacher at The Goodlife Collective.

Freda considers herself a “relationship millionaire”, a currency worth growing: “Spend time with people whose outlook you admire and who uplift you. Unplug from systems that feel draining. Observe your thoughts and choose which ones you ‘live’. Life can be overwhelming and lead to despair when we live our thoughts.”

Follow Freda Wells’s red thread of inspiration and inhale the Kiwi spirit while reading her answers for #inspirators!

Thank you, Freda, for being an Inspiration Addict!

#INSPIRATORS QUESTIONNAIRE

Name: Freda Wells

Company / Institution: The Kiwi Diary; The Goodlife Collective

Title: Idea landscape explorer | Curator & Communicator | Mama |

Yoga Teacher | Environmental & Social Justice Advocate | Inspiration-addict!

Website: www.thekiwidiary.co.nz ; www.goodlifecollective.org ; www.esho.life

LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freda-wells-aaabb78/

Country of origin: Aotearoa / New Zealand

Country you currently live in: Aotearoa / New Zealand

Your personal definition of Regeneration:

Short answer? The opposite of degeneration.

Medium answer? Life and living systems in action. It has a cyclical quality, a system that begets more life - not necessarily in the same form. A Fibonacci sequence situation! It’s a balance between creation and constraint, constantly eking its way through these two forces.

The long answer… is a bit more experiential. Because theory and experience create different kinds of understanding. I encourage people to carve into their lives, to get away from words, from headspace, from ‘doing’, to get outside and just be with nature. To observe and notice how it all works in harmony together, without interpretation, sans judgment. Just sit with, observe, and notice how it makes you feel – to be around anything living. A plant, the earth, the ocean, wildlife.

Observe the natural world, and wait. It slows us down - our lives are unnaturally fast a lot of the time. When we say reconnect with nature, we also reconnect with nature’s time scale. Which isn’t a Roman calendar or a Casio watch (even though they’re quite funky.) When we allow ourselves to slow down (after the guilt of ‘doing nothing’ subsides and the monkey mind quietens), our body, heart and mind come into coherence with nature. And then I think it’s an opportunity to experience regeneration.

Main business challenge you face:

Maybe I don’t consider myself wired for ‘business’!

I mean that in the sense of capitalism. I remember hearing a band called ‘Supreme Beings of Leisure’. I loved the name as a reminder of what life can be about... Not in a hedonic sense, but a sense of ‘we’re here for more than a 9-5 grind’, more than just acquiring stuff. I relished exploring the meaning of things at university – psychology, philosophy, design, environmental science. Then after graduating from university and heading out into the ‘real world’ my idealism felt un-channelable! I wanted to glue photos on shop windows to show the working conditions of the factories where the clothes came from or photos of the beautiful mountain tops being mined and topped for the minerals they contained. I wanted everyone to come out of the offices with their ironed clothes, and get their hands dirty planting veggies! I found it all a bit artificial and disconnected, and I felt painfully aware of what it was costing us all collectively. That was 25 years ago. I’ve mellowed a bit.

Instead of spreadsheets, I have relationships, laughs and enriching conversations.

So yes, that can be a business challenge! I’m energized by the effervescence of a great group connection and conversation. It’s a challenge to navigate the world in its current state, but it can bring out the best in people, galvanizing energy into the solutions.

The amazing Inez Aponte recently shared on LinkedIn a ‘Humans of New York’ story in which the interviewee described our current world as casinoeconomy. That’s the challenge for so many at this turning point: people want to be part of the solution, but it can’t happen quickly enough. It’s a challenge to balance how to be most of service and effect healing where it is needed, whilst sustaining ourselves (I’m someone who is sustained by lots of outdoor time, and having time for reflection and contemplation).

I’m fueled by a passion to show people how much goodness and inspiration is out there, and to collaborate with anyone who’s keen to bring out individual and collective potential. For so long, the system has incentivized individual success, but it’s no longer fit for purpose. We need to shift to incentivizing collective success, but being good at that means putting it to practice. Piaget deciphered this all those years ago with kids, that learning needs to be experiential and I believe his theories of learning apply to adults too.

We’re all on that journey to find balance. Balance isn’t an end point or a destination – but a state we’re constantly moving toward and away from. I enjoy the dance, always learning as we go. 

Main driver that keeps you going:

Love.

Love for my gorgeous son, my partner, my family and friends, for adventure, the outdoors... The good energy that is constantly renewed when we’re surrounded by amazing people who inspire us.

I’m post-tragedy, a term I heard first from Daniel Schmachtenberger. It resonated deeply with me because I know I can be judged as naïve, bubbly, or absent-minded... but, people maybe aren’t aware of what I’ve been through, processed, and consciously chosen happiness despite having seen and experienced a lot of darkness too.

Travelling through third-world countries and learning about a lot of world history left me with that anger and sadness at how much unnecessary suffering and destruction humans are responsible for. I’ve walked across rubbish dumps and seen a child flying a kite made from plastic from the dump he lived on. In that moment, I saw the duality: of tragedy and injustice, and the indomitability of the human spirit. Fifty meters from there I saw parents with their tiny baby in a makeshift home of old cardboard boxes. My heart broke in two in my chest that day. I felt so much guilt for being able to walk away and fly home to a comfortable existence. Those experiences and memories are always with me.

So, post-tragedy speaks to me. We can let those experiences break us, steal our faith, trust and hope. Or we can transmute. Follow the thread of that negative emotion, to its source – to what it tells us that we value, and use that to remind ourselves what we want to stand for, to fight for. And then act from that place.

The trait you are most proud of in yourself:

Kindness, curiosity, empathy, irreverence.

Also, in a world of experts, I’m going to say my ‘not knowing’. I’m an expert in not-knowing. It’s a space of possibilities that allows for deeper understanding, openness to more information, and curiosity before judgment.

Our ego forms its identity by attaching to stories. Then we gather evidence to confirm it. The human brain is designed to ‘know’. To file the information away and create patterns, be right, and avoid cognitive dissonance – so it makes shortcuts (heuristics, judgment). It’s a brilliant design feature to cope with the sheer quantity of incoming information, but its downfalls include biases, stereotypes, prejudice, ingroup/outgroup bias, etc. Learning things like this is why I loved studying psychology!

The trait you most value in others:

Curiosity, kindness, integrity, irreverence, receptivity, humility, silliness, adventurousness.

Passions & little things that bring you joy:

Beetroot! (Seriously! When I was 18 and had glandular fever, I experienced exhaustion. Beetroot is a tonic for the blood, and I always feel like a million dollars after beetroot).

Ocean-swimming.

Moments of hygge (cosiness, when we’re all snuggled on the couch together as a family, my 6-year-old is still cuddly; laughing and being a unit, my heart overflows with gratitude and love. I feel like a relationship millionaire – that’s a currency worth growing.)

I also love getting outdoors: mountain biking, skiing, and rock-climbing… New Zealand is an amazing playground!

Getting into the hills grounds me. Distant horizons free our souls and imagination.

The #inspirators who determined you to take the regenerative path:

• My university lecturers and great authors!

• Dr James Flynn (my Social Psychology lecturer)

• Rachel Carson

• Aldous Huxley

• Buckminster Fuller

• Evan Eisenberg’s book The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature

• Geoff Park (Nga Uruora Groves of Life)

• Daryl Davis (Klan-destine Relationships)

• Fritjof Capra

• Ciara Moynihan (made me aware of the Regenerative Practitioner Series that I’m on now, so huge gratitude to this inspirational supreme being!)

A hint or starting point for companies or professionals that are taking the first steps in the regeneration journey: I don’t consider myself a guru here, but be clear on your purpose. And also ask yourself what needs of the collective are you responding to. Turn me into we. Allow agility from the original plan!

Let go of ownership, of heroship. Being unseen is the new hero (inspiration on this: Daniel Schmachtenberger, and let’s be honest, every indigenous culture ever!

Most used and abused clichés about sustainability that bother you:

“Every little action makes a difference.” This may be polarizing, but research also shows that if we feel like we’re making a lot of good decisions as an individual, we think we’re having a good impact and are LESS likely to get involved in politics and civic movements. Where the change is really needed.

Grant Ennis’ book, Dark PR, really opened my eyes to this paradox.

An honest piece of advice for young people who lose hope:

Hope or lack of it is a byproduct of the stories we are telling ourselves.

What information landscape are you exposing yourself to? Be selective - curate it. Listen to Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on OnBeing: What if we get this right? A belief is just a thought we keep having, so what thoughts do you notice on replay in your mind? Choose thoughts that have a good trajectory.

Get intentional. Create a meditation practice. Build your community. Spend time with people whose outlook you admire and who uplift you. Meditate on what it feels like to show up to life in that way, and what mindset they have.

Get into ocean swimming.

Look for opportunities to help others, and notice its effects on your sense of purpose and well-being.

Hope is a renewable resource. Unplug from systems that feel draining. Follow your intuition to plug into goodness. Follow your curiosity and your heart.

Nothing is forever… observe your thoughts and choose which ones you ‘live’. Life can be overwhelming and lead to despair when we “live our thoughts”.

Books that had a major impact on you:

• Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Turning Point - Fritjof Capra

• Politics of Being - Thomas Legrand

• The Biology of Belief - Joe Dispenza

• Silent Spring - Rachel Carson

• Our Future Untold - Alina Siegfried

• God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho

• The Way of the Warrior: An Ancient Path to Inner Peace - Erwin Raphael McManus

• Meta-Human - Deepak Chopra

• The Myth of Normal - Gabor Mate

• Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us - Jon Alexander

• Jitterbug Perfume – Tom Robbins

• Love Warrior & Untamed - Glennon Doyle

• Atlas of the Heart - Brené Brown

Must-reads for any Regenerative professional:

• Books by Giles Hutchins

• The Appreciative Inquiry Handbook For Leaders of Change - David Cooperrider, Diana D. Whitney, Jacqueline Stavros

• Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth

• The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom - Tomas Björkman

• Theory-U, Otto Scharmer

• Politics of Being - Thomas Legrand 

Movies / Documentaries you would watch all over again:

• Le Quattro Volte

• Encounters at the End of the World

• Mountain

• This Way of Life

• My Octopus Teacher

• Everything, everywhere, all at once

• The diving bell and the butterfly

• Twelve Canoes

• Amandla

• Baraka / Samsara

• Mistaken for strangers

Blogs / Websites / Podcasts etc. you visit frequently:

Podcasts: OnBeing, The Great Simplification, School of Greatness, Dare to Lead, We can do hard things, People I (mostly) admire, The way out is in, Design Matters, Hidden Brain.

Websites: yogajournal, positive news, www.sarahwilson.com goodlifecollective.org, consilienceproject.org

Blogs: Seth Godin, Todd Kashdan, Daniel Hulter

Music that makes you (and your heart) sing: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Nilufer Yanya, Ekiti Sound, Alabama Shakes, The Avalanches, Foxygen, Nils Frahm, Jose Gonzalez, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Feist, Yo La Tengo, DJ Shadow, Humans, Bill Evans. It all started with Beastie Boys, Face to Face and De La Soul back in the day.

Places you travelled to that left a mark on you:

So many! Italy, Peru (Machu Picchu blew me away), Bolivia (Isla Del Sol), Argentina and Uruguay. Beautiful people and culture. The native bush in New Zealand is also a place that imbues deep peacefulness.

Global Regenerative Voices you recommend us to follow:

This one’s tricky for me... I truly find all humans to be quite brilliant – yet often it’s the system that needs a redesign to allow that brilliance to shine! There are so many more who inspire me!

• Giles Hutchins

• Nora Bateson

• Curtis Ogden

• Erin Remblance

• Chloe Auneau

• Inez Aponte

• Thomas Legrand

• Michelle Holliday

• Diane Myers

• Carol Sandford

• Nate Hagens

• Tomas Bjorkmann

• Jesus Martin Gonzales

• Grant Ennis

• Benjamin Freud

• Marlieke Mieboom

• Daniel Schmachtenberger

• Otto Scharmer

• Fritjof Capra

• Daniel Christian Wahl

• Tyson Yunkaporta

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Seth Godin

• Charles Eisenstein

New Zealanders who inspire me:

• Lara Taylor

• Rob Cousins

• Melissa Clark-Reynolds

• Sarah Pirie-Nally

• Crystal Olin

• Haley Hooper

• Anake Goodall

• Morgan Fitzgerald

• Bridget Doran

• Johnnie Freeland

I think we need more hybrid vigour of disciplines. Just to be devil’s advocate, sometimes language can do us a disservice by boxing something in, and then mental heuristics do the rest.

I know lawyers who are great philosophers, project managers who are great musicians, musicians who are great mathematicians, and mathematicians who are great chefs. Also in the spirit of, ‘the way out is in”, I think a regenerative outer world requires a regenerative inner world, so some favourite psychologists:

• Brené Brown

• Susan David

• Paul Wood

• Gabor Mate

• Scott Lyons

• Nicole LePera

Trends in Regeneration we should keep an eye on:

• Regenesis

• Regenivores

• Hatch

• Inner Development Goals

Best places for business networking (online or offline): Linkedin!

I’m not the best person to ask about that… follow your intuition and lean out into the stretch zone! Join networks that resonate!

Events we should attend:

• IDG Summit 2023

• HATCH Experience

• Good Life Collective

• iKLEKTIK

• Plum Village

Associations, business clubs, tribes you belong to – and why:

• IDG - I’ve just signed up New Zealand’s third IDG Hub!

• Collective Intelligence - ‘a human-connected ecosystem’ supporting personal development and building a trust economy

• sheevolves looks amazing and I’d love to experience more like it!

• iKLEKTIK - just being

Sustainable Development or Regeneration courses, trainings, or certifications that really teach us how to have an impact:

I don’t really feel that knowledgeable about this but will indulge in my opinion!

There’s that cute saying: “Youth is wasted on the young!” (George Bernard Shaw)

But, in a similar way, I think knowledge of the outer world can be wasted if not balanced with knowledge of our inner world. For example, can we distinguish extrinsic and intrinsic motivators? How often do we check in with them? With our unconscious biases? These checks can be humbling and shift how we show up, our decisions, and thus how and how far, relationships can go in our lives. 

I truly think emotional literacy is massively important for a healthy future. The absence of love, connection, emotional needs, can create some pretty dysfunctional “adults”.

For that reason, I put some ‘inner world work’ courses in with the more outward-facing ones:

• Openfield Institute – immensely talented workshop and collaboration experts

• Charles Eisenstein Courses (charleseisenstein.org)

• Dare to Lead™ — Boma | Lead the way.

• Theory U | u-school for Transformation

• The Regenerative Practitioner | Regenesis Group

• Cultivating Leadership

• Systems Thinking Course | UnSchool of Disruptive Design (unschools.co)

• NeuroCapability: Neuroscience of Leadership Online Programs

• NICO LUCE YOGA – one of the best yoga teachers I’ve ever been blessed to encounter. A master of narrative, psychology, the whole human being really!

Reasons to feel optimistic about our future in 2030:

Because what makes us human is that we adapt. Because it’s darkest before the dawn, and as Al Gore says, ‘hope is a renewable energy’… I like that saying ‘You’ll find what you’re looking for’ – when we look for the good, there is SO much. And, there’s a big awakening: humanity’s collective immune response is fully underway.

Reasons to feel pessimistic about our future in 2030:

Hmmm – interesting question. Our bad track record at making decisions based on several generations from now? Our negativity bias? Because power corrupts, because we live in a culture of telling, and have stopped ‘stopping’. A lot of people are plugged into the wrong sources of defining what matters.

Regenerative Leadership qualities much needed today: Humility, Curiosity, compassion, empathy, not-knowing (learn-it-alls, not know-it-alls).

Quote that inspires you:

I’m a chronic collector of quotes! Words are to me what buried artefacts are to an archaeologist… glueing together the parts of my soul that have sometimes felt broken by the world.

“We are all souls with only one wing. We fly by embracing one another.” 

(Luciano De Crescenzo) 

“Knowledge isn’t knowledge until it is shared” 

(Te Reo Maori proverb)

“The more sorrow carves into the soul, the more joy it can contain.” 

(Kahlil Gibran)

“I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe, that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless. You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. Nature is a totally efficient, self-regenerating system. If we discover the laws that govern this system and live synergistically within them, sustainability will follow and humankind will be a success. We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” 

(R. Buckminster Fuller)

Your own quote that will inspire us: