Human and Emotional Sustainability: The Path to Global Health

In a rapidly changing world, with climatic, technological, and social shifts, choosing sustainability is the only way to reshape our relationship with ourselves, others, and the Planet, and to allow a generous future for us and future generations. If sustainability can be approached from multiple perspectives—health, environmental, economic, socio-cultural, and technological—the first paradigm shift is certainly an inner one, which can arise only from deep self-awarenessIl termine autoconsapevolezza si riferisce primariamente all... More and reflection on our true needs, the essence of happinessHappiness represents an emotional state characterized by pos... More, and our role in the world.

Inner Sustainability and Justice

When we talk about sustainability today, we refer to the possibility of maintaining the Human-Planet system, which humanity itself is destabilizing, with repercussions across all areas of life, including economic, health, and environmental impacts.

Central to sustainability is the human dimension and social justice, which allows every human being to live “in a healthy, socially just, and economically active environment”, as suggested by Professor Francesco Regoli, who coordinated the Pharmasea project to monitor marine pollution from pharmaceutical residues, highlighting the multidimensional nature of sustainability, with environmental, economic, and social aspects.

The first step toward sustainability becomes education in inner sustainability, as emphasized by Elena Perolfi, vice president of Fondazione Patrizio Paoletti and head of the foundation’s pedagogical, didactic, and training projects, in her talk at the recent Sostenibilizziamoci.4 event, held on April 1 at Teatro Sociale in Como. Elena Perolfi highlighted how humans can overcome the reactivity and automatisms typical of the instinctive reptilian brain and the emotional limbic brainThe emotional limbic brain occupies a significant position i... More, thanks to the neocortex, the most recently evolved structure of our brain:

When we consciously engage our prefrontal cortexThe prefrontal cortex plays a fundamental role in numerous p... More, we are physiologically less reactive, less impulsive, less violent. Activating this area deactivates the automatic aggression circuit and enables cooperationThe silent force that holds human groups together Cooperatio... More, emotional regulation, and ethical decision-making. Sustainable behavior is our access to an inner function: a place in the mind that, if inhabited, allows us to suspend impulse and direct action. This area of the brain does not activate on its own: it must be trained, with method and consistency. But the reward is enormous: this is where sustainable behavior becomes possible, and it is from here that change can originate.

You can watch Elena Perolfi’s full talk at Sostenibilizziamoci.4 in this video:

A Secret of Sustainability

To deeply understand the secret of sustainability, it is often helpful to reflect on the etymology of the word itself. Sustainability comes from to sustain, which describes the ability to “hold something or someone up, above us”. To symbolically “hold something above us,” at least two actions are necessary.

Raise and train your arms, act in time

The first action is to raise the arms, which we can metaphorically associate with personal active and proactive engagement to lift what needs to be sustained. Naturally, our arms must be trained and nourished, and what we sustain should not be too heavy for them. This detail reminds us of two fundamental themes: on one hand, the importance of training for sustainability, including strengthening personal and community resources from childhood and adolescence, and on the other, the need to act before the weight becomes unsustainable, learningIl termine apprendimento - con i sinonimi imparare, assimila... More to read the signals of the world we live in and acting in time.

True sustainability is always a balance between what we can do and what needs to be done. When this balance is lost, and our strength is too weak or the weight too heavy, sustainability is impossible.

Downsize ourselves

The second action to “hold something above us” is to downsize ourselves, i.e., understand positive interdependence and deliberately choose a lower position to hold something extremely important above our heads. True sustainability is an antidote to arrogance and always requires an act of downsizing and humility, reconnecting us to our original dimension as a living and sentient being within Nature, which is the framework where true happiness can best develop.

Sustainability and the Myth of Eternal Material Growth

If sustainability requires humility and downsizing, it is clear that one of its obstacles is the myth of eternal material growth: the illusion of constantly chasing higher profits, economic gain, and success, in a race to accumulate money and tangible goods, often to display or store on the shelves of fragile self-esteemThe term self-esteem literally refers to the evaluation of o... More or happiness.

True wealth, instead, translates into functional circularity and movement of resources, the ability to invest the seeds of our fruits and, with them, support generative activities that multiply the common good. True wealth often requires a step back or inward, for example, sacrificing quantity for quality or ensuring process optimization for deeper well-being.

The Paradigm Shift: Vita Tua Vita Mea

Patrizio Paoletti, founder of Fondazione Patrizio Paoletti, described the necessary paradigm shift to achieve true sustainability during the presentation of the 8th Observatory on Sustainable Lifestyles:

The Bible says: “And you shall impose the name.” But imposing the name does not mean freely managing or destroying everything I have named. It does not mean enslaving what I have named or exploiting resources without discernment, imagining them to be infinite. We have followed the motto Mors Tua Vita Mea for millennia. We even reached Mors Mea, Mors Tua: if you strike me, I must strike back. Instead, we must reach Vita Tua Vita Mea, a win-win.

It is this new paradigm that allows us to value the natural interdependence linking us to others, all living beings, and the Planet itself. Only shared victory, circulating and multiplying benefits, can ensure global health and true evolution.

Sustainability, Priorities, Happiness

If Nature provides precious examples to metaphorically understand our lives, it reminds us that, for a generous harvest, pruning is as important as enriching the soil. And when necessary, clearing weeds that could deprive our best shoots of resources. Sustainability requires redefining priorities, preparing for difficult cuts or choices to thrive in the future with a generous harvest. This step is what in the construct of antifragility is called “conscious destructivity”, a moment of courageous choice born from discernment and direction.

This generous harvest will allow us to nourish ourselves and others with the fruits of our effort and courage, and it will surely have the taste of true happiness, the most complete kind, combining pleasure and eudaimonia—the joy of appreciating the meaning of things, our choices, and our effort. Humans do not desire a life without effort, but rather a life where efforts are meaningful and generative.

Patrizio Paoletti emphasizes the need to overcome the social misconception that humans are fully evolved. Instead, he highlights the creative aspect of humans, capable of adaptation and improvement.

We are a reactive species with the possibility to evolve. But evolution is self-awareness. True sustainability requires an evolutionary leap in three factors:

• Role: we must redesign our role on this Planet and among ourselves
• Responsibility: meaning taking responsibility and accepting consequences
• Priority: ourselves, with the ability to train to resist the violent impulse to be reactive. A shift in priority also changes our narrative because our life is not reality, but the narrative of reality.

 

Silence and Envisioning for Sustainability

To find the strength and courage to act more sustainably and guide our operations wisely, weighing priorities, resources, and needs, it is valuable to pause and reflect on our daily actions as well as our dreams. The practice of intentional and meditative silence helps us carve out time from daily rushes that is a free space for deep, focused inner listening. In this time-space of silenceSilence, often overlooked in the frenzy of modern life, is a... More, we can rediscover the inner peace that allows clarity of vision and intention, a place to improve ourselves from within.

From this simultaneously privileged and simple place of silence, it becomes easier to envision the future we desire, asking ourselves: What do I truly want? How can I improve today? Because if the eternal growth of material well-being is an illusion, what can grow throughout our lives is ourselves, improving each day, one step at a time.

Sustainability and Lifestyles

The simplest, most direct, and concrete way to improve ourselves is to act on our lifestyles: those repeated actions we take daily that contribute to maintaining sustainable systems. This includes all small daily sustainable choices, such as taking public transport or riding a bike for short trips, choosing local foods, and avoiding wasting precious water.

Choosing healthy lifestyles is a path to global health and an act of responsibility and sustainability, because caring for our diet, exercising regularly, cultivating healthy relationships, and managing stressWhat is stress? From a clinical perspective, stress is a phy... More protect against chronic diseases and neurodegenerationWhat is meant by neurodegeneration? The term “neurodegener... More. In an increasingly aging world, cultivating physical and mental healthWhat is meant by mental health? According to the World Healt... More today, also for the long term, contributes to the resilienceWhat is meant by resilience? According to the American Psych... More of social, health, and economic systems, and to community well-being.

Sustainability: Engaging Young People

In training for sustainability, engaging young people is essential. New generations are those most affected by our mistakes today or our sleepwalking laziness on autopilot, but they are also the ones who can create a wonderful world, weaving their dreams with those of their ancestors.

We can cultivate today the world we want to live in tomorrow, envisioning resilient and innovative cities where biophilic architecture can, for example, interact with neuroaesthetics and new energy technologies, where green lungs oxygenate and surround building spaces, where urban planning encourages human encounters, and where fair and regulated digitalization expands creative possibilities, placing humans at the center.

In this shared sustainability training, we will rediscover together how doing good for others and the environment is a direct and immediate source of well-being for ourselves too, creating generative and expansive happiness, life-creating happiness.

Education for Emotional Sustainability

Educating ourselves for sustainability is one of the most important contemporary challenges and one of the fundamental pillars of innovative educational designInstructional design is a key process in the field of educat... More, placing children and adolescents at the center and making them protagonists of history and an evolutionary process of change.

At AIS Assisi International School, a bilingual school combining Montessori methods and Third Millennium PedagogyTo understand what pedagogy is, let’s provide a definition... More, environmental education is an integral part of the curriculum. Training for climate resilience at AIS is paired with strengthening inner resources and heart intelligence, for primarily emotional sustainability: learning to manage emotions and thoughts, self-regulate, and consciously guide our responses and actions.

Educating ourselves to sustain the infinite richness of our inner world, with all its nuances, is the first true sustainability, allowing us to resist both emotional escape and unregulated surrender. Emotions are signals from the world, both external and internal, invaluable for guiding our behavior and understanding life.

Through emotional intelligence, we can nurture a sense of connectionConnection: the human need that precedes all technology Conn... More with ourselves, others, and the Planet. This sense of unity, embracing infinite diversity and facets, guides us to sustainability as the natural path of existence, overcoming the short-sightedness of separation and recovering a clarity of vision that recognizes the complete integration of all life forms and manifestations, in a continuous network of relationships and experiences, within a single organism called Earth.