Inner Development and Sustainability: The Australia Inner Development Goals initiative

“Sustainability starts with us” Thomas Hübl.
In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals SDGs provided a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. However, progress is not happening fast enough. We urgently need to increase our collective abilities to face and effectively work with complex challenges. The Inner Development Goals IDGs framework was developed as a complementary framework to the UN’s Transforming Our World - 2030 SDGs, to develop people’s inner capacity to deal with the increasingly complex challenges and barriers to building a sustainable world by 2030… and beyond.
The Australia Inner Development Goals Initiative co-created a seminar and workshop. The gathering brought special guests. In activating and being nourished by reciprocity with Country, paying respects to ancestral and contemporary Earth Stewards the world over, alalouie Alana Marsh, a Meriam woman joining us from Kulin Nation, Victoria, e-connected us in Regenerative System Re-setting and Wayapa Wuurrk practice. Our Keynote speaker was Thomas Hübl, PhD, Founder of the Academy of Inner Science, Co-Founder of the Pocket Project: Restoring a Fragmented World, and Visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School’s Wyss Institute. He shared with us his wisdom about what we, as individuals and as a collective, need to do to create a sustainable society. He shared the importance of a trauma-informed society on many levels to create systemic awareness to integrate what we were born to. In his words, “sustainability starts with us”, and “I feel you feeling me is the basic building block of relating”. Thomas, in conversation with the Director of Partnerships and Communications from Global Leadership, Daniel Hires, shared with us the Inner Development Goals framework and how the five critical dimensions (Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting) can support the Sustainable Development Goals. Following the workshop, we connected with Dr Fredrik Lindencrona, IDG Head of Research Co-Creation. He explained how this translates from research and policy. He leaves us with the question, how might we build and think differently when leading organisations? The event was captured live in Scribing, in-person, by Strategic Designer and Educator Vivien Sung, who captured the collective knowledge shared throughout the session. In hosting the hybrid gathering, Unit Coordinator and Lecturer for Peace of Mind and Peace in the World Dr Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon at the University of Sydney brought together hybrid and in-person Australian-based individual founders and organisations contextualising IDGs in Australia to co-create the IDGs Australia Hub.
Co-facilitating the session were Alan Taylor, 3P Impact Leadership and Team Coach, Facilitator, Sustainability Advocate; Alice Howard-Vyse, Humanise This, Systems and Strategic Designer and Regen Sydney, Convenor; Cherry Ward, Sustainability and Leadership Development Specialist, Bluebird Leadership Founder; Helen Lawson Williams, Anamorphic Digital Co-Founder; Jax Wechsler, Strategic Designer, Educator, Founder of Social Design Sydney; Jennifer Barker-Burns, We Evolve Coach and Facilitator; Wendy Harper, Co-Founder P-Lab, ND- Neuro Change Institute, and Founder of the Agency of Women.
Reflecting on the 5 dimensions Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, Acting, and in connection with what the guests heard about individual and collective trauma that Thomas brought, we did a journaling: What is the potential for you? What is the potential for your work? What is the potential for Australia?
Video editing: Cherry Ward. Edited from the 3-hour Seminar and Workshop on May 3, 2023.