People who are sensitive to their environment are good observers. These individuals, who come together in increasing numbers, think a lot, and wonderful artists and creators who see the value in everything emerge from them. For them, the world is like a living, dear friend that needs to be protected.

You must have gotten tired of excessive and unconscious consumption, the crude pollution of the environment, and become interested in turning whatever you find into something beautiful by producing value for the future, so we met on these lines. I’m sure you’re wondering, “Where did we run out?” How is this beautiful world like this? Is it possible to upcycle our lives on a larger scale, in addition to producing value-adding products with the awareness that garbage is not garbage?” The subject is on your mind too.

Like many of us, I am one of those who have been thinking about transforming our lives from the inside for many years.

I think it was December 2018. In the speech of the young activist with braided hair at the United Nations Climate Summit;

” According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we are less than 12 years away from reaching the point where we can no longer reverse our mistakes. During this time, unprecedented changes are required in every aspect of the entire society. This includes reducing our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by at least 50%. I want you to act as if your house is on fire, because it is. It’s been a long time since we said, “We have to switch to environmentally friendly living.” It has been almost 5 and a half years, full of environmental disasters such as a huge 2-year pandemic, many large fires, and unseasonal floods at unusual speed.

As if that wasn’t enough, nutrition, health problems and drought were added to the food chain due to deforestation and food chain disruption due to erosion. There is a chain reaction that is reflected in our homes as an economic disaster that hits our furnaces and is very current in the world.

While these situations that shake the whole world affect all living things, we, as humans, are the strongest link in the chain of life. Yes, we are the most affected, the most powerful and the most important link. Because we have the ability to directly influence our environment with our choices, expectations, thoughts, actions and emotions.

You’ve probably heard the word holistic. Those who choose to live knowing that they are responsible for living sensitively with their environment by taking steps for the benefit of all during their actions are those who choose a holistic life. When we are born, we are directly connected to our mother, and our mother is completely dependent on us with this consciousness. This awareness of inner connection, the feeling of being one with the whole, is a gift given to us from birth. Unfortunately, we lose this ability over time and need a new “internal upcycling” process. While I was looking for my own personal transformation path thanks to Eastern schools, I saw schools that provided holistic education in infant nurseries to preserve this awareness and even not to make it forgotten. According to them, since there is nothing outside apart from them, sustainability comes naturally. They know that living in connection with sensitive choices from the inside out in their thoughts, feelings, and actions can create a butterfly effect.

Internal upcycling, which is decided at older ages, enables the individual to live a happy, satisfying life by making constructive changes in their beliefs, values, behaviors and emotional states through conscious awareness, personal development studies and transformative experiences, and by developing healthier, sensitive bonds with his environment.

I am now sure that the human consciousness that is disconnected from its whole lies behind the great existential crisis in the world today. In my opinion, thoughtlessly produced waste and the garbage in our minds are reflections of the same thoughtlessness and unawareness. That’s why I think we should first start with an “Advanced Internal Transformation” inside.

These were the first years when I started observing myself. One day, while walking in Maçka Park in a hopeless mood, I noticed that my facial muscles were crawling on the ground. As I lifted my cheeks towards my temples with the help of my index fingers, I burst out laughing. Much later, I learned that our muscles are powerful levers of emotion and thought that affect our emotional state.

Now, if I said let’s list together the things that are not going well in our lives, apart from the ones above, who knows what a long list would come up immediately. Problems, setbacks, difficulties, delays, disappointments, a lot of expectations and the emotions that follow them would fill our minds and hearts like garbage heaps, and our faces would become sad because of a lot of garbage that did not belong to that moment or even to us.

When we do not realize that we think and imagine all these things we complain about frequently and many times during the day because we do not pay attention to the situation, and that is not enough, we see fears, complaints and other news many times on social media and TV, we make ourselves feel bad in the transformation link of the chain, despair, pollute our insides while polluting our environment. We also pollute.

What did we say? We have the ability to directly influence our environment with our expectations, thoughts, actions and emotions. If we have such power, an “internal upcycling” effort may, over time, initiate a large external upcycling movement.

Moving to an environmentally conscious life is only possible by re-realizing the sensitive ties with ourselves through responsible observation and transforming our choices, rather than ringing the bells of fear.

Then, today, if we want, we can start the quantum upcycling butterfly effect ourselves by separating internal wastes with the “vice versa” rule.

This time, “What would it be like?” With the question, let’s make a list of the events in which you do not judge yourself and those around you, behave with sincere kindness, share to make you feel good and feel good, try to understand for tolerance, and observe without hurting the grass like your ancestors.

You’ll soon realize you’ve made lists of hundreds of positive things. This will gradually transform the problem-focused, closed, low-frequency thought habit into a high-frequency, receptive, creative solution-oriented one. Just like your moments of inspiration when you try to extract value from waste.

You can try to persistently write every day for at least three weeks. As your frustrations are greatly alleviated, everything in your life will seem to reflect this goodness, meaning that as you transform your inner reality, your outer reality will begin to transform moving forward.

What do you think, my dear friend, is it worth a try?

Zeynep Cavusoglu