Field Note: Sustainability Mindset Indicator Reflections

Understanding the Sustainability Mindset

The Sustainability Mindset Indicator (SMI) assesses how we think, feel, and act in relation to our planetary moment. Rather than measuring knowledge about environmental issues, it explores the deeper patterns of consciousness that shape how we engage with complexity, uncertainty, and our interconnected challenges.

At its core, a sustainability mindset represents "a way of thinking and being, to optimally adapt to the moment in which we are living", one that recognises our role in actively shaping futures rather than simply adapting to predicted changes. It's grounded in the understanding that current global challenges require not just new policies or technologies, but fundamentally different ways of relating to ourselves, each other, and the natural world.

Based on the work of Isabel Rimanoczy, the assessment explores this through four interconnected domains:

Ecological Worldview examines how we understand planetary challenges and our relationship to them, both intellectually and emotionally. It asks whether we see environmental and social issues as separate problems requiring technical solutions, or as interconnected symptoms of deeper systemic patterns that implicate our own daily choices.

Systems Perspective explores how we think about complexity, time, and relationships. Can we hold both short-term urgency and long-term consequences? Do we see diversity and paradox as problems to solve or as sources of creative possibility? How do we balance planning with responsiveness to natural cycles?

Emotional Intelligence focuses on our relationship to pace, reflection, and identity. In a culture that rewards speed and productivity, can we create space for contemplation and deeper knowing? How aware are we of the values and assumptions that drive our choices?

Spiritual Intelligence addresses our sense of connection to nature, to purpose, and something larger than individual success. It asks whether we experience ourselves as separate from or embedded within the web of life, and whether we've found ways to contribute meaningfully to collective flourishing.

What makes this assessment particularly relevant for those of us working in education is its recognition that sustainability requires more than adding new content to existing curricula. It demands what the researchers call "anticipatory agency", the capacity to recognise our role in actively constructing preferred futures rather than passively adapting to predicted changes.

Personal Reflections

Looking at my sustainability mindset profile, I'm struck by how it reveals both gifts and growing edges that feel deeply familiar. The assessment confirms what I've long suspected about my relationship with sustainability: I understand the interconnected challenges we face, I feel them acutely, but I haven't always translated that knowing and feeling into consistent action.

What the Mirror Shows

The strongest parts of my profile—creative innovation, purpose, and flow in cycles—speak to capacities I recognise as central to my work. There's something affirming about seeing my ability to balance rational analysis with creative imagination validated as essential for sustainability leadership. The assessment captures how I've learned to work with uncertainty as a companion rather than an enemy, finding excitement in the unknown rather than paralysis.

The gap between cognitive understanding and behavioural change feels like the most honest insight here. I know about ecoliteracy and my personal contribution to planetary challenges. I feel the weight of these realities. But somehow, that knowing and feeling doesn't always bridge into the daily choices that would align with those values. The assessment suggests this creates "emotional stress" and "feelings of being overwhelmed", which rings true.

The Paradox of Empathy

What strikes me most is how the assessment identifies empathy as both strength and limitation. My capacity to "put myself in another person's shoes" appears throughout the results, but so does a tendency to feel paralysed by the very complexity I can perceive. It's as if my ability to see multiple perspectives—so crucial for the work I do—sometimes prevents me from acting decisively.

The section on "both-and thinking" particularly resonates. I do seek creative solutions that are "inclusive of all stakeholders," but I recognise how this can become a form of analysis paralysis. The assessment suggests I might sometimes use intellectual complexity as a way to avoid the vulnerability of taking concrete action.

Gifts for the Work

Reading about my strength in "anticipatory pluralism" and capacity to "hold multiple futures simultaneously" feels like recognition of something I've been developing without naming it. This connects directly to my work with futures literacy—the ability to imagine otherwise isn't just academic for me, it's a daily practice of holding hope alongside analysis.

The assessment notes my comfort with "natural cycles" and understanding that "things grow, but not forever because there is also decline and death." This speaks to something I've been learning through my engagement with care as resistance, that sustainable change requires accepting endings as much as beginnings.

The Action Question

The most challenging insight is around the gap between understanding and behaviour. The assessment asks: "What are things you are good at that you aren't incorporating into your sustainability contributions?" This feels like the question I need to sit with.

I'm good at creating learning experiences that help people imagine alternatives. I'm good at holding complexity without rushing to false solutions. I'm good at working in the cracks of institutional constraint. But am I using these gifts as fully as I could for planetary flourishing?

Moving Forward

What emerges is a picture of someone who has developed many of the cognitive and emotional capacities needed for sustainability leadership, but who might be underestimating her own power to create change. The assessment suggests that my tendency to feel overwhelmed by the scale of challenges might actually be protecting me from recognising the influence I already have.

The invitation seems clear: to trust that the understanding and empathy I've developed can translate into action without requiring perfect solutions. To remember that "small actions of kindness" and everyday choices are also "changing the world, one interaction at a time."

Perhaps the work is not to resolve the tension between knowing and acting, but to let that creative discomfort drive continued experimentation with how I show up in the world.

This feels like a beginning rather than a conclusion. The assessment has given me language for patterns I've sensed but not fully articulated. Now the question becomes: how do I honour both the gifts and the growing edges it reveals?

This framework offers a useful mirror for examining not just our individual relationship to sustainability, but the deeper patterns of consciousness that shape how we show up as educators in a time of planetary crisis.