Coaches Corner with Linda Aspey

1. Who or what inspired you to do what you do? 

Nature, grief about loss and potential loss, and hope for a brighter future, if we act now.

2. What do you find the most challenging about your work?

To engage people with a subject they would rather not think about. It’s both a challenge to do yet an opportunity to connect with people differently.  Climate science is filled with uncertainties, and the impacts are rarely felt the same across the world. The subject can feel distant to our own lives, and it doesn’t to some seem immediate. The remedies can call into question the lives that we lead and the image we have of ourselves, and addressing climate change and environmental degradation means we must address underlying inequalities, malfunctioning economic systems and ineffective political systems. So the whole subject can feel overwhelming and too big for us to make a difference. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way.

3. What’s the biggest lesson you have learnt in recent years?

That feeling fearful, anxious or angry about the climate and environment are just expressions of love.

4. If you could wave a magic wand and have one wish for you or your coaching practice, what would it be and why?

That every client would contact me and say that one of the main things they wanted to work on was their relationship with climate change and the environment.

5. Tell us a fact that not many people know about you …

My first career was in nursing – animals, adults and children – in that order!