Everyone needs some motivation to focus on greening their life. I've found that it isn't one thing that motivates me to make changes in my life but that I need several:
- Benefits to our planet, the environment, society and the ability to leave something better for future generations - Unless you are Mother Theresa, that isn't always personal enough to push you to make the effort day in and day out. I've found I need more personal motivations; it's the "what's in it for me" piece of the puzzle.
- Saving money - We use less by trying to live a green lifestyle. We focus on consuming less so we end up buying less which saves us money. We do buy organic foods which can be more expensive but we eat out less because we don't want to let the food go to waste.
- Living a healthier lifestyle - We are eating less processed foods, foods with no pesticides and I'm cleaning with natural products that don't bring strong chemicals into the home.
- Competitive spirit - By nature, I'm a competitive person so I get excited by seeing how little garbage and how much recycling we had for the week. A new motivation this summer was seeing how many vegetables we could harvest from the garden. We had a very cool, cloudy summer this year so our bounty of 3 peppers, two zuchini, one cucumber and a handful of red tomatoes and countless green tomatoes isn't all that impressive but it is a start.
- Pride - I know I'm tired of hearing how terrible the world is so it is nice to know that each day I did something that improved the world I'm living in. Even if it is only within the walls of my house and only my family knows about it, it gives me a sense of pride.
- Fun - there are a lot of people out there trying to figure out how to make being green more fun. People will change their habits more easily if they get a little fun out of it. Watch this video for a great example of that theory put in practice.
What motivation do you have? I'd like to hear them.
