How to Get Inspired and Follow Your Dreams to Act for the Blue
Find Your Inspiration: Look for stories or examples of individuals and organizations making a positive impact on the ocean. For instance, the podcast host shares an inspiring interview with a co-founder of a successful organization that has made a significant global impact. This can motivate you to think about what you can do.
Overcome Fear and Self-Doubt: Acknowledge that fear of rejection or failure is common. The host emphasizes that many people hesitate to pursue their dreams due to these fears. It's important to push through these barriers and take action, whether it's applying for a job, starting a business, or getting involved in conservation efforts.
Take Action: Start small by identifying ways you can contribute to ocean conservation in your daily life. This could include reducing single-use plastics, voting for environmentally conscious leaders, or volunteering for local conservation projects.
Build Confidence Through Practice: Just like athletes practice to improve their skills, you can build your confidence by continuously learning and engaging in activities related to ocean conservation. The host shares an analogy about coaching a hockey team, highlighting the importance of confidence and taking risks.
Connect with Like-Minded Individuals: Engage with communities or groups that share your passion for the ocean. This can provide support, encouragement, and additional motivation to act for the blue.
Document Your Journey: Share your experiences and efforts on social media or through other platforms. The podcast mentions a young marine biologist who documented her journey of picking up plastic pollution while traveling across Europe, inspiring others to take action.
Stay Committed: Understand that making a difference takes time and effort. The host reflects on his own journey of balancing a job while pursuing his passion for ocean conservation, emphasizing the importance of dedication and perseverance.
Inspire Others: Your actions can motivate others to join the cause. By sharing your journey and the impact you’re making, you can encourage more people to act for the blue.
By following these steps, you can find inspiration and take meaningful actions to protect the ocean and pursue your dreams in ocean conservation.
Follow a career in conservation:
https://www.conservation-careers.com/online-training/ Use the code SUFB to get 33% off courses and the careers program. Do you want to join my Ocean Community? Sign Up for Updates on the process:
www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp Sign up for our Newsletter:
http://www.speakupforblue.com/newsletter Facebook Group:
https://bit.ly/3NmYvsI Connect with Speak Up For Blue: Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
Do you ever just hear about something or see something online or maybe something in your new day life where you're just like, "Oh man, I am so inspired to do something for the ocean." But maybe I just don't know exactly what I want to do. This is the episode that you want to listen to because that happened to me just recently. I felt so inspired after I did an interview. It's going to be hopefully get published next week. We're just in review right now. With the company, an organization that is doing some great stuff all around the world. But it started off with just an idea. People just acted on that idea. There are times where I'm just like, "Hey, I'm doing all this communication. It's really great to see how can I scale up or how can I do something else that will make people be like, "Oh man, this is what I need to do." That's what we're going to be talking about on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. How to act for the blue? Let's start the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about taking action acting for the blue. It's really funny just to start off. When I first started this podcast, it used to be called Speak Up for Blue. Then I turned it to Speak Up for Ocean Blue for some SEO stuff. It was Speak Up for Blue because I wanted to have this Speak Up for Blue, then I wanted to have act for the blue, and just bring it all about. To be like, "Hey, we can talk about the blue, but we can also act for the blue and do certain things." I just never got around to doing that because I have to pay the bills, and I had to get a job, and I was working other jobs while I was doing this, and I just continued to do that. Maybe, this will happen sometime soon. The goal for me was always to be around the ocean, was to do work, was to do research, was to do conservation, and more and more that I talk about conservation and science, the more and more I want to do it. Especially when I interview somebody who's doing it as well. I have an interview coming up. I don't want to give it away. It's a pretty big interview for me. Somebody who's never been on the podcast before in the 10 years that we've been around, but it's something big. It's a company and organization that went pretty much worldwide and viral almost instantly about just under 10 years now. I got the co-founder and CEO on the podcast to talk about it. We're just in review, so it's going to come out soon. When I talk to this gentleman, when I talk to about this organization, I'm always just like, "Man, that is awesome. I wish I could get something like that done. I wish I could find the way to do that." I think about his origin story and the company's origin story, and I'm just like, "Oh, man. They just went ahead and they started something." It hit big. Not everybody's going to hit big, but it hit big in terms of not just the fact that they're popular, but it's the fact and then they're known worldwide, but it's the fact that they do some really cool stuff, and they've been able to do some really cool stuff, and the numbers that they've been able to get, not in terms of revenue come in, but impact that they've been able to have is absolutely amazing. The way they treat their employees is absolutely amazing. When you see a company like this in an organization like this, I always say company and organization because they're a little bit of both. I need to do that. That's something I need to do before what I want to do. That's really what it comes down to. A lot of times, we don't really think that it can be done. I think that's the problem a lot of times. This happens with business a lot of times when you're starting your own thing, and I get this fear all the time. It's like, "I want to go full-scale, but I've got this fear that's keeping me from going full-scale." That could be also not just starting your own business or starting your own nonprofit organization. It could be just applying for that job. You might be worried that you might get rejected because you've been rejected before. You might be worried about what other people say. That's fine. If you really want to get stuff done, it's not going to be easy, and you've got to push through it, but you can get it done. If you coast through life and you constantly second-guess yourself, you'll never know what you were able to accomplish. That's something that I have to tell myself all the time. In fact, as I'm saying this, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this happens in everything." Not just ocean conservation, but it happens in everything. This episode is a bit of a motivation for you. If you want to act for the blue in any capacity, whether it be starting your own business, starting your own organization, or working for an organization, or working for a business that does pretty cool things, sustainable things, or eco-friendly things, this is your time to really think. Push through those barriers, push through that fear, push through that potential rejection, and just go for it. Put everything together. It's really interesting. I'm talking about this and I say this to my kids. I've got a hockey team that I coach. We just started this season. It's a U18 hockey girl. Both of my kids, both of my girl daughters, are on the same team. It's wonderful. I've been waiting for this for about seven years because they're two years apart. Every time my oldest daughter was in U18 as a major, the second year U18, which only had two years, my youngest daughter was in the second year U13. They're always one off, but then in U18, it's three years. They're able to be on my youngest daughters in her first year of U18, my oldest daughters in her last year of U18, and they get to be on the same team. I'm super excited about that. I'm going on a little bit of a tangent from my tangent. This analogy is really interesting because we just started playing hockey again. We've had two games. We only play games. We don't have practices. We might have practices later, but we don't have practices. During the game, I have to put out some coaching points. I'm the head coach. We have a great assistant coach. We basically look at every game we were saying, "Let's just build." This is housing. This is not rep, but let's just build on the last game and let's just see what we can do. A lot of the times, what I see, and this is not just girls. This is boys and any sports. This is like any sport that you see, is you see a lack of confidence out there. You'll see someone go for the puck, but not fully go for the puck. Be a little hesitant and not come out with the puck. Then just be like, "Oh, well." They're worried that one, they won't get the puck, and two, they'll either fall or they'll get hit or there's a number of different reasons, but they don't want to look bad. They don't want to look bad in front of everybody. The difference sometimes is when you have to put yourself out there and you have to be vulnerable and you have to go for something, oftentimes we start to hesitate a little bit and we don't get what we want because the timing's not there or the other person didn't hesitate or something else didn't hesitate or just kept moving on. If you don't apply for a job right away, it's going to go. I've done that a couple of times. I've thought about how do I approach this job? How do I approach this job? Next thing you know, I didn't realize it, but the deadline date was a past due and I couldn't get that job. It was closed. The people who applied for it on time are the people who had a chance for the job. Going back to hockey, if you don't go for that puck, you're not going to get it. If you go, if you take the puck even and you go through the entire team and you get all the way to the other end of the rink and you shoot the puck but you barely shoot it. You don't get down, bend your knees, pull back and move your weight forward and shift your weight forward and then shoot as hard as you can. It's probably not going to go in. In fact, it probably won't go very far or won't go very hard. But when you start to pull back all the way and you start to fire it like you mean it because you're like, "Hey, I went all this way. I went from one end to the other, went through the entire team. I'm not going to waste this opportunity because I'm probably going to get what? Four or five shots a game?" I'm going to make sure that these four or five shots I'm going to do the best I can. I'm going to put everything into it. A lot of the times, we don't do that. A lot of the times, we hesitate. A lot of the times, we're like, "Well, what if I don't get it? What if I'm not good enough? What if I look bad? What if I fall?" We let those fears creep into our brain and it stops us dead. We either lose the opportunity or we just let it go by. That is like when I see kids on the ice do that, I get frustrated and I tell them when they come back, I'm like, "The next time you go all the way through the team, shoot hard. Spend all that time to shoot hard. Then the next time you go for the puck and that somebody else is coming, get down, put your weight in and lean into it and go get that puck. Or the next time you have the puck and you carry and someone comes close to you, don't just let it go because you think they're going to take it away. Bend your knees, get down and go straight or deep around them or do something with the puck. If you lose it, you lose it, but you're going to lose it anyway because you're going to flip it down the ice and it's not going to go anywhere. It's all about confidence. It's all about getting over your fears and not letting your fears creep into your mind and then let them do everything. You lose those opportunities. Stop that thought process. I have to say it to myself, we all have to say it because it's scary. When you start to take chances, you start to take risks, you start to be vulnerable depending on what you're doing, there's a risk involved. Sometimes they're higher than others, but you've got to go for that. You've got to go for that opportunity. When you start to see other people do great stuff with the ocean, going to meetings, spending money and doing something, start to think about how can you set yourself up to succeed like they look like they're succeeding? Because I bet you they're going through the same fears that you're going through except they're pushing through it. That's the difference. They're pushing through their fears. I think that's what we need to do as a community of ocean goers. Think about this. Think about how many politicians are in our office right now that don't deserve to be there. Think about that. There's a lot of people, a lot of you that are listening to this audience, who would be great politicians, who would not only act for the ocean and act for the environment, but you'd probably be pretty good at acting for your people and representing your people. You don't go for it either because I don't want to deal with politics. It looks scary. It looks awful. Some of you would probably be really good politicians, but we let those fears of what the whole politics can do because we don't want to do it. But with that said, with that happening, you're not in office. So you can't go out and make laws that will protect the ocean, it will protect the environment, it will protect the economy. We let other people do it. Oftentimes, not as intelligent, not as thoughtful, greedy and often corrupt. And when we let that happen, we let other people make decisions for us. And we get into the positions that we're at now. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm not blaming you if you've had thoughts about going into politics, or you've had thoughts about acting for the blue in any kind of way, then you've thought, this is not a, Hey, like, what are you doing? You're an idiot. No, this is like talking to myself too. I'm looking right into the camera right now. And I'm talking, by the way, you can check me out on YouTube and Spotify with the video podcast. But it's, it's, it's the same talk, right? It's the same talk that we let fears get in our way. And we don't take risks, even though we have to take risks. Going back to the hockey analogy, you have to go that extra mile to win. You have to be better than the other team. And the other team has to be better than you. And you're both trying your best. But you have, you're sometimes your best is not good enough. And you have to do better. You have to push that extra little bit. You have to hold on to that puck a little bit longer and lean into it a little bit longer in case someone's trying to push you over trying to get the puck away and make that extra move. Sometimes you need to practice that little extra bit. And just so you can, you can get that move down and you can play it, you can use that move in a game. Right? Same thing with all of you who had to do math to get into university to be a marine biologist or to be a scientist or to be anywhere that you had to deal with math. Math was hard. Math is hard. But you practice at it. I'm going to do that with my girls right now. They practice at it. And as they practice on, they build their confidence as so when the test or quiz come up or even exam, they know they've seen it all. So when the teacher throws a question that might be a little bit of a curveball, they've seen it. They've seen it not only once, they've seen it multiple times. You have to practice. And it sucks. And you're going to, you're going to struggle and you're not going to get everything you want right off the bat, but you have to continue to do this. So putting in that extra work, putting in that practice and giving it that extra little effort at the end when it counts, can set you on the path to act for the blue. And that's what we oftentimes we lose. We see other people doing great things, wonderful things. They're like, Oh man, I wish I was them. You could be them. You could be doing more than or something different that can compliment what they're doing. You just haven't done it yet because that fear is just creeping into your mind. And that negative self talk is just happening all the time. I'm telling you that you can do it. If you put your mind to it, you can actually do what you want. Now you may not have a control over external factors, like having money to start a business or having the time to put it together, but you could find you could figure out a way. People have figured out ways before. That's why you see a lot of businesses that start off. I mean, Amazon, although, you know, that's huge as it is and monopoly as it is, it started off in a little office. You know, Apple started off in a little office making a computer, one little computer. And it went through its trials and tribulations. You've watched any of the documentaries on Apple or Macintosh is used to be called, but it survived, right? It fought. It did what it had to do. And it went through its up and downs. And now it's one of the biggest companies tech companies in the world. Now, there's a lot of questionable practices by some of these companies, but they they survived. There are some companies out there who are doing great impact, just like this one I interviewed. And they are doing fantastic work and they work off of impact. They pay their people livable wages and they work off of impact. And that's how they measure the success of their business. Can we sell a product that allow us to do this great thing that we want to do and take care of all of our people? Yes. Okay. Great. Now they've had some trouble. They've had some trials and tribulations here in the interview, but they've been able to overcome it and they're going to continue to get trials and tribulations and they will be able to overcome it. It's just a matter of how will they fight through it to get through and how much will they fall at the time and how fast we'll take to get back up. That's the effort level. That's the decision-making level. That's the practice of decision-making, but we can't get into that practice without doing it. Man, I need to listen to myself. I really do. But I think that's what it really comes down to. It comes down to your motivation. Can you motivate yourself to act? Can you motivate yourself to act for the blue? And we see this every single time. When we see negative things about the ocean, when we see the consequences of climate change, the consequences of plastic pollution, the consequences of overfishing, and we're always hearing that doom and gloom around the ocean, we're just like, man, that sucks. The ocean is screwed. We're done. And then we just give up. But there are some of us who are just like, no, no, no, we're not going to give up. We see this happening. We understand that the ocean's in trouble, but we're going to do our best to work at it. It might just be in this one little corner of the world. There's one little area that we need to do, whether it be restoration, whether it be protection, whether it be policy, whether it be in the field, whether it be in a lab, whether it be through a business. We all pick our own little ways. But once we combine them all and all those efforts, we end up having a pretty big impact. And not only that, our impact of what we're doing at that moment can inspire others to pick up the slack and just be like, yeah, you know what? This person is doing some great things. I'm going to do some great things too. It's really what it comes down to. Protecting the ocean, acting for the blue comes down to how much effort we want to put in to act for the blue. And it could be menial. It doesn't mean you have to change your entire culture or your entire career. It means you start to do a little bit more work. You start to lessen your single use plastics. You start to vote for people who are talking about the environment. By the way, climate change wasn't really mentioned in any of the debates. I think it was mentioned once or twice in each debate, not enough considering the ramifications. But we need to, we need to be there. Like we need to do this type of work. We need to motivate ourselves to do this. If we don't, who's going to do it? Because right now, there are not many. There are a lot of people, but not as many as we need. We need more people to act for the blue. And you need to get that self-talk, including myself and get off our butts and start doing something. Whether it be create things that will inspire others or do some impact that will inspire others, it doesn't matter. Act for the blue. Whatever that might be. I just saw a young woman on TikTok. She's a marine biologist. And she decided that one day, you know, she looked at the plastic pollution problem. She started to say, you know what? Like I may not live around the coaster. I may not have a full-time job in marine biology at this point. But there's something that I need to do. And she went on this mission to start picking up plastic pollution throughout Europe as she backpacked across Europe. And then she filmed it. And she documented it. And so now on social media, you see her go to Sweden, go to France, go to Italy, go to Greece, you know, go to the Czech Republic. And she's all over the place. And she's picking up plastic pollution. And she's showing the plastic pollution. She's educating people about the apostles through her TikTok. And she's got like 100 over 100,000 followers, I think. It's ridiculous. Like it's crazy. It's awesome. Those are the people that inspire me to be like, she just picked up and decided to backpack across Europe, which many people do. But then while she's doing that, she's like, no, I'm actually going to show that there's plastic pollution in each and every country in Europe or the countries that she's traveled to. And then I'm going to document that. And hopefully people will start to realize how much stuff not only comes up from the shore or comes up from the ocean onto the shore, but it's like just distributed on land as well. Some places are cleaner than others, but not all. And when they dispose of things and how much waste goes on, you just don't realize it within each country. And even within each region or city within a country. So when you start to go through social media, you start to come across people, like this young marine biologist woman, or this massive company that goes viral every once in a while, and it's huge around the world, then you start to like, hey, I can do this. I can act for the blue as well. You just have to figure out how to get paid while you do it, right? You just got to be able to survive life while you do it. And there's ways, there's always ways. I started this 10 years ago, right, almost almost 10 years ago, I launched, actually 10 years ago, I launched, I know, almost 10 years ago, I launched. And, and I've been doing this while having a job ever since. It's a lot of work. There's some sacrifice that to make, but I love doing this and it keeps me connected to the ocean and allows me to get a job where I could support my family and pay for the bills. And that's important. That's hugely important. So if you want to act for the blue, you get to act with the inspiration, you got to go through those fears, fight through the fears, and you can act for the blue as well. I'd love to hear your idea for acting for the blue. Let me know. You can put a comment on Spotify, on this video, or audio, whatever you'd like to do, or you can go to our YouTube channel, it's in the link below, or you and leave a comment, or you can just hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. That's at how to protect the ocean. But I hope you feel inspired by this episode or other episodes in the upcoming episode, and I can't wait to see what you're up to. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.
