In this episode, we explore an engaging teaching exercise designed to help children understand the concepts of challenge and perseverance. A teacher sets out pieces of paper on the floor, guiding a young boy to give him a high five by stepping only on those papers. As the exercise progresses, the teacher gradually removes pieces of paper, increasing the distance the boy must jump to reach his goal. Each attempt illustrates the importance of overcoming obstacles and adapting to more challenging situations. The moral of the story emphasizes that while goals may become harder to reach, persistence and creativity can lead to success. Tune in to discover how playful learning can teach valuable life lessons!
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Achieving Large Goals: The Importance of Breaking Them Down
In the pursuit of significant objectives, such as addressing climate change, it is essential to recognize that these goals can often feel overwhelming. A recent podcast episode illustrates this concept through a relatable analogy involving a teacher and a group of elementary school children. The teacher lays out pieces of paper on the floor, and the students must step only on these papers to reach the teacher for a high five. This exercise serves as a metaphor for how we can approach large goals by breaking them down into smaller, manageable steps.
The Analogy of the Pieces of Paper
The pieces of paper represent smaller goals or milestones that lead to the ultimate objective—giving the teacher a high five. Initially, the papers are placed close together, making it easy for the child to step from one to the next. As the exercise progresses, the teacher removes some pieces of paper, increasing the distance between the remaining ones. This change illustrates how, as we strive for larger goals, we may encounter obstacles that make the journey more challenging.
When faced with a larger gap to jump, it becomes evident that without the smaller steps (the pieces of paper), reaching the final goal becomes significantly more difficult. This analogy can be applied to various life goals, such as:
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Achieving a big house: Instead of focusing solely on the end goal of homeownership, one can break it down into smaller steps like saving for a down payment, improving credit scores, and researching neighborhoods.
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Pursuing a professional sports career: Aspiring athletes can set smaller goals such as improving specific skills, participating in local leagues, and seeking coaching.
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Building a music career: Musicians can focus on smaller milestones like writing songs, performing at local venues, and networking within the industry.
The Importance of Small Goals in Climate Change
The podcast emphasizes that the same principle applies to addressing climate change. The challenge of combating climate change can feel insurmountable, leading to feelings of confusion and helplessness. However, by breaking down the larger goal of reducing climate change into smaller, actionable steps, individuals can contribute meaningfully to the cause.
Steps to Take
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Look Inward: Start by assessing personal habits and making changes to reduce individual carbon footprints, such as minimizing plastic use and opting for reusable products.
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Get Involved Locally: Engage with local organizations focused on environmental conservation. This could involve volunteering for clean-up events or supporting community initiatives aimed at sustainability.
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Educate Yourself and Others: Stay informed about climate issues and share knowledge with friends and family. Understanding the science behind climate change can empower individuals to take action.
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Advocate for Change: Support policies and politicians that prioritize environmental protection. Voting for representatives who align with conservation values is crucial for systemic change.
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Participate in Community Projects: Join or initiate local projects that aim to address climate issues, such as tree planting, habitat restoration, or educational programs about sustainability.
Conclusion
The journey to achieving large goals, particularly in the context of climate change, requires patience and persistence. Just as the child in the podcast must step on each piece of paper to reach the teacher, individuals must take small, deliberate steps to make a difference. By recognizing that progress is made through incremental achievements, we can collectively work towards a healthier planet. Each small action contributes to the larger goal, and together, we can create meaningful change in the fight against climate change.
really cool video that I saw. I was a teacher teaching kids. It looked like boys at a school. And they looked like elementary school level. The teacher set out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And so those were the only things that this child could step on. He said, "Your goal of this exercise, give me a high five by only stepping on the pieces of paper." Pieces of paper were really short and close to each other. And they were numerous ones. It was like five or six. The boy stepped on each piece of paper as he got closer to the teacher. And when he got to the last one, he gave the high five. Now he kind of put it to all the other kids. He's like, "How do you think friend will do if I take out a piece of paper?" So he takes out a piece of paper, which lengthens the space between each piece of paper. And so the child does it again. He has some that are easier. And then he has to make a large leap at the end. And he makes it high five. And then he does it again. And he takes out another piece. But this time he takes out two pieces of paper. So now there's only like three pieces of paper. It's one at the beginning, one in the middle, one at the end. So the kid jumps. He barely makes it to the middle, barely makes it to the end, but he still makes it. Boom. High five. Now he takes away the middle. And he's like, "Look at how long you have to go before you can reach the goal of giving me the high five." And there's a big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult to jump from the beginning to the end without running up. So it's really difficult to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. The moral of that story was if you want to get to the goal of giving your teacher a high five. Whatever that goal might be, it might be a big house. It might be playing in the NBA or playing a professional sport. It might be a music career. It might be a family. All those goals are great goals. But they're the end goal. That's the prize. It's really hard to get to the prize when you don't have other goals in the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. Each piece of paper is signified the different goals. So as you started to hit the smaller goals, you started to build towards the larger goal at the end. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's really difficult to go from the beginning to the end, to the solution, to the goal, to the prize without hitting those baby steps. And I think that's the same thing we have to think about with climate change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great lessons for adults to be reminded of that you need to build up to get to that final goal. You need to take those steps in order to do something. Welcome back to another episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. On today's podcast, we're going to be talking about how loss some of us feel when we look at ocean conservation, especially when it comes to climate change. As I'm recording this, New York City Climate Change Week is happening. Also, there's a hurricane that's barreling down on Florida category for record storm surges, apparently lots of wind. There's going to be a lot of flash flooding. I hope people in the Florida, Georgia and Carolinas are going to be okay. If you're told to evacuate, please evacuate as quickly as possible and be safe. But with that said, a lot of us feel lost. And when we see storms like this happen, we see climate week happen and we're saying like, what are we doing to actually reduce climate change? We hear from governments, we hear from people, we talk about some people are still denying. You know, when you talk about how do we pay for it, how do we get everything done, it's very, very confusing. And who do you believe? What kind of opinions do you believe and where do you go for information? So we're going to be talking about all of this stuff and how to get over it and how to get more informed on this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. 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 could speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And for the past nine and a half years, I've been producing this podcast. At first, it was speak up for blue, then it was speak up for the ocean blue. Now it's how to protect the ocean so that you can get more information on the ocean. So you don't feel this overwhelm that sometimes we feel when we see massive storms like the hurricane hell and that we're seeing right now when we see these massive, you know, solutions or supposed solutions like the Paris Accord or we see these conferences like our ocean and New York City climate week. And we wonder what's actually being done. Are we doing enough to ensure that we are reducing climate change to ensure that we are addressing climate change and we are adapting to climate change, especially those who are most vulnerable. And that is the difficult part. That's where a lot of people get lost. They they, you know, watch stuff where they listen to things and it's really depressing. You get a lot of doom and gloom type of material out there. And then you're just sitting here and just like, I don't know, I give up. I have no idea. There's nothing I can do from an individual perspective that could really help. And I don't agree with that. I feel as though if everybody just stopped and said, Hey, you know what, like, we just got to forget it, then it's not worthwhile. You know, I think that's that's a lot of problems. And I think the first thing we have to address when we feel lost is misinformation. It is there's a plethora of misinformation online and wherever you can look for information, whether it's on TV, depending on the station, whether it's online, that whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, these podcasts, like all these other podcast shows that have this questioning of conservation and climate change and whether it's really worth to actually do anything. And a lot of the misinformation in the past has happened and started with fossil fuel companies. They would hire these PR firms. They would have a strategy and they would spin this narrative that would be easy to understand and get in the minds of people, whether it be through newspaper back then or radio or TV or celebrities and say, Hey, you know what, and politicians, especially climate change doesn't really exist. You know, we're all just kind of freaking out. All these scientists are freaking out. Some politicians are freaking out. But really, what it is, it's just the natural changes in the climate has happened for years. We've only really been studying for 100 years. So we only know what's for the last 100 years, which is false because the studies that have been done have dated back millions and millions of millions of years. And we're able to see how the climate and how the planet has changed over time. That's the beauty of science. And to be honest, you know, a lot of people don't have the time to look up all the science. A lot of people don't have the ability to even understand some of the science, because of it's really complicated. There's sometimes I like, I look at climate models and I'm just like, I have no idea what this is about. I'll look at the primary literature. I'm like, I have no idea what this is about. And I've studied science for a long time. Some of it's really complicated, but others, it's a little easier to understand. And to be honest, one of the reasons why I started this podcast was to help take that complex information, the ones that I understand, and be able to explain it to you so that you're more informed about the ocean so that you can make better decisions surrounding the oceans and speak it up to other people. That's really the point. And so the goal what you should be looking for is you should be looking for sources of information that you know you can trust. And by trusting is that people are providing evidence, whether it's be through speaking to experts like scientists, or whether it be providing information that provides evidence, you know, like that's what you're looking for, journal articles, and so forth that have been peer reviewed and have been gone through the most strict criticism process that you've ever seen. It's ridiculous how critical scientists can be of each other because we're taught to be critical. That's what we're taught to do, because you have to be. You have to question, you know, when you see a scientific study in front of you, you got to question the scientific study to make sure that it passes the vigor of what the scientific process is as we know and love and learn when we're in school. And so that is a pretty rigorous process where you, you know, when the final product comes out, you know, that's the product, like the study has gone through the criticisms, gone through people looking it over, not just the editors of the of the magazine that it's in the journal article, but also other colleagues who have looked it over. And if they don't agree, they write a response in the next issue. And then there's a little bit of a beef going on in terms of the science, not personal, but into the science, sometimes it spills into personal. But there is information that continues to go back and forth to make sure that we're bettering the studies, we're bettering the science and we're, we're bettering our understanding of the science. And that's what how the scientific process works in today's world. The problem is, is when it gets outside the scientific community, and it gets into sort of the places where you and I consume information. And that could be on social media, that could be on TV, that could be on radio, there are a lot of places that it could be. And it just depends on who is providing that information, the source of that information really is important here, right? It's important to start to look at, you know, somebody all of a sudden comes up with a new scientific process to explain something, you need to go through that scientific process in your mind, like, where's the evidence? Where are they gone? Has it been accepted into the wider, wider scientific study? Now, there are times where scientists get it wrong, doesn't happen all the time. So when you look at a study, or you hear stuff and you hear scientists speak on something, it's usually because it's been out in the literature for quite some time, or it's a new study that or new discovery that's happened, and that we need to get it out into the, into the open. But talking to scientists, listening to scientists on podcasts like this, and other podcasts out there that have to do with marine biology or science or anything like that, is really important. It's really important to get information straight from sources like these, not just podcasts and videos and stuff, but also articles and, and nonprofit organizations and so forth that are reputable, that have the reputation to say, hey, you know what, they provide really great information. They provide really great programs, governments and so forth. You need to, to trust in them that they are giving you the right information. And I know there are some of you who are, you know, have a little bit of the conspiracy theorists in you, but not everything is a conspiracy theorist. The theory, it is science, a lot of it science, a lot of it is science based, and some of the decisions are science based, not all the time. We had just covered an episode, last episode about the cod fishery and how politicians weren't getting it right and taking risks where we should be conservative in a scientific opinion, not just mine, but also the own government scientists who do the information, work up the information. So when I get back to my point and not getting too much on a tangent, when it comes to misinformation, making sure that you are looking at sources that are correct, sources that can be trusted, and you should be questioning each and every one of them. And if they provide evidence, then you could be like, okay, now I'm starting to get to, to know this thing. And now we're starting to get somewhere. So that's, that's important as well, right? So misinformation, tackling misinformation by going to the right sources is extremely important. Trying to tell the right sources, you look for evidence based, evidence is given when somebody's trying to put something together. If there's no evidence and it's just conjecture, that's exactly what it is. It's just conjecture. Somebody proposing their theory of what they think happens, but it's not always right. So the, the source matters, the magazine matters, the website matters, all of it matters to make sure that it's a reputable place that puts out good scientific information and people as well, like myself. I've been called out before on covering some stories, and I've come back and like, you know what, you're right, like I never thought of it that way. Here's some evidence to back it up. And this is why I was wrong when I first said something. And I think that's really important to understand and take the responsibility for putting out misinformation by accident or not understanding an issue properly and being transparent with your audience. You know, if you have that, then you're looking at a really good source. And I think that's, that's, that's really important. The other thing is that you're taking in so much doom and gloom, that you just feel apathetic towards a topic, say climate change. We hear the doom and gloom. We hear about the hurricanes. We hear about the flooding. We hear about the droughts. We hear about the wildfires. What else do we hear? Increased storms. We hear about sea level rise. We hear about the freshening of water. Not only just climate change, but we hear about plastic pollution. That's, that's a huge issue. Overfishing is a huge issue. And of course, the, all the different consequences of climate change are big issues within the ocean. And there are a lot of them. And it's very dire out there. And it's something that we need to continue to get on and act. But we can't have people who's listening, who are listening to information on doom and gloom, always just feel so apathetic that they're just going to stop listening to the information. They're going to go somewhere. It's happy after, after listening to things that are really bad, it really affects your mind. And I'm going to give you a bit of an analogy of something recent that I've kind of come up on my social media feed. I'm a big hip hop fan. And the news coming out of Puff Daddy, P Diddy, Diddy, whatever his name is, the allegations that are, that are coming on, that have come out about him and the lifestyle that's he's led and the disgusting things that he may or may have allegedly done. It's taken up a lot of my time. I'll tell you what, it's taken up a lot of my time listening to interviews, listening to conjecture, listening to rumors. And you're just kind of like, wow, all this negative talk really makes me look at the world differently. Some of the stuff that's come out could change the way we view musicians that have been some of our favorite musicians in the past, as well as some of our favorite actors in the past. This goes pretty deep if everything is true. And it makes me think, this is really bad. This is horrible stuff that's coming out. You know, the way some of these people have been treated is absolutely awful. And it affects your mindset. That's all you think about. It's like another, that's a real life situation, but it's like sometimes when we watch a TV show like Criminal Minds or Law & Order, SVU, if you got into that a little bit and you start to watch it on a daily basis, now with the ability to binge, you start binging things and you're just like, the world is a little messed up. You know, even though these are stories, the world is a little messed up. And it's affecting the way I think about life in general. Well, that's the same thing that happens with doom and gloom stories constantly being told to you by different types of media and by different types of way you consume information. And so you're always hearing the doom and gloom of the ocean, the doom and gloom of climate change, the doom and gloom and plastic pollution. Well, there are optimistic and there are good new stories out there about the ocean. And it's up to us, like the communicators, to get that information to you and it's for up to you to consume that information. It's okay to consume good news. And there are a lot of creators out there, especially on TikTok, I've seen where they're sharing like they've got this post and it's like you swipe across to a couple of different images and they just summarize these stories, these good news stories about climate, these good news stories, or climate reduction or action, and these good news stories on ocean action. And you just kind of feel good about yourself. You're like, Oh, there are some good projects that are going on in the world. I may want to know a little bit more. So I'll dive deeper into it. But for the most part, it's pretty cool that there are some good stories that are happening. It's pretty cool that there's some optimism that's happening. And to be honest, a lot of the times I find those stories and I put them on this podcast. It's one of the reasons why I started this podcast was so that we can get information to you, the audience, you who are listening to this, who are looking for that information, not always doom and gloom. And you can see that there are fishing villages that put a climate bank together, their own climate savings, where they, you know, they contribute certain amount of money per month or however it works. And then so that when there's something that catastrophic that happens where they fish, marine protected areas destroyed. They have to wait to rebuild that. They can't fish until they rebuild that. But in the meantime, they can draw money from the savings that they've been contributing to taking a little bit of money from their portions. And they can contribute to until that area rebuilds and is okay and it's safe to either not the protected area, but around the protected area to fish again. Stories like that are happening. And there are organizations all around the world that are working with communities to make them more resilient against climate change, more resilient against these massive storms, more resilient against plastic pollution, sea level rise, all these things that are happening around the world that we don't know about because the mainstream media doesn't think it's important enough to actually put out. But that's the beauty of the internet is it democratizes the way we put out information. So if we want you to see projects that are happening around the world that are good news and that are building towards something bigger, we can do that. And that's what I try to do partly on this on this podcast is bring you the good news. Now I have to talk about the doom and gloom stuff, right? Because it's important that we know and we're aware of it. But I always like to finish it off with ways we find solutions with ways that people are working towards building a rapport, building a relationship with local communities, building a way that they can work together without being invasive, without being overbearing and without taking information and not sharing it with that local community, right? Seeing that ocean justice being served, making sure people have a voice, making sure that conservation is not just about science, but it's about people as well, right? Mostly about people and how people manage their slice of the ocean. And that's, you know, that's the hope that it gives me. When I put out a story like that, or I've just finished an interview where I talk to somebody about doing that, I feel great. I feel wonderful. And so what I do is I go out, I tell my, my wife, I tell my kids, I tell friends, I tell my mom, I'm like, hey, there's this cool project out. And I want to talk to you about it. And then I put it out on the podcast. And then people are like, wow, I didn't know this was happening. I'm so happy that it's happened. Now I'm in a happier mood. And I feel good about the ocean. When you feel good about something, you get all this optimism, not all the time, but when you get this optimism, you start to want to chip in, you start to want to feel good about helping out and where you can do maybe volunteer with an organization, maybe volunteer with like a marine life center or volunteer at a museum or volunteer in an educational facility to teach other people how they can protect the ocean or how they can protect the planet, how they can reduce climate change, either on an individual level or on a volunteer level, right? Get involved with local organizations where you organize or work with people who are organizing riverside cleanups and coastal cleanups and beach cleanups where you're taking away plastic pollution and any kind of pollution that is solid that you can take away to ensure that those areas are clean. Those areas can go through their natural processes and we can see a healthy nice ocean coastline or river coastline or lake coastline. Those are really important, not just for sort of the vanity of it all, but also for the healthy functioning of those ecosystems, of those habitats. That's extremely important. We don't get enough of that. We get a lot of bad news. We don't get a lot of good news where we can take action. What we feel like we want to take action. That's what we hope here on this podcast. What's I hope to inspire you to do is to take action, whether it be on an individual level or whether it be on a level where you vote or you work with organizations to help other people vote or you start to get out and work with a volunteer with politicians who are doing great things for the ocean and for the planet. That's what I hope that this podcast does is inspire you to go out there and change the way you think of the ocean and change the way how your lifestyle affects the ocean or influences the ocean. That's the goal. That's what I hope you get out of this podcast. The first thing, you've already done the first step. Anytime I talk to an expert, I have a guest on, I always ask them, what do you think people can do? The big thing people say is educate yourself. Find out what's happening with the ocean. Find out the cool things that are happening and find out some of the not so cool things are happening and inject yourself where you can to be able to provide value for the ocean, whether that be in a donation to support a charity or support a nonprofit organization, whether it be to volunteer your time to do so, whether it be in a board or director or actively going out and doing cleanups and making sure your area, your local area is really good. I think that's making sure that you participate and feel good about the ocean so that you can participate and be like, hey, you know what? I know we're in, we have a problem, but I want to make sure that, you know, I'm doing my part to get it cleaned up, to get it fixed, right? Yeah, you're only one person out of eight billion, but if more people feel this way, then that's great. That's what's really important. The other thing I want to cover, the last thing I want to cover is I saw this a post on LinkedIn and it was someone who had just attended a couple of sessions at New York City Climate Week and they were saying how they saw this project, a couple of projects that were being sort of exposed or being shared at one of the sessions during climate week, the New York City Climate Week, and they were saying that a lot of times when we get caught up in climate change, and this is one of the reasons why I did this episode today is when we look at climate change, there's a lot to handle. It's a big issue with multiple layers of consequence and it's complex. So we always think about climate change globally and when we think about globally, we're like, what can I do as one of eight billion to help out globally? But that's a hard thing to, it's a hard pill to swallow. But this post was like, it's good to really think about what when climate change first came out, it was like, think globally, it was the same. Think globally, act locally. That was the same. It was like, if we want to make an impact globally, we had to take baby steps. We can't reduce climate change on a global level unless we start reducing it locally. And that means everywhere. I've got, I've have the opportunity to speak to people every episode who are all around the world, many different countries over, I think 90 to 100 different countries have listened to this podcast over the last 10 years or nine and a half years, almost a 10. I have that opportunity to sort of influence you and help you think about the ocean by providing you that information. And all of a sudden, you can start acting locally. They'll take those baby steps towards going to our final goal, which is thinking globally. There's a really cool video that I saw. This is the last point I'm going to make. It has to do with this one. But there's a really cool video that I saw. It was a teacher teaching kids. It looked like boys at a school and they looked like elementary school level, maybe grade six, maybe grade seven, maybe even younger. And they, the teacher set out these different pieces of paper along the floor. And so those were the only things that this child, the child that was going up could step on. And what he did, he said, your, your goal of this exercise is, and then the teacher stood at the opposite end of the pieces of paper of where he was. So there was probably about four or five different pieces of paper. So the kids stood at the beginning and he and the teacher said at the end, your goal is to come over here, give me a high five by only stepping on the pieces of paper. So the pieces of paper were really short and close to each other. And there were numerous ones. There was like five or six. And so the child stepped on each, the boy stepped on each piece of piece of paper as he got closer to the teacher. And when he got to the last one, gave the high five. Great. No problem. So now you kind of put it to all the other kids like, how do you think the boy will do your friend will do if I take out a piece of paper? So he takes out a piece of paper, which lengthens the space between each piece of paper. And so the child does it again. He has some that are easier and then he has to make a large leap at the end and he makes it high five. No problem. Keep hitting the mic when I give myself five. Sorry about that. And then he does it again. And he takes out another piece. But this time he takes out two pieces of paper. So now there's only like three pieces of paper. There's one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end. So the kid jumps and he rarely makes it to the middle, barely makes it to the end, but he still makes it boom. High five didn't hit the mic. Nice. Now he takes away the middle and he's like, now do it. And he's like, look at how long you have to go before you can reach the goal of giving me the high five. And there's a big space. There's probably about five feet of space, which is really difficult to jump in space, like from the beginning to the end without running up, there was no room to take a run at it. And this is a younger child. So it's really difficult to jump five feet. I don't know if I could jump five feet. There's no way I could. So he's just said the moral of that story was the fact that if you want to get to the goal of giving your teacher a high five, whatever that goal might be, it might be a big house. It might be playing in the NBA or playing a professional sport. It might be a music career. It might be a family and you know, having a marrying your partner and having a family. All those goals are great goals, but they're the end goal, right? You could have multiple goals, but that's the end goal. That's the prize. And it's really hard to get to the prize when you don't have other goals in the middle. Those are the pieces of paper. So each piece of paper signified the different goals. So as you started to hit the smaller goals, you started to build towards the larger goal at the end. So as you started to hit that like, you know, basically climb that ladder to get to that final goal, that's how you do it. But if you don't have those small baby steps, it's really difficult to go from the beginning to the end to the solution to the goal to the prize without hitting those baby steps. And I think that's the same thing we have to think about with climate change. It's a great lesson for kids to learn, great lessons for adults to be reminded of, that you need to build up to get to that final goal. You need to take those steps in order to do something. So the first step you would take as, you know, someone who's new to ocean conservation and climate change reduction is to look at inwards and look at what you can do on an individual level. And it may not have an impact on a larger scale, may not reduce climate change, may not be your final goal, but that would be it. That would be what you need to look at when you are looking towards your final goal. You need to start with yourself, reduce plastic pollution, your own plastic pollution, right? Go to multiple use plastics or stay away from single use plastics, right? Start to look at reusable stuff. Like, you know, all these things can be done. There's so many ways we could talk about this in other episodes. Then you start to look at the next step and that's could be like, who can I volunteer with that will have a bigger impact? Who can I support, whether it be a monetary value or volunteer value, right? Your time. Whether it be on a board of directors or like I said, you know, on the ground doing some field work or doing some cleanups, then you build big and you're like, who do I vote for? Who represents protecting the ocean that are my values? I want them to have the same values. Those are the people I'm going to vote for. Or that's the person I'm going to vote for, depending on the election and what level, what scale, the elections at state, federal or local, right? Then you just keep building from there. Maybe it's dedicate part of your career to it. You know, there's, there's so many things you can do before you get to that level, before we get into everybody has their own journey and nobody's the same and doesn't have to be the same. There's no right or wrong way to go about doing it. But those steps, you've got to take those baby steps to get to the final goal. Understanding that is a huge deal. And I want you to really understand. If you feel lost, just realize it's not going to be solved tomorrow. It's not going to be solved 50 years from now. It's going to take a lot of time. And I hope we start to see that reduction happen, but it takes the baby steps to get to that point. And once we get there, then progress is going to continue to make. We don't stop there. We continue to do it to start see and chip off those pieces to see that end goal happen, especially when you want to reduce climate change and protect the ocean. That can be done, but we need to take small baby steps. And that's sort of the lessons that I have kind of seen and observed and taken throughout my journey to live for a better ocean. That's the goal. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. This is something that we're building a community here. It's not just an audience listening to this podcast. This is the start of a conversation. I would love to hear your thoughts and continue that conversation. So please feel free to reach out. You can comment on Spotify on this video podcast, or you can go to YouTube and you can put your thoughts in the comments section below. Or if you're listening on Apple podcasts and or like an audio version of your favorite podcast, app, don't worry about you can go and you can't get a hold of me. Don't worry about you can go to Instagram and you can just DM me at how to protect the ocean. It's the name of this podcast, all one word. I would love to hear your thoughts on how you're protecting the ocean and the baby steps that you're taking to get there and where you think you need to go next because that's what we talk about when we talk about as a community share those ideas so that other people can benefit and you can learn something as well. That's it for today's episode. If you want to learn more and you're right at the beginning of your journey and you want to learn more, sign up for my newsletter. Go to speakupforblue.com/newsletter. That's speakupforblue.com/newsletter. You can just sign up the emails, like you just sign up for free. There's no cost. You get access to more articles about the ocean and ocean conservation. You can get access to some jobs and any kind of content that we put out videos or anything like that. Job ads, all this sort of stuff. Just go speakupforblue.com/newsletter and I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of The How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.