This past week in Wicked Problems I have learned a lot about things that I would never have thought I was going to learn in a class like this. One of the most important things I have learned is the importance of mindfulness when relating to living a sustainable life.

In Marc Cohen’s TED Talk he spoke about the relations between wellness, mindfulness, and sustainability. One of his biggest points was that there has to be wellness for happiness and happiness is all about your mindset. You can choose to happy, and when you are happy then you are in better harmony with yourself and with the earth because you are more intentional. One of my favorite things that he said was illness vs. wellness, when you are “Ill” you are thinking about “I” (yourself), and when you are “WEll” you are thinking about “WE” (the earth, others, and yourself). I think that his statement speaks a lot of truth because when you feel well you think with more of a purpose and your values align with your actions.

A lot of those same things were brought up in the Mindfulness and Sustainability reading. You are more likely to be intentionally sustainable when you are being mindful and you are in tune with yourself and what is happening around you. I was introduced to the idea of meditation in this reading, and then again in class when we were walked through a meditation exercise, and I can honestly say that I can see how that would be beneficial to just take time to center yourself and really realize what is going on around you.

The Wildest Things activity was a great was to start brainstorming ways to mindfully be more sustainable. That exercise was very beneficial in preparing me for Activity 2 where I stated my own problem that I would like to explore. The problem that I chose was furniture waste because as someone who is wanting to enter the interior design business I think that it is important to look at waste that is being created by our industries to try and change the old ways and mindfully build a sustainable future as the new generation of interior designers.