Human’s Greatest Survival Instinct: Innovation

I did my first TEDx talk on Feb 3 2019.  It was the launch of my unique story to the public.  Both an exhilarating and nerve rattling experience! And just like I discussed in my talk – my stress response of Fight, Flight, Freeze or ‘FIGURE it Out’, was in high gear.  Thankfully, I ‘figured it out’ and the talk went really well.

I told the story of my husband and I accidentally living the evolution of western civilization over a 7 year period, and how it impacted our life perspective.  We started out as hunter/gatherers and lived for two years fighting for food, water and shelter. We progressed through the agricultural, industrial, and information eras and spent one year living more futuristic than most people today ever have.  We had created a fully self-sufficient, sustainable, circular system to meet all our survival needs without any daily work from us. We were now free to learn, grow, explore, and connect with nature, with minimal costs, minimal carbon footprint to live, and minimal labour to meet our needs.

Living through evolution showed us that humans ‘Greatest Survival Instinct is Innovation’.  There were three key lessons we learned about innovation, that shaped our perspective.

One, humans can’t go back.  It is a myth to think that life was easier or simpler in previous times. It is actually just a different set of problems and challenges to figure out, often more closely linked to life and death then we face in society today.  

Two, every innovation has a downside, a side effect or an unforeseen consequence.  Every innovation since the dawn of time has been done to solve a human survival or comfort need.  And every innovation was created with the best of intentions, not to create a side effect that impacts people and the planet.   The side effect of every innovation is what we need to innovate on today while we search for a new disruptive solution to the original innovation.

Third, we realized humans innovate and problem solve, but we only do it when it is extreme, critical to our survival, or something we will not tolerate anymore. Every generation is uniquely shaped by the generation before and the era they were born into. And every generation ‘FIGURES it out’. Every generation solves the problems of their time.

I will be posting many stories from the land, living through evolution, and other life adventures as an entrepreneur, competitive adventure racer and travel fanatic, that have shaped my unique passions and perspective on people and the planet.  The TEDx video will be out soon, and the stories will begin! Sign up with your email and we’ll let you know when it is released.