Truth Talk: My Transformation Journey
Truth Talk: My Transformation Journey
Transcript
The following is a transcription of Truth Talk: My Transformation Journey, which is part of Robin’s “Truth Talks” series during his experiment in non-ownership.
For the full series and depth to this practice visit: The Experiment in Non-Ownership – Robin Greenfield in Los Angeles.
[audience member] “… that you’re right in front of me.”
Nice! Is that in alignment with your desires for right now?
“Oh, um, yeah, I didn’t have a desire; it was just really a noticing. I didn’t have like, a desire.”
Okay. Sweet, nice. Just observing without evaluating.
“Yeah, unusual.”
Nice, that’s unusual for you?
“Oh God, yes.”
Really? Nice. Well, Daniel, I assume you’re ready? You always are.
“We’re rolling.”
Nice! So today, I would like to share with you my journey of awakening and stepping out of the life that I was living, which was one of incredible destruction: destruction to the Earth, destruction to people, and to the plants and animals we share this home with. At the time, it felt totally normal and really wonderful, and what led me to today is living a radically different life from that. One that is focused on living in harmony with the Earth and, to the best of my ability, in harmony with humanity and with the plants and animals that we share this home with.
So I’d like to just tell you, to start, a little bit about where I came from, to give you a bit of a backstory. How does that sound to all of you?
“Good.”
Great! Nice. So I grew up in Northern Wisconsin on Lake Superior. I was born to my mother, Cheryl Greenfield, and my dad, who I just called Mark. We grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin, and as a young kid, I generally struggled with feeling like an outsider. We were very low income. My mom made … there were four kids from three dads and my mom made about … less than $20,000 a year. We also got a lot of support from the government, as well as my mom’s sister and her dad. So we were very low income. My dad wasn’t around. We were Jewish in a town that was almost all Christian or Catholic, and my parents were hippies, too. So in so many ways, I felt like an outsider.
As a young person, I just really wanted to belong. I just really wanted to be loved, to be acknowledged, to be accepted, to be seen and heard. So much of my younger childhood was focused around that, and what I saw as normal was having a nice house, having a shiny car, having a nuclear family.
I remember going over to my friends’ houses and — hello to everyone out there in the internet world on the camera — we’re going to treat you just like you’re here with us. There’s a small group of us, and you’re here; I’m here, you’re here. Here we are on this camera as well!
So I went over, I would go over to my friends’ houses, and they had all this plastic Tupperware, and I thought, “Plastic Tupperware? That’s what the normal people use.” Meanwhile, my mom had glass jars; our food was stored in glass jars. I was just looking at all the things that my friends did that had more money than me, and that’s what I gravitated towards. I wanted to be normal, basically.
That became a large focus of my younger years, and that continued through middle school, high school, and into university. At the same time, I loved the Earth. I was spending so much of my time outside catching frogs and turtles, fishing, learning about animals. I was absolutely just in love with the Earth. So when I went to university, I studied biology with a concentration in aquatic science. So that love for the Earth was still very much there, as was the love for money, because money was how I could be accepted, how I could be loved.
When I got to university, my focus was not so much on the studying, really. My focus was on binge drinking. I went to a university where it was all about the red Solo cup; that was the new, like, normal to be drinking from a red Solo cup. That was the cool thing — so to be drinking lots of whatever cheap beer and cheap vodka. I also spent a lot of my time pursuing women, because I had learned that the measure of a man from the society that I had learned a lot from was in the number of women he was sleeping with and the physical beauty of the women he was sleeping with.
So I was pursuing the same thing that most people are: to be loved, to be accepted, to have a sense of belonging. For me, during college, that really came through partying with my peers, through pursuing sex and having sex, and through money as well.
So freshman year of college, I became … I was recruited to sell educational books door-to-door. Actually, I worked in Burbank, California, just a few miles from here. I would work between 84 and 90 hours a week knocking on doors, selling books, and I made, in my first summer, about $18,000 between my freshman and sophomore year, which for me was a lot of money in one summer — in three months of working very hard.
I learned that actually I could, through the skill set of sales, make a lot of money. Instead of being a biologist, I could just do sales and work for a short period of the year and rather than working in nature, spend a lot of my time in nature when I wasn’t working.
So that’s what I did through university: I did that all of my summers, selling educational books door-to-door, and I was really enjoying it. I was reading books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” I was investing in my future, maxing out my 401(k) or my Roth IRA and I had investments in, like, mutual funds or life insurance, for example. So I was very focused on this financial freedom aspect of living.
After university, towards the end of university, I started to sell advertising to businesses, so I started to work as an independent contractor selling advertising at grocery stores on the shopping carts and the register tape receipts. Shortly after college, I moved out to San Diego, California, in 2011 — so 13 years ago — and I joined a marketing company. After six months, I started my own marketing company.
At that time, I was about 25 years old. I set a goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30. And very quickly, I was on path for that goal of being a millionaire by the time I was 30. I was bringing in over six figures a year; at the peak of the company, I had about 20 independent contractors out selling advertising. I was enjoying life; I was in San Diego, a Wisconsin boy living three blocks from the beach. I had friends. I had romantic relationships. I was traveling the world, which I had been doing in the years prior. I was continuing to explore the world, explore myself, and I was happy, healthy, and I was thriving, I would say. I was really, really where I wanted to be in life.
And then something happened. I realized — I want to say had to, but I didn’t have to, but I chose to radically transform my life. I realized that I wanted to do things totally differently from the way that I was. What happened was I started to watch a lot of documentaries and read books, and I realized that the way that I was living was causing incredible destruction to the people, to the plants, and animals we share this Earth with and to the planet as a whole.
Everything that I was doing was a part of systems of extraction, of exploitation, of injustice, of inequity. The food that I was eating — with every bite I was taking, I was consuming a part of the planet. The car I was driving and the gas that I was pumping into the car, the stuff that I was buying (mostly cheap stuff from Walmart at the time), the trash that I was creating that was being buried in holes that we call landfills — other people call it organized littering, the money that I was spending. Every dollar I was spending was part of this monetary system that has so much destruction in it.
The investments that I had, the bank account that I had, even the water that I was drinking was being pumped across the desert and was running the Colorado River dry. Even the natural hygiene products that I was putting on — my deodorant, my shampoo — was part of destruction. My cleaning products in my home, the entertainment I was watching on TV, the alcohol that I was drinking at the bars … it was all part of systems of destruction.
I learned that the reason I was doing a lot of what I was doing was just because society had kind of told me to do it. You know, I had been watching movies and reading magazines and watching commercials, and I realized that a lot of what I was doing was just because that’s what I had seen on TV or I had seen other people doing.
You know, my Old Spice deodorant? Why was I wearing it? Well, because Old Spice had pretty good commercials, you know? For me, it was the commercials. Ultimately, what they had was multi-million dollar advertising budgets, and they had penetrated deep into my mind so I believed that I needed them.
So I decided I was going to take my life back: back from the destruction, back from the corruption and the lies, and back from — I would say a lot of it was a realization of corporate control — that I was not in control of my own life. That corporations and, in many ways, government agendas and just societal norms and structures were in charge of my life. I decided I was going to take my life back, just one step at a time.
So what I did, you know, and during this, a lot of people — if you learn that almost everything that you’re doing is not in alignment with your belief system — you might feel some doom and gloom, some overwhelm, some depression. How many of you have experienced that at some time?
[audience responds]
Some of that? Yeah, so you can relate. I definitely felt some of that, but these documentaries that I was watching, these books that I was reading — “The Story of Stuff” is an example — that was a really powerful short film series that didn’t just tell me the problems that existed in the world but also shared solutions.
So what I decided is that I was going to be a part of the solution. I learned that I was a hypocrite, plain and simple. My actions were not in alignment with my beliefs. I didn’t believe in destroying the world. I didn’t believe in children and slave labor making my clothes, or people in prison making my clothes. I didn’t believe in dumping my toxic fluids into the ocean or into, you know, low-income communities. I didn’t believe in doing any of this.
But now I knew that I was, and I realized I was a hypocrite. So what I did is I made a list of changes that I wanted to make, and I decided I was going to make at least one positive change per week for two years. So if you make one change per week for two years, that’s 104 changes. So that’s what I set out to do.
You know, for my food, for example, I stopped buying my food at Walmart and started to buy local food. I started to eventually go to the local farmers’ market and go to the food co-op. I started to buy unpackaged food instead of getting everything in plastic.
Simple things like starting carrying reusable grocery bags to the store. I started to eat a lot more whole foods, a lot less processed foods — so, you know, instead of boxes of Rice-a-roni, just brown rice, for example. A lot more fresh produce — lots of fruits and vegetables, for example.
I started to look at everything that I was putting into my garbage can and say, “How can I do this in a way that doesn’t create garbage?” So anything that was single use, I found reusable long-term use alternatives. Ditching bottled water, you know?
At the time, I used paper towels and I switched to reusable washable towels instead. Saran wrap or tin foil — just using reusable containers. I got a simple water purifier to attach to my faucet so that I didn’t need bottled water, for example.
Instead of throwing my food scraps into the garbage can, I started to compost and turn my food scraps into compost. I started to grow a little bit of my own food. I found a bookshelf in the alley, filled that up with soil, laid it down flat, filled it up with soil, and started to grow just a little bit of food — some greens and some herbs.
I started to ride my bike more and drive the car less. I started to use cash instead of credit cards. I started to shop local instead of buying things online. Really, online wasn’t so much of a thing then, but Walmart was. So, less Walmart, more local.
And so I was making lots of small changes. I ditched all of the hygiene items that I had that had toxic chemicals in them. Some people out there in the internet world will be like, “Toxic? What do you mean toxic?” Well, I mean ingredients that you read and you have no idea what they are. They’re derived with chemical byproducts, with fossil fuel byproducts, you know? Stuff that’s just like, “Why would I want this on or in my body?”
So I ditched all of that and started using natural personal hygiene items. I just said, you know what? Deodorant, for example — maybe the armpits are designed to sweat. Maybe I’ll let the sweat out, and maybe it’s okay to smell a little bit, like animals smell. I’m an animal. I don’t want to have this wafting, you know, stench, but it’s okay if I smell a little bit. I don’t need to mask that.
I started to swim in the ocean more and shower less, you know? Just so many different changes! I was focused on food, water, energy, waste, and transportation. These are what I considered to be sort of the five key pillars of personal sustainable living, and then money as well.
So lots of small changes, but I also started to make some big changes, too. Within a year, I got rid of my car, and I used an electric car share program when I did need a car, or I just rode my bike. One radical change that I made early on is after just about a year — less than a year, actually — I’d actually chosen to get a vasectomy, knowing that I didn’t want to have children.
Not because of the environmental purpose reason, because I believe you can raise children in a way that is sustainable and beneficial to the Earth, but because at the same time as I was doing all of this, I was formulating who I really wanted to be. I knew that it wasn’t as a father of an individual child, and rather, I wanted to be a servant to the larger picture of humanity.
The way that I could do that was by having freedom and autonomy and knowing that I was formulating the belief that I wanted to be able to use my life in a bold way that would be much more easily accomplished if I didn’t have people that were dependent upon me.
So I was making these personal changes, but I was also, from that time at the age of 25, 26, formulating my long-term plan of being an activist human being dedicated my whole entire life — the decades ahead — to this desire to contribute to the Earth and to the life that’s upon this Earth.
Other things, you know, that were some of the bigger things — well, it took me a few years, but I got rid of all of my credit cards and had no more credit cards. I took all my money out of my investments after about a year, so my life savings, I took that all out because I learned that it was invested in fossil fuels and cigarettes, and I didn’t want to invest in that.
Did you see that? Yeah, I’ve been eyeballing — a little gopher popping up right here next to us!
Oh, hello, gopher.
Cleaning it. Thank you for gracing us with your presence!
So a lot of it was just that I wanted to be connected to the Earth, and I was shedding so much. I was shedding my ties to the financial system, canceling as many bills as possible, taking my money out of investments that were parts of destruction, out of the big banks, and drastically simplifying my life.
I was going through my stuff and asking, “Do I really need this? Does this really add value to my life?” I was in a three-bedroom apartment, and I went from the biggest room in the apartment to living in the 6’x 6′ closet of the apartment and renting out the rooms so that I could live rent-free in the apartment that I had.
So I was downsizing and simplifying. I had gotten rid of my car, which meant I no longer had a trunk to put stuff in. I realized that really changed things when I could only put what I had on my bicycle. And along with that, you know, the clothes— just shedding my huge closet full of clothes.
So there were so many things I was making … so many different changes. In 2013, so about a year-and-a-half after I started making all these changes, I had probably made around 100 changes at that time.
So imagine this: imagine if you woke up and tomorrow you were doing a hundred things differently from today. You might smell different, your friends might be different, your food’s different, your cleaning products in your house are different, your hobbies are different.
What media you’re taking might be different; you might look at yourself and be like, “Who am I?” You might not even recognize yourself. But by taking it one step at a time, I was able to gradually, yet rapidly, radically transform my life.
I started practicing traveling with no money as I was demonetizing my life. That was some of my first adventures. I traveled far away, at first with just a little bit of money, and then with no money.
One of my first adventures was to land in Cabo, Mexico, with no money — with just the clothes on my back and, at the time, my cell phone on airplane mode — and had to get back to the United States with no money. That way I had to really test my philosophy of “Can I live without money?” It also forced me to deepen my connection with humanity, to have these deep interactions. By being dependent on others, I actually needed to facilitate deeper connections.
Then in 2013, I set out on my first environmental venture. This is when I decided I changed my life title from business owner — or, basically salesperson or business owner — to environmental activist. Actually, at the time, it was a professional adventurer, is what I decided that I would be. Then it shifted to environmental adventures and environmental activism.
My first campaign was to bike across the United States on a bicycle made out of bamboo and try to have no negative environmental impact. By doing this, I could cross the country living out my beliefs of sustainability to the extreme — practicing to the extreme in all the pillars: food, water, energy, waste, transportation — to cross the country on a bicycle, 4,700 miles, trying to have no negative impact — paying attention to every single action that I was taking, to the point where I could not walk into a store that used automatic doors. I had to wait for someone else to walk in and then hop in with them, no using a faucet or even a flush toilet.
I even remember passing by an automatic light at night and stopping to unscrew the bulb so that the light wouldn’t be on because of my behalf. I was paying attention to every facet of how my life interacted with the world.
In doing so, I brought others on this adventure with me. What I started to do is, I would ride my bike right up to the newspapers and the news stations. The first one, I think, was in Kansas or Nebraska, and I said, “Hi! I’m biking across the country! I’ve got a bamboo bicycle outside the station with a trailer covered in solar panels, and I’m biking across the country for sustainability. Would you like to do a story?” Most every time, they would say, “Yeah, that sounds interesting!”
So I was able to start spreading the message of sustainability wherever I was — Nebraska or Kansas, Chicago or New York City. That’s when I found my voice as a messenger for the Earth, a messenger for sustainable living.
So I was doing — there was kind of two main facets: me deeply embracing and practicing and then also being a teacher, being a messenger and sharing, and deepening into both at the same time. My way of going about things was to take things to the extreme. Why? Because that’s where I wanted to be.
I realized that the way we were living is incredibly extreme. The United States has 5% of the world’s population, yet we consume 25% of the world’s resources. That, by definition, is extreme.
So I decided to take things to the other end of the extreme. Extreme was kind of the only option, because if you don’t go to the extreme, you continue to destroy and pillage, and I said, “I’m not doing that anymore.”
So extreme was kind of my only option if I actually wanted to live sustainably. And then also, because I found that if I took things to the extreme, that the media would cover it. It was with these campaigns that I was able to create these packages that helped the media to be able to share this.
In 2014, I biked across the country again. This time, I only ate food from dumpsters, from the Mississippi River all the way to New York City — only ate food that was going to waste. In each of the major cities I passed through, I hosted “food waste fiascos,” where I would get thousands of dollars’ worth of perfectly good food out of the grocery store dumpsters.
I set it up in these mandalas of food waste, and the media would come out, and people would come out and say, “What do you mean this is all from the dumpster?” And I would teach about our globalized, industrialized food system and how food has become a commodity rather than a life-giving source, that it’s dollars and cents on the spreadsheet, and all the waste is built into this global industrial food system.
Then teach about the alternatives — growing your own food, foraging, buying from local farmers, joining a CSA, for example.
In 2016, I set out on a campaign where instead of living out my beliefs, I did the opposite. For one month, I lived like the average person in the United States —
eating, shopping, consuming just like the average person does. But the catch was, I had to wear every piece of trash that I created.
The average person creates 4.2 pounds of trash per day, which is 135 pounds a month. So by the end of the month, I would potentially be wearing 135 pounds — my body weight was around 150 pounds. So an entire me, basically.
To do that, I had to design a suit that could carry that. I had a designer take 160 hours to create a suit that had these clear, thick plastic pockets where I could distribute all of the trash throughout my body — from feet to neck — and distribute things like plastic forks here and the Starbucks cup here so you could see all of the trash and people could look at it and see that’s the same trash that they create.
So I ate, shopped, consumed just like the average person, and by the end of the month, I was wearing 87 pounds of trash everywhere I went in New York City, riding the subway, trying to go to the movies, standing in line at Whole Foods, wherever I was, I was wearing that trash for sometimes 12 hours a day.
This was the activism that really worked. I had media following me almost every day, sometimes doing up to ten interviews in a day, sharing these messages.
That’s what I’ve continued to do. Over the last decade, I’ve done probably around 15 or so major campaigns and then continued to simplify my life.
In 2015, I moved into a 50-square-foot tiny house, and everything that I owned fit into that tiny house. In 2016, I downsized to owning just 111 possessions, all that were in my backpack. Then, in 2020, I downsized to just 44 possessions, all of which fit into a day pack.
One of my other major campaigns was for one year, I tested to see if I could break completely free from the global industrial food system and grow and forage 100% of my food for a year.
So for one year — down to the salt, the oil, the spices, the calories, the fat, the vitamins, supplements — everything I consumed I had to either grow in my gardens or forage. I did that in Orlando, Florida, in 2019. And I came out of that year in the healthiest state … the healthiest physical state that I had ever been in my adult life. I was thriving.
I only fluctuated my weight by about four pounds while doing that, whereas you could imagine you could easily lose many pounds breaking free from all processed foods — no ice cream or any of that. So I was able to largely thrive just off the Earth.
The last part that I’ll share is that, it was back around 2015, that’s when I first started to take my vows. I made a series of lifetime vows, as well as some vows that I renew every four years.
I vowed for life to earning less than the federal poverty threshold, which right now is $15,000 a year, but when I made that vow, it was around $10,000 a year.
To never pay federal taxes because our federal taxes go disproportionately to war, the military-industrial complex, police brutality, the prison systems, bailing out the big banks, the pharmaceutical industries, Big Ag, fossil fuels — I said I’m not going to pay for that.
So instead, I vowed to donating 100% of my media income for life to people doing the work, environmental activists, nonprofits, initiatives that are serving the people. Rather than contributing to war, serve the people who are most under-resourced in these systems of destruction and exploitation. So I made these series of vows and I’ve continued to do that. Right now, I renew them every four years in alignment with the presidential cycle.
So I just renewed my vows this year — a couple of weeks ago. And this year, it includes actually four years of practicing non-sexuality, so no sex or romance, and I’ve been doing that for the last two years already.
And then, actually … Hello helicopter! [Applause] [Music]
And actually, I just committed to four years of telling only the truth and not telling a lie. So existing in a complete state of truth and transparency.
So I’ve continued, you know, I started this journey 13 years — 14 years ago now — and you would think that with all of that, there wouldn’t be much more to do.
But what I’ve seen is that our lives are wrapped up in this huge web of destruction, or a web of consumerism. We’re here in the middle, and there are hundreds of strands that are tying us in, weaving us in.
It takes — it’s a full-time job to break the strands of that web, to unravel that, and that’s what my job has been, largely: to break each of those strands and to replace each of those strands with community, with connection, with love, and with embracing that I’m a part of everything. Breaking down the separation and embracing the interconnectedness with everything.
It continues to deepen. A lot of what I’m doing today, I never could have imagined when I made my list of a hundred changes that I wanted to make that I’d be able to get to.
But it was always the plan. I always knew from the very beginning that I was going to radically transform my life and use my life as a tool of service.
There are certainly other things that I … there’s certainly other things in there, but that gives a little bit of a, or a substantial summary of the journey of breaking free from the societal structures and societal norms. Becoming myself, a human being who has a simple mission to live in a way that doesn’t destroy the very home we live on and to really exist in a way that’s actually beneficial.
That was the big thing for me a few years in that I realized. Instead of looking at life through the lens of, “How does this make me look? Will people like me?” Instead of looking at life through that lens, I started to look at life through the lens of, “Is this beneficial to the Earth, my community, and myself?” If the answer was yes, go for it. That was my new lens for looking at the world.
What I found was that, once I started doing that, most of the BS, it just could fall away. It could just shed away.
I realized that mostly what was holding me back for so long was societal norms and societal structures.
So much of this journey is a practice of just coming home to myself, loving myself, just being myself, and helping others to do so as well.
Then the other big aspect is community. What this ‘dominator society’ wants is fragmented communities — not even community — just fragmented communities, fragmented cultures, fragmented individuals. Why? Because if we’re broken up and we’re fragmented, what do we need? Their money. So we can buy their stuff, and we don’t believe that we have it right here.
So that’s a big part of this is just becoming whole and complete and finding a home inside of ourselves.
So on that note, I would love to take time to hear if any of you have questions, you know, things that are alive in you. For those of you out in the internet world, you are welcome to add your questions into the comment section, and there’s a good chance that, at some point, when I’m back online, I’ll answer some of those, or I’ll have a teammate who will help answer some of those for you. So you’re very welcome to … although I won’t get to them in this moment … you’re very welcome to ask the questions as well.
So yes, anything come to mind as far as any questions?
[audience member]
“A big question I have is, there’s understanding the choices we make and the things we consume as being harmful, and then there’s the commitment to actually make a change.
“You know, that’s what I find so challenging and impressive about you. You set out to make a change — one change every week for two years. Like, how did you bring yourself to a place to commit to accept that truth that you came to, of, you live a life of destruction?”
Yeah, well, there’s a couple things. I think my strategy was what I started changing was the things that I was most excited about.
So for example, I was excited to grow food. That wasn’t hard — I wanted to grow food. I was excited to ride my bike. I started — I was excited to get rid of my gym membership and get my exercise through being outside.
I was excited to explore, you know? I started to explore in new ways; I was exploring, you know, having an aquaponic system at home, trying to raise tilapia and grow food at the same time. Or have a black soldier fly larvae that would, when they hatch, when the larva is ready, they climb and they’ll climb upstairs and then, if you set it up, they’ll fall right into your aquaponics tank and feed your fish and make you fish to eat!
So whatever I was excited about, that’s what I did first. My strategy was that I was building the foundation one step at a time, and as I built each of these steps that I was excited about, then the other things that felt daunting became easier because I had the foundation, I had the motivation, I had the inspiration, and I was able to build one thing at a time.
So that’s always my recommendation to people: Don’t start with what you’re feeling like doom and gloom about or like you don’t want to do; figure out what it is that you really want to do and start with that.
Also, don’t start with the Herculean challenge; start with small things, like one thing at a time that are actually accomplishable.
Another thing is writing it down really helps — having that goal list. What I did is I made a goal list and I put it in my kitchen. My kitchen was where my front door was; you walk right in there and it was right on the wall. I tied a string around a pen and taped that to the wall right next to that. So anybody who walked into my house could see whether I was making changes or not. Before I had the internet, before I had social media to keep me accountable, I had my list on my wall for everybody that came over to see. So that helped as well — having it be that.
And then, of course, community. One of the big things is that I just transformed who I was spending time with. I found there was a little … this guy, Joshua Alevard, and this guy, Brian Blum. They were really passionate about sustainability. There was this little sustainability club, and I started to go to that.
We started to go on little field trips — sustainability field trips. So just every opportunity I had to be around people that would help me move in that direction — like, you are your surroundings to a degree. You can ascend your surroundings, but if your surroundings are peace and wholesomeness, then you’re likely to begin to embody that, whereas if your surroundings are chaos and destruction, you’re likely to embody that.
So that was another big part about it. So those were some of my key ways that helped me to break that web of consumerism and weave together a new web of a more harmonious way of being.
Does that provide some insight?
“Yeah, absolutely.”
Yeah.
Other questions come to mind?
And I’d like to mention, with questions, there is no question that’s off the table. As you know, I’m now living in 100% transparency, but secondly, sustainable living is everything. Sustainable living is our entire existence on Earth. So there’s absolutely nothing that is outside of the realm of this that I don’t see as relevant to explore.
Yeah.
“I’m kind of wondering, do you feel committed to staying in the United States knowing that, like, we’re probably the most violent country on the planet?”
Yeah, so the question is: Do I feel committed to staying in the United States?
Yes. For one, two years ago, I got rid of my last form of identification, so leaving the country is — well, entering other countries is kind of challenging right now, even if I want to.
I actually lost my passport in 2022, here in Los Angeles, and then I composted my birth certificate a few weeks later. So I can travel internationally, and I would like to explore that — traveling internationally with no passport in the years ahead.
But regardless, that’s just a little side anecdote. Absolutely, I am dedicated to being here in service in the United States. The reason why is that the roots of destruction that are … the tentacles, let’s say, of destruction that are wrapped around the world … the majority of them stem from Western consumerism and Western dominator government.
You know, just the fact of the number of dictatorships that the United States has installed in other countries when democratically elected democracies happen and the United States says, “Well, that’s not the best for our oil interests, so we’re going to topple that and place the political system that we want.”
That’s just one example of how the United States, of all countries, is at the heart of the destruction globally.
And so, and here, you know, right here sitting here in Los Angeles, the reason I’m doing this experiment of non-ownership here is because Hollywood culture, you know, the movies — this place influences the world as much as anywhere else in the world. Like, there are not many places in the world that have as much or more influence than here. And so I’m dedicated to being here because I believe that if the United States doesn’t change, then we will never have a sustainable future on Earth.
I’m also dedicated to being here because this is the society that I know. I can speak from a place of authority on this society because I’ve lived here for 38 years. I don’t know everything about the society, of course, but I know the ins and outs fairly well of our corporate structures and our government systems to be able to speak from a place of authority on our baseline way of existing on this Earth.
And then also as a person with a lot of privilege, I’m also very hesitant about going and setting up in another country where I’m an outsider and I don’t really know the culture and the situation as much.
Now, I’m open to working in other countries if I’m invited to do so, without a doubt. But I fully believe that I would be most effective right here, and that my greatest impact can be by working here, changing things at the roots here, and having that spread out.
Yeah, thanks for asking that, Cheryl.
“You said that some documentaries started the process of your transformation. Do you remember any in particular or what the issues were that they were talking about?”
Yeah, I’d like to share those resources. So for the documentaries that changed my life, that’s at robingreenfield.org/films. For the books, that’s at robingreenfield.org/books. For the 100 changes I made, those are listed at robingreenfield.org/100, and then my timeline, sharing my journey of change is at robingreenfield.org/timeline, and with each change, for example, taking my money out of the big banks, you could click on that and then it shares why I took my money out of the big banks.
So when I said that, what I just gave was a bit of a summary — it is a bit of a summary — if you go to my website and you follow all the links within this one thing, you have an incredibly large rabbit hole. I know some of the people out there in the internet world right now have been in that rabbit hole.
So as far as the films, a really big one for me from the beginning — I mentioned “The Story of Stuff” earlier — that’s a series of short films that were huge.
“Zeitgeist,” actually, was a really big one in teaching me about the truth behind our monetary system. “Food, Inc.” about our food system — that was a really big one. Those were some of the earlier really impactful ones that come most to mind, but there were, you know, a few dozen that were very impactful at the time. Those are the ones that come to mind the most at the moment.
We got some deer over here!
Yeah! Hello, deer!
And is that a raven or a crow?
“Crow.”
You’d say crow?
Yeah, I was thinking crow, too.
Nice!
Yeah. Other questions?
“You said one of your vows for the next four years is to speak only truth, and I’m curious — and you mentioned being more transparent about different things — but I’m curious, in what ways, within yourself or outward, have you found that you’ve been untrue?”
Well, yeah, so in what ways my — you know, my objective, my commitment for the next four years is to speak only the truth and not tell a lie. So in which ways have I been untrue?
If you want to really dive into that, I just did a nine-part truth series that I put on my YouTube channel, which shares everything that I had been hiding, guarding … anything I’d been embarrassed about. Andrew watched some of it, right?
So I dive really deep into that. But to give you — to give a little bit of a summary: my sexual past — there were a handful of sexual experiences that I had that were not consensual or not fully consensual that I felt a lot of pain over and that others felt pain over that I wasn’t sharing.
So my financial past, you know? Just sharing my dealings with finances. I used to steal a lot of stuff. It was kind of my way, when I was younger, of sort of damning the man, I would say. But there was also just a bit of a — just taking. It wasn’t taking from individuals though; it was always really just a taking from the mega-corporations, mostly.
Then, you know, there’s just so many things that I’ve had to be very selective of what I share. As a human being who — okay, part of me doesn’t care what people think about me at all, but part of me cares greatly.
The part of me that cares greatly is that my job is to share messages in a way that result in people hearing them and then wanting to transform their lives.
My objective is for people to radically transform their lives. But my objective is also to help people make small changes. Ultimately, I’m here to light fires inside of people that will radically transform their lives.
If people are going to listen to me and transform their lives, they’re going to have to like me, not dislike me most likely. How often do you dislike someone and are then inspired and motivated to do what they’re saying? It’s not really how it generally works with humans. They want to feel a connection to you and a liking for you in some way.
It’s an interesting thing that I’ve shared. I’ve been selective of what I share because of knowing what people have the desire to hear and what they would be, like, “Well, that’s just too much, man!”
So just to give you one small example — I shared this in my truth series, but I have this pot, and it’s my only pot. I cook in it, and I make tea from it, but I also pooped in it once because I was in the Everglades and had diarrhea and didn’t want to go out of the tent because the biting insects were so bad out there.
So I pooped in this pot. Now, what I realized was that I — when I realized I was going to do this releasing of everything is that other people had eaten from that pot. Not something you want to tell people, even though it’s totally clean.
The pot was totally clean, but I’m talking about truth in the sense of sharing everything you’d be embarrassed to share or everything that people would cancel you for. In our society, you can become canceled for so much so easily.
From little things to really substantial things. Things that I really mourned. Like, I said, I grew up in a time where I had never heard the word “consensuality.” I had asked numerous of my best friends growing up; there was no discussion of consensuality. We didn’t — there were … and the way women didn’t know about consensuality either that we were interacting with. Neither of us knew our boundaries. Like a lot of us — some did. So, like, it’s … but to share the nuance of that in a society that so often just wants to create labels, it’s very hard.
And so being just so vulnerable about these things has been very challenging. Those are a few things. Also, working with the Discovery Channel — like working with TV — my experience with that is another thing that I shared a lot of truths on.
Of course, like, if someone says to me, “Do I look pretty?” you know, now for me, that’s easy. I have no issue whatsoever, because I don’t believe in the concept of pretty and ugly anymore.
So my teacher, Steve Torma, who teaches nonviolent communication, put this so poignantly for me when he said, “There is no such thing as a chunk of ugly that can fall from the sky into your eye. Ugly is in your mind; it’s purely in your mind.”
So if someone says to me, “Do I look pretty?” I’m not thinking about whether they look pretty. So what I can say to them is just simply, “I’m enjoying being in your presence.”
I don’t have to acknowledge this concept of pretty or ugly, and I’m not sidestepping it in the sense that I’m like, “I’m not going to tell a white lie.” I’m also just not entering into these societal structures or ways of being, and I can still operate from a place of full truth and integrity.
The reason why is ’cause I do enjoy their presence. I can genuinely — and what do they really want when they say, “Do I look pretty?” They want to be seen, to be heard; they want to know they matter.
If I say, “I’m so joyful to be in your presence,” they’re going to get the same out of that or most likely more than hearing that they’re pretty, if it comes from a place of truth.
So yeah, one or two more — a couple more questions come to mind?
“Of all the changes you’ve made, what’s been the most liberating? That you’re most glad that you did?”
You know, I’m not someone that really does ‘mosts,’ because everything is so connected, everything is so interconnected.
Between, like I said, food, water, energy, waste, transportation, connection, community, money; I feel joy in so many ways. Right now, one of the things that’s most alive for me is the practice of universal love, which I’m starting to be able to really speak about from a place of feeling no discomfort, in the sense that I just exist in a state of universal love, for the most part. Whereas, five years ago? Heck no, I couldn’t have said that. I could have talked about the concept of it. But now I can say, in this moment, you saw when that helicopter went by: I loved that helicopter. I enjoyed its presence.
When I’m sleeping here in Los Angeles right now, I hear the sirens and I hear the birds, and I love them both. I love this experience of humanity, and I love the experience of suffering.
Some people out there may be like, “This guy loves suffering? What is he, a psychopath?” But suffering is life! To not love it would be to be pushing away life.
Suffering is inherently a part of life, therefore I am going to love it.
So right now, what’s feeling the most freeing is that, the choice to love everything. That’s definitely partly from Ram Dass. I listened to 40 hours of Ram Dass on my walk from Canada down here, and one of the things that he says is, “I am loving awareness.” So, I will walk down the street just saying, “I am loving awareness.” But really, that one resonates for me.
But yeah, just saying, “I love everything.” And I just walk down the street and I say, “I love the trees. I love this puke on the ground. I love this dog poop, because there’s something behind it that I love.”
And so, last little thing I’ll add to that — almost synonymous to love for me is gratitude. Because do you ever hate something you’re grateful for? Not really, maybe.
So love and gratitude are synonymous. Truth and integrity are synonymous. Integrity and love — now that I’m getting more into this practice — I see that they’re all so interconnected.
Gratitude is … that over the last few years has been the biggest window, along with that, another tie to gratitude is celebration of life.
Where my relationships struggled the most in the last handful of years was the lack of celebration. Whenever we would complete a task … I’ve run a nonprofit for multiple years, and we would complete a task, and I’d say, “Good! Let’s do the next one!” Instead of saying — instead of celebrating what we had just done. Most all of my teammates have struggled with how little gratitude I’ve expressed and how little celebration of life I’ve expressed, I’ve embodied. And that’s been the key magic to transforming my life to being a place of joy: is gratitude and celebration of life.
I feel like that’s a perfect place to say goodbye to you, dear friends. I hope that you enjoyed this time together and that you have taken some things out of this.
If so, I highly encourage you to come up with a list of changes that you’d like to make. Make a list! Hang it up in your kitchen or on your fridge or wherever you’ll see it every day, and try to make one positive change per week.
If you’re looking for some motivation, you can go to robingreenfield.org/100 and you’ll see plenty there. If you’re looking for some really big changes, before I went offline five days ago, I wrote my top changes for making a substantial change in your life and the Earth, and there are 16 changes in there. That’s robingreenfield.org/changes. So that’s where if you’re looking for maybe a radical, big change — those are some of the big ones.
So. We love you very much, Dear Friends, and we’ll see you again soon!
The following is a transcription of Truth Talk: My Transformation Journey, which is part of Robin’s “Truth Talks” series during his experiment in non-ownership.
For the full series and depth to this practice visit: The Experiment in Non-Ownership – Robin Greenfield in Los Angeles.