The Adaptive Mind: Identifying the Psychosocial Skills & Capacities Needed to Navigate an Increasingly Difficult World

In response to the urgency and rapid unfolding of the climate crises, along with confluent and related global breakdowns, the ability of people to resiliently persist, maintain social capital, and collaborate to make the difficult decisions involved in societal transformation is critical. Taking this urgent need as a starting point, this workshop seeks to define the “adaptive mind”, i.e., the psychosocial propensities, capacities and skills needed to navigate a world characterized by constant, traumatic and transformative change.

This workshop aims to support the movement toward building the psychosocial skills to deal with a world confronting the profound and complex challenges of multiple simultaneous crises and system failures. It seeks to generate synthetic and integrative insights that

• further raise awareness of these growing needs,
• support projects and programs aiming to respond to them, and
• help advocate for transformative shifts in education, professional development, funding and policy.

This four-day virtual workshop emerged from the urgency of the times. The climate crisis is increasingly recognized as an all-hands-on-deck situation. With impacts unfolding more rapidly than scientists predicted and the need for a profound transformation of modern society becoming increasingly clear, climate change is far more than a technical challenge. It is an “adaptive” challenge in the face of great uncertainty, complexity, disruptive changes and inevitable transformation.

Recognizing this adaptive challenge, this workshop explores the one factor that has allowed societies to survive existentially threatening confluences of crises in the recent and distant past – the ability of people to resiliently persist, maintain social capital, collaborate and make the difficult decisions involved in transformative societal change. Taking this adaptive challenge as a starting point, this workshop aims to define the “adaptive mind”, i.e., the psychosocial propensities, capacities and skills needed to navigate a world characterized by constant, traumatic and transformative change.

This expert meeting will also support a broader field of efforts working to build the psychosocial skills needed to deal with a world confronting the profound and complex challenges of multiple simultaneous crises and system failures. It seeks to generate synthetic and integrative insights that

• further raise awareness of these growing needs,
• support projects and programs aiming to respond to them, and
• help advocate for transformative shifts in education, professional development, funding and policy.

Specifically, this workshop aims to make the following critical advances:

1. Develop an integrative multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary understanding of the human propensities, capacities and skills needed to cope with and effectively navigate circumstances characterized by constant, traumatic and transformative change.
2. Contribute to the emerging recognition of the need for these skills, as well as the early efforts in field building to respond to this need.
3. Discern which aspects of these propensities, capacities and skills can be developed through education, training and regular practice; how such skill-building can be integrated into education and professional development; and how it can be promoted and anchored through policies and institutional changes.

The workshop will convene a global conversation of researchers, practitioners, wisdom holders, and critical thinkers from a wide range of disciplines and fields of practice, including various subdisciplines of psychology, neuroscience, public health, environmental justice, change leadership, organizational studies, cognitive science, mind-body-spirit practices and traditions, faith-based/spiritual leadership, future studies, social-ecological systems and sustainability science, education, and more. One anticipated output from this workshop is a co-authored policy piece in a high-visibility journal as well as other useful synthesis products.

A special thank you to all of those that served as advisors for this workshop.
Advisory Group: Taj James (Movement Strategy Center, Full Spectrum Labs), Rebecca Weston (Climate Psychology Alliance of North America), Tamara Toles O’Laughlin (Climate Critical Earth), Mary Gelinas (Gelinas & James Consulting), Christine Wamsler (Lund University), Linda B. Grdina (The Wellbeing Project), and others.