choice Magazine
choice Magazine is the vehicle that forwards the global conversation about professional coaching by providing: diverse perspectives, thought-provoking commentary, insightful discussion and access to services, tools, resources and practical information.
choice Magazine
Episode 139: Coaching Through Climate Crisis: A Four-Step Resilience Framework with guest, Tamara Yakaboski
"What in nature do you love more than anything in the world?" With this simple yet profound question, resilience coach Tamara Yakaboski opens a pathway to climate resilience that transcends political divides and paralyzing eco-anxiety.
The climate crisis has arrived on our doorsteps, manifesting in unprecedented weather events, rising temperatures, and profound uncertainty. Many of us experience solastalgia—the pain of watching places we love transform before our eyes—along with eco-anxiety and climate grief. These responses aren't weaknesses; they're natural human reactions to witnessing profound environmental change.
Drawing on over 20 years as a social scientist and professor, Yakaboski shares a transformative four-step framework—Access, Assess, Align, and Action—designed to bridge the gap between awareness and meaningful climate engagement. Unlike conventional approaches that rush toward solutions while bypassing emotions, this methodology helps both coaches and clients process their embodied responses to climate uncertainty before taking action.
Perhaps most revolutionary is Yakaboski's redefinition of resilience itself. "I don't want to be a cut piece of wood that bounces back," she explains. "I want to be like a tree that can grow from a rock crevice or cliff edge." This ecological understanding of resilience—as adaptation rather than resistance—offers a powerful metaphor for navigating climate challenges with creativity and determination.
The conversation weaves between practical strategies and profound insights, revealing how reconnecting with nature—whether through forest walks, ocean sounds, or simply observing birds in urban settings—can reset our nervous systems and rekindle our capacity for hope. Not passive, wishful thinking, but active hope grounded in meaningful engagement.
Ready to transform climate anxiety into purposeful action? Visit TamaraYakaboski.com to access her guide on overcoming cognitive barriers to climate engagement, and start having more conversations about climate change. As Yakaboski reminds us, "We feel more hopeful and empowered the more we're in conversation with others."
Watch the full interview by clicking here.
Find the full article here.
Learn more about Tamara Yakaboski here.
The climate crisis doesn’t just challenge our systems—it affects our minds, bodies, and emotions. Even the most committed leaders and coaches can get stuck in overwhelm, avoidance, or burnout.
As a resilience coach and climate practitioner, I’ve seen how three common cognitive barriers can keep us—and the people we support—from engaging fully. That’s why I created this free workbook to guide you through them.
Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com/
Welcome to Beyond the Page, the official podcast of choice, the magazine of professional coaching, where we bring you amazing insights and in-depth features that you just won't find anywhere else. I'm your host, Garry Schleifer, and I'm excited to expand your learning as we delve into the latest articles, have a chat with this brilliant author behind it and uncover the learnings that are transforming the coaching world. Join our vibrant community of coaching professionals as we explore groundbreaking ideas, share expert tips and techniques and make a real difference in our clients' lives, which is, I think, what most of us coaches want. Remember, this is your go-to resource for all things coaching. So let's dive in.
Garry Schleifer:In today's episode, I'm speaking with Resilience Coach Tamara Yakaboski, I've been practicing that one, who's the author of an article in our latest issue Climate Consciousness and Coaching ~ Making the Connection. Her article is entitled Coaching with Certainty Through Climate's Uncertainty ~ A Four-Step Process to Building Climate Resilience. Tamara is a PhD and, as I mentioned, a Resilience Coach, and she's an organizational consultant specializing in leadership, climate and professional development. Drawing on over 20 years as a social scientist, tenured professor and author, she combines embodiment, practical leadership and innovative methodologies to address complex challenges. Tamara integrates somatic, trauma-informed and, of course, nature-based intervention with neuroscience, creative thinking and systems in her signature Embodied Climate Action Program. She holds climate trainings from Yale School of Public Health and the Climate Psychology Alliance. She views resilience as a transformative competency. She empowers clients to navigate climate, career grief and uncertainty by creating meaningful impact in their work and communities. Tamara, thank you so much for joining me today. I think it's kind of obvious why you wrote an article for this issue, but I don't know what spurred you to actually get it pen to paper, so to speak.
Tamara Yakaboski:Oh well, I'm always excited to get this message out to folks. I think we live in a time when climate conversations feel really polarizing or people just aren't really sure what to say or what to do or how to respond. So I think it's always exciting to share tools, communication, ways to talk about it, ways to sort of approach it so that we all feel more comfortable and equipped. As you know, I say in the article, climate crisis is on all of our doorsteps now. I think you know, 10 years ago we had some buffer and ability to sort of not have it on our day-to-day or sort of regular. But we've seen with current events, climate or weather-related events right. Here we are.
Garry Schleifer:Like you wrote about in your article, like your client, like nature was my protection. Now it's like this doesn't happen here. We don't get tornadoes here. Well, guess what? And you also pointed out, the increase in temperature exceeded the Paris Accord. So we have a lot of indicators and things. So I'm going to ask this next question, and right on the tip of that, because I know there's a solution. But you used a lot of terms like echo anxiety, echo stress, echo distress, and I hope I pronounced this right Solastalgia. First of all, what does that last one mean? Did I say it right?
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, you did so. Solastalgia was coined, I don't know, 20 or so years ago, but it essentially is this concept of seeing the place that we love disappear, whatever that means, before our very eyes. So it combines both the comfort of a place that we love with the pain of sort of watching its demise. So it becomes really prevalent right now, you know, with the hurricane that flooded much of North Carolina. That's a perfect example of a moment when folks would be experiencing solastalgia. A place where you didn't think the mountains would flood and all of that. And so we see this also in coastal areas with water rising.
Tamara Yakaboski:I live in Colorado, so here on the front range of the Rocky Mountains, we experience it a lot with droughts and wildfires that are burning differently. Of course, California has that too as well. So that term, I think, is really pertinent for these times, and in naming it, I find it so helpful for people like oh, that's the deep pain I'm feeling that I'm not able to sort of just move past.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, Great. And as you're saying the word, I'm hearing the other root word nostalgia. So the remembrance of and the remembrance of something of days gone by. So I'm guessing the solar perhaps is the derivative of that one. Tell us more about the echo anxiety, echo stress and echo distress that you're seeing with your clients.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, so I like to think about, as humans, we have this sort of continuum of reactions and responses to climate crisis which, first off, I always like to remind people, this range of responses are all natural to seeing our lifeline disappear, right?
Tamara Yakaboski:And so we have this range.
Tamara Yakaboski:So we think about the continuum of responses.
Tamara Yakaboski:We have sort of despair on one side and sort of denial on the other side, and both of those are really extreme responses to witnessing and feeling the change due to climate crisis.
Tamara Yakaboski:So then we have this middle range, and so sort of in the middle is where that eco-anxiety, climate grief, distress kind of lives. So I like to sort of help people understand that that middle space is a healthy, natural, normal response. It's sort of like a wave when we think about resilience or like window of tolerance. It's sort of a natural wave and what we want to watch for is not sort of going into the extremes of despair which is really severe and kind of leads to that suicidal ideation. We worry about that a lot with folks who are on the front lines of climate work, perhaps climate scientists, people who are really in the data and frontline activists. We sort of worry about that end. And then the opposite end of sort of denial, which actually denial, the people who in the US a study kind of shows out of Yale's climate work, they do the it's called the Six Americas and it shows that actually like people who are truly in denial is like less than 10%.
Tamara Yakaboski:So, there's this other group of people that are denial is a coping mechanism and denial is really dangerous too, because it keeps that cognitive dissonance going and it keeps us out of action. But when we're in the middle of this range and we learn how to work with our eco-anxiety, our climate grief, we actually can find a lot of empowerment because we can find ways and things that we can do. And the research shows, the more active we are in taking actions for our personal lives, our professional and our community, the greater sense of resilience we have. It doesn't, maybe, change sort of the severity of it, but it gives us a way to kind of work with it rather than sort of be in those extremes.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, oh, thank you for saying that, and I can't help but think there's a bit of an elephant in the room in these conversations about the political actions that have been taken currently, and especially in America. What impact is that having on clients? Are you noticing that increasing stress, increasing hopelessness? How do you work with your clients that are overwhelmed or hopeless?
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, yes, I think here in the US, right, unfortunately, climate science is a very highly politicized conversation and with recent political actions, we're really seeing sort of the speeding up of the trajectory we were already on. And so recently I just finished teaching a three-part course on climate resilience where we looked at cognitive, emotional and physical impacts to individual and community, and that same course I had offered a year before and had very low enrollment. This year it took place over the end of February and early March. The course was full. So I think we're seeing the response and the reaction of, I think, what tends to happen. If we think about climate, we have these different layers of global, national, federal, state level. I'm going to let them deal with it and then, lo and behold, they're not, or not to the degree that they need to, right.
Tamara Yakaboski:So one of the powerful things of this moment is we're seeing a lot more. My students, it was a group of retirees, and they were like oh, we're so riled up, right. So we're seeing people then feel the empowerment and the necessity to take action at the individual and community level. So that is like a really powerful way to kind of stay out of those end despairs and denial. So on one hand we're seeing a greater response and reaction because we can't just say, oh, the UN is taking care of that or oh, the government's taking care of that, oh, there are policies that you know. We can't just sort of default anymore.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, wow, such a big job. Yeah, and I can't help but recall back to the phrase that you put in your article about climate resilience. Is this what we're talking about? Tell us more about what you mean by climate resilience.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, when I got into climate work years ago, what I found is there's already a lot of great work happening in the technology, the adaptation, the mitigation, sort of that larger, like built environment state level work. What I found was always missing, and I happen to live in a town that has had for a few years a climate action plan at a community city level, which is great, really progressive in the US.
Tamara Yakaboski:And they're doing some really good infrastructure things.
Tamara Yakaboski:And what I noticed in all of these plans and conversations, the cognitive and emotional and embodied pieces were missing.
Tamara Yakaboski:When you engage people in climate conversations, what tends to happen is I'll watch people's body language and like, so I'll do a tabling event, sort of advertising, you know, upcoming workshops or whatever the case or course, and I'll watch people. So happy, smiling, they'll kind of scan what's the sort of flyer, and then you see the embodied response. They either shut down and actually turn and walk away, or their whole body just drops, or they kind of look up a little more sheepishly and kind of come over and like, well, tell me a little bit about this.
Tamara Yakaboski:So you kind of get these different really embodied responses, and so for me then it told me that there was some gap missing between the 90% of people who recognize that the climate crisis is here and that it's impacting our lives, and there was a gap between that and action. So climate resilience when I talk about this, then I'm talking about those built competencies and skills to bridge that gap between what you know and what you're feeling and sort of the need to take action. So we look at cognitive responses and how to work with those mindsets and those responses for ourselves and in our communities. And those responses for ourselves and in our communities, the embodied piece, like I mentioned, with just how people see the word and either lean into it, push away or just like run as fast as they can.
Tamara Yakaboski:So there is a very embodied right. So we've got to work with semantics and that's why, sort of in my four-step process, we're always sort of accessing that internal embodied response first, because we are nature beings, right and earth. We are so all interconnected but we live very disconnected lives and so part of the sort of healing work I think really is that reconnecting ourselves, our felt sensations with nature and with others, and so we start there and then we work with the cognitive responses. And then we can kind of get to that value alignment and get into that action piece, because otherwise often, what people do is they come in and they're like, if they want to engage, they want to lean in then they're like, okay, tell me what to do and I'll do it. And that's really overwhelming.
Tamara Yakaboski:There's so much to be done.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, well, and going back to what you said about all those different levels from individual to big government and countries and things like that. It's a huge amount of steps to get your head around things like that. But I'm gonna turn now. You referenced something that I loved in your article and that was the action steps that can help both the coach and the coach with their client. So tell us a little bit more about that.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, so I have found over the years that folks who support others like coaches, therapists, other helpers we're just feeling really unprepared to support other folks, including themselves, right. So the four-step process of access, assess, align and action is just kind of an easy way to sort of do that process. Connect in what is happening in my body and then what are the emotions and mindsets or stories that I'm attaching to that? How can I use that knowledge, paired with my values and my skillset and my gifts, and then take action? That way we're not sort of bypassing all of the pieces. The somatic and cognitive pieces and just trying to jump right into action, which we find, especially with really complex issues like climate crisis and like climate grief. When we jump right into action, we have a great tendency for either overwhelming paralysis or complete burnout. So these steps are meant to help kind of slow it down a little bit, make sure that our actions are really connected in with what matters.
Tamara Yakaboski:So one of the questions I love to start with people is like what is it that you love? Like what in nature and in this world do you love more than anything in the world? I don't know, Garry. What would you say to that?
Garry Schleifer:Oh, has to be trees. Nothing like a good wooded area to just change my whole way of being. And the other is always water, like being near a beach. I recall sitting in Mexico. We've gone every winter for 25 years and sitting on a chair having a coffee just watching the waves roll in. That's it. And one other thing I do is when I rest, let's say I have a break in the afternoon, I'll put on a noise of water crashing to block out the rest of the noisy world that we live in.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, very much so.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, what do you notice like in your body? What shifts when you sort of sit in that forest or sit with that water?
Garry Schleifer:First word it comes to mind is relaxation, but like a release of stress. It's like there's nothing but beauty to observe. There's nothing but sounds of nature to listen to and absorb. It's just so calming.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, I love that and finding that for clients and for ourselves because that right there tells me that one of the great easy ways for you to reset your nervous system, if you're feeling that ego anxiety, is to find that meaningful connection. Because our ability to take meaningful action is directly related to our ability to calm our nervous system and to really feel grounded and connected into what matters because there is so much noise.
Garry Schleifer:Oh yeah, yeah, no, I, you're making me think that it's time to cause. It's not. Here's the weird thing, it's around here, you have to drive to nature. We don't have nice parks nearby. I'm in a commercial, like a suburban area, but there is one thing I must say, a connection for me, and that is there's a, I think it's a red-tailed hawk that lives around here Actually a couple of them, and amongst a bunch of high-rises. And just to look out the window and see that it's like. It's to me, it's like a single signal. My mom and my sisters and I always say, oh, there's dad, he passed in 2019. But like that, he occurs as a bird, right? So you just stop and think, oh my gosh, here in this suburban area, is this creature that survives and thrives. He looks great, big, wingspan and everything, and you know just, it goes to the word that you say a few times in your in your article about hope.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, yeah. You know, when we think about resilience, why I love using the concept of resilience in my work is part of that is teaching people that from an ecological and indigenous definition of resilience, resilience is actually the ability to adapt and transform ourselves in response to our environment and then with our environment. So the whole idea of resilience as like a bounce back metaphor is actually from the lumber industry and it's like how much pressure can a cut piece of wood take and then bounce back and return to its original cut structure without breaking. And I always tell everybody, like, I don't wanna be a cut piece of wood, I wanna be a tree, right. And then you think about, like, how resilient a tree is and the roots and how it can grow in a rock crevice and on the side of a cliff, right, you could imagine, you know, in mangroves and in the water, right, we can imagine all of these ways of thinking about a tree and resilience and sort of think of like, oh, that's what I want to be, I want to be like that, not a piece of wood. And at what point can I go before I break? And that's sort of part of the mindset shift of the red-tailed hawk is resilient? Right, you even use the word, it's adapted. Yeah, different environment.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, adapted, yeah, different environment. Yeah, well, that's beautiful to see. Yeah, so much to think about and I don't feel overwhelmed in this conversation, oddly. I feel a bit of hope as a result of the conversation and obviously rereading the article and seeing the steps. For me, it was very helpful, but also for you for bringing it home and asking me the questions about, like, how do I access my feelings around nature, what happens, and things like that. So I challenge all of our listeners and readers to do the do the same thing, just yeah just be in the moment of nature, find your nature spot.
Garry Schleifer:And you even suggest that in the article, right? So every time I'm reading it I'm like, okay, feet on the floor.
Garry Schleifer:The ground is way down there, somewhere 32 floors down, but it's there.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, and if you can't access, like you said, like you're in an area that doesn't have a lot of great outdoor nature spots, I really encourage people and not everyone has a good relationship with outdoor nature. Do you have a plant in your house and can you be with that nature? Can you do a visualization of the ocean?
Garry Schleifer:Tamara, it's that not that me be with nature. Nature don't want to be with me. Okay, I have to go outside to get my nature on.
Tamara Yakaboski:Well you can look out the window at the sky right.
Garry Schleifer:Exactly, and that's what I do too. That's my thinking place, by the way, even though it's the airport, the international airport, but it's just about the horizon and the looking out. I will say one more thing before we start to wrap, but that is I just went to the bank and store, ran a little errand, walking right, and I walked past a tree and I stopped because I think the buds are already coming out, even though it's freezing, not freezing, but just below freezing. That means different things in different countries, below zero, so yeah. So it was like, oh, one day I'm just gonna walk by and they're like, they're open, and that's always what happens here. It's just this miracle. Nature has its own resilience.
Tamara Yakaboski:It does. It's so creative right.
Garry Schleifer:Yeah.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, and this is a wonderful time of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere to really tap into the observation of budding and what's starting to bloom and what's turning green. Because that's very similar to the idea of active hope. When we talk about climate, hope has to be an action word.
Tamara Yakaboski:It can't be like the oh well, I just hope things work out okay, because you know what they're not going to.
Garry Schleifer:Fingers crossed, yeah right.
Tamara Yakaboski:So hope then becomes actionable, and that's why, sort of in the four-step process. We end. It's a cycle but it wraps up with action. So what's the thing today, Garry, that you're going to do from this conversation? What's that takeaway of one small thing that you can do that fuels that connection in that sense of agency?
Garry Schleifer:Yeah, well, I think I redid it, but I can do it again because the sun's shining and oh, it's crisp, it's nice, and tomorrow will be raining, which in itself, I love rain too. Like to watch the rain and the nourishment that it provides, and the recovery process especially in spring. So, Tamara, thank you so much for being with us. What else would you like our audience to do as a result of the article in this conversation?
Tamara Yakaboski:Oh, have more conversations. What I've learned is that we feel more hopeful and more empowered the more we're in conversations with other people, because this is a community effort. So find someone to talk to, open up the conversation and see where it goes.
Garry Schleifer:And follow the steps and do what you did with me today. That was awesome. What's the best way to reach you?
Tamara Yakaboski:By email is great. I'm also on different social platforms, but email and I know one of the things I'm sharing with listeners is actually a guide on some of the common cognitive barriers to climate engagement. So I would say, engage in that, go through some activities and some reflection and let me know how it goes.
Garry Schleifer:Awesome. And for those that are listening and not watching, what's the website?
Tamara Yakaboski:My website is my name, so tamarayakaboski. com. And you'll have to probably get a spelling. Uh, okay, the last name is just for everybody, unless you've got that.
Garry Schleifer:Just go look at the recording of the article and you can find it so that and we'll put a link in below as well so you can pull it up afterwards. Thank you so much, Tamara, for joining us today for this Beyond the Page episode.
Tamara Yakaboski:Yeah, thanks, Garry. Thanks to everybody listening and reading.
Garry Schleifer:And to those that care enough about our planet to engage in this conversation, especially as coaches. One thing I have to say is I never imagined this when I first started working on this issue. It was Renee Friedman who said she's done this for like 30 years and I'm like my two things in nature mine's more reduced, reuse, recycle. I'm like on that realm of it and coaching my two passions. So now, all of a sudden, I get to talk about both of them in an open forum.
Garry Schleifer:That's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app. Don't forget to subscribe and like and refer us to your friends. If you're not a subscriber to choice Magazine, you can sign up for a free digital issue by scanning the QR code in the top right-hand corner of our screen or by going to choice-online. com and clicking the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery.