Inner Development Goals - Transformational Skills for Sustainable Development

It's taken a few years to discover that it won't be possible to reach the original and highly promoted UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 without getting deeper into the human aspects that impact all these things. And more specifically, the inner development of humans. So now the top minds in the world have added Inner Development Goals, which they call "transformational skills for inner development".

"We bring the power of inner development to all global challenges faced by humanity." IDG

It's great to hear that scientists and the academia are starting to see a clear connection between our human development and fixing our greatest challenges.

Robert Kegan, a professor in Adult Development at Harvard University talks about widening our perspective, and not trying to fix problems with the same mindset that got us into this mess. Watch the clip here.

My Commentary

We just "celebrated" two special days: International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2022, and World Food Day: Another year of global record hunger looms amid food and climate crisis.

We're not actually short of anything. The only thing we're short of is caring enough to want to distribute the globe's resources in a way that benefits everyone.

Feed Everyone Before Anything Else

Before we dive into improving our inner development, we need to make sure that every person on the planet has their basic needs met. We're not actually short of anything. The only thing we're short of is caring enough to want to distribute the globe's resources in a way that benefits everyone. There are people in the world starving, living in unsafe and unhealthy conditions, being abused and exploited, and a very cold winter is coming up since energy prices have increased so much. We need to fix the hunger by actually growing food wherever it's needed in the world. By educating locals to be independent suppliers of their own food. Without food, it will be impossible to begin working on our human development.

Transitioning from Individual Development to Collective Development

Another issue is that all these scientists and foundations are still speaking in terms of our individual development. But we have completely different conditions in the world now that are pushing us to learn to advance collectively. These are two very different paths. On the first path we remain in the narrow and limited space of the human ego - so nothing will really change. On the latter path we pool our human capacities to expand our perspective together. The second is a far more powerful and efficient way for advancing, and actually all our human development from this point forward will be collective. The days of self-improvement and self-development are over and never returning.

The Heart of the Matter

I wonder how many years it will take for all these scientists and foundations to understand that you can no longer talk about working on adult development, without talking about the human ego. Even if we all acquire all of these wonderful "science-based skills and qualities that help us to live purposeful, sustainable, and productive lives", we still won't be able to reach the SDGs in time for 2030.

What is really blocking the good energy from flowing through the world and providing everyone with the good vibes they need to thrive? The growing human ego is the big elephant in the room that needs to be addressed. Then we'll have a better understanding of why we're mainly concerned about ourselves, and how this is preventing us from reaching sustainability. Once we begin to focus on learning to rise above our ego to connect with others, everything will start to return to a balanced state.

Missing a Method

How did they put this list of skills together? "The Inner Development Goals represents crowd-sourced wisdom of all ages and all cultures. We have not invented any of the skills or methods. We are building a constantly evolving, open source learning ecosystem where we listen, collect and connect the dots. It is a continuous journey of co-creation with many participants." Inner Development Goals

All this sounds wonderful but until we learn to deal with our clashing egos, we won't be able to enjoy an "open source learning ecosystem". So even though some of these skill categories sound like they will achieve this, such as: #3 Relating — Caring for Others and the World, and #4 Collaborating — Social Skills, you need to apply a method that was designed for overriding the human ego in order to genuinely acquire these types of skills. Because they involve transforming the toxic energy between us into the premium fuel we'll need to navigate the new era. And it can't be a method that was developed by a human ego. No method dreamed up by an individual will help us get past this great obstacle - the barrier to all the good we're seeking. The only method in the world for overcoming the human ego is the Integral Method, which helps us experience how interdependent we are, and learn how to connect above our differences.

I'll know we are closer to reaching sustainability when one of these reports puts a far greater emphasis on investing in human connection - that's where all the creativity and trust will come from. Learning to tap into our collective intelligence together with people from all over the world.