Contemplating the wide-ranging social, economic and environmental forces acting on our society and the planet can induce vertigo: The closer one looks, the more unsettling everything seems.

Realistic Sanctuary aims to provide a window for looking at how we might healthily address the cumulative effects of increasingly rapid change. This blog argues that becoming realistic about humanity’s problems is only the first challenge.

The second challenge-to take refuge from the emotional weight of upsetting trends-is equally important. That's why creating and experiencing sanctuary needs to work in tandem with understanding the world's problems.

Realistic Sanctuary explores how being pragmatic, while harnessing sanctuary to shift cognition towards slowness, might help people:

• Become calmer and more appreciative in the present
• Come to terms with this century's threats to human well being
• Prepare for an increasingly unpredictable tomorrow.

Why might this approach be needed? There's an emerging strand of research-on which I reported in an article soon to be published in Worldchanging-that suggests changes to an ecosystem's health may correspond to mental health impacts.

If true, mental health problems related to climate change (or other forms of ecosystem disturbance) would combine synergistically with other stresses, leading to a greater incidence of anxiety and depression than already foreseen by the United Nations, which predicts depression will be the second largest cause of workplace disability by 2030.

The implication is that safeguarding soundness of mind and body will be central to adapting to large changes that are actively in motion.

Realistic Sanctuary could help individuals perceive life differently and determine a sustainable course of action. It can make it possible to reflect on the reality of accelerating change.

That's why I believe it may be possible to develop an inner core that can withstand major economic and climatic changes and affirm life in spite of them.

We can harness that core to help make our friends, families and communities more calm, mutually supportive and resilient.

On a personal note, while I am sharing insight drawn from years of thinking about sustainability, innovation and more, I'm using the idea of Realistic Sanctuary as a pathway to being more engaged with family, friends and local/global communities.

It's true: We're in this together.