Start working on your Inner Development Goals now

The current challenges for humankind we experience such as loneliness, climate change, political crises, polarization, and conflict are all caused by human behaviors. The good news is that human behavior is something that we can control. To steward the trajectory of our world on a better course Inner development is key.

Scientists, politicians, delegates, and governments are starting to tease out and align on what type of inner development and inner skills are essential to have a chance to create a flourishing world and also reach the 17 Sustainable Development Goals defined by the UN by 2030.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) act as a roadmap to orient the UN member states on their global mission to navigate climate change, economic and social inequality. The 17 goals include aspirations to eliminate hunger and poverty as well as improve education and produce clean energy. While these goals present an inspiring vision, they neglect the holistic perspective that will make it possible. A beautiful world can only be made manifest by equally beautiful principles and processes that underpin transformation. The challenges that produced the global meta crisis are birthed by our dominant thought processes and mental models — over-reliance on rationality, a mechanistic world view, atomistic individualism, infinite growth, and meritocracy, just to name a few examples.

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Without a radical shift in the structure of our inner world, we cannot bring about that equally radical shift in our exterior world.

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As time ticks on, the gaps meant to be filled by the SDGs widen, wreaking complex and long-term havoc on our global society with inequality and climate disaster multiplying day by day. As above, so below, as without, so within—deaths of despair are on the rise in the developed world with suicide, alcohol, and drug-related deaths at historic highs. The insidious and deep trauma of mass economic inequality and environmental pollution debilitate our collective mental health and well-being. We believe these problems are symptoms. The root causes disconnect us from our self, from others, and nature, making the collaboration, courage, and commitment needed to bring about the SDGs difficult if not impossible.

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) aim to do just that. They compliment the SDGs by identifying the personal and interpersonal skills and capacities that we must develop to make the vision of the SDGs possible.

The five categories (containing 23 sub-categories) aim our focus on improving our relationship with ourselves, our communities, and nature, as well as improving our cognitive capacities and ability to collaborate with others to bring about change and act on our vision.
But how do we implement these changes at a scale large enough to create change? Any framework we adopt requires tools that are cheap, evidence-based, and widely available.

29k can train the skills mapped by the IDGs and provide the data that measures the effects of those interventions. It can provide the information that researchers and policymakers need to understand how increased inner development leads to more sustainable behavior, the changes we need to reach those SDGs by 2030.