The Female Indiana Jones
Hello our beautiful friends! Today we have an extremely inspiring and alarming conversation with Alison Teal, modern life female Indiana Jones and oceans advocate. Alison combines storytelling, adventurous spirit and love of exploration to raise awareness, educate people around the world and share the positive outlook on apocalyptical issues. In this conversation, we discuss sustainability, consequences of plastic pollution, and humans’ ability to change it all.
Alison Teal was a Tarzan child, travelling around the world with her photographer parents who worked for the National Geographic. At the age of 7, she climbed the Himalayas with her family looking for Yeti. Growing up in organic wild lifestyle, Alison’s childhood taught her that magic is real, and what you can dream and imagine can actually become your reality. No surprise, she became a storyteller and a filmmaker.
“You always discover something new if you can just get out of the house. And you will be amazed by what you can do just by being human and talking to others.” – Alison Teal
Being an adventurous spirit, it’s not as important to see more new countries for Alison as it is to return to the places she was raised in to preserve their unique cultures. It’s the reason why she has started the film series Alison’s Adventures, documenting the tribes she was growing up in, willing to share their sacred, ancient and authentic stories with future generations.
“Nowadays, it’s more important to jump out of technology into the unknown, because then you will make real human connections.“ – Alison Teal
As she went on this type of Indiana Jones trips uncovering mysteries, legends and myths, she couldn’t ignore the environmental impact of the humans’ trace. The plastic was everywhere she went—in the rivers, deserts, and oceans—, and then she decided to expose this huge urgent issue to the world.
Alison was one of the first Naked and Afraid show participants. The show went viral, and Alison understood she had the platform to highlight the plastic pollution issue. She started raising awareness by creating films about the Trash Island. This small, yet powerful action demonstrated that one person can actually make the difference and inspire others.
“No matter where I go, and regardless of politics, wealth, and religion, the one commonality is that there is plastic everywhere. But, the craziest part is that this apocalyptical issue could potentially take the humans down, but it also can bound people together, because the only way to find the solution is by working together.” – Alison Teal
Alison is sure there are all kinds of alternatives awaiting to be implemented, but there has to be openness to the switch; willingness to implement the change; and awareness. As a filmmaker and storyteller, her mission is to shock people in a way of demonstrating what’s happening to the world. “When people see it, they can actually believe it,'' she explains.
Alison believes that baby steps are important. “Do your best when you can,'' she suggests. And one thing we all can start doing is very simple (so, no excuse!): we have a new form of storytelling called social media, and by one click of sharing something, we can help people get more aware and engaged, and therefore change laws.
“Life is about balance. You can’t stress about plastic, climate change or the impact of flying on the plane all the time, because you aren’t going to stop it tomorrow. There are realities in life that you need to do, but you need to sit down and realize how can you improve it.” – Alison Teal
Alison’s secret to turning an ordinary life into the adventurous one is simple: talk to people. After traveling the world, connecting with different cultures and going through incredible experiences, Alison realized that we have to come together as a world to throw away the stereotypes and start taking care of each other, because that’s what will help the human race keep going and evolving.
A lot of inspirational leaders say that you can either live out of fear or live out of love – you can’t do both. For Alison, “love” word is confusing, so she is spreading around the “aloha”, a word of greeting, representation of feeling good, and a sense of happiness and acceptance, all together. By being out there in this world and sharing her adventures, Alison helps people dive into nature, fall in love with it, and have an innate desire to protect it.
Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode with Alison, you can find out more about her here:
Also, here is Alison’s TEDxTalk – Discovering the greatest Treasure on Earth
Designed to inspire you to live your own dream life.
You can find out more about Alex and Mimi here:
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https://www.youtube.com/mimiikonn
https://www.youtube.com/alexikonn
Produced by Jason Sanderson - Podcast Tech
Show notes by Veronica Joce
