Ending the Tour for Regeneration: A Threshold Moment for 2026 and Beyond

How a personal journey becomes a collective invitation to regenerate ourselves, our cities, and the systems shaping our future.

Before the Tour for Regeneration began, my life seemed stable and successful from the outside. I had a long-term home, a respected company, and a strong professional identity forged in the built environment and global PropTech world. But something fundamental within me had fallen silent. Inside, the landscape felt flat and muted, as if a deeper pulse had left the room. That silence revealed something I had been avoiding: the life I had built could no longer contain the person I was becoming. The rupture was subtle but undeniable. What I didn't fully realise at the time was that this personal rupture was part of a much larger pattern. Many of the systems, industries, and urban environments I was (in)directly part of were also nearing the end of their cycles. The disconnect I felt within myself mirrored the disconnection unfolding around the world, as within, so without.

Stepping Into the Unknown: Letting Go of Home, Identity, and Old Urban Paradigms

The call to regenerate didn't come suddenly. It began softly, in the form of restlessness, discomfort, and a growing realisation that staying where I was would eventually wear down the parts of me still longing to grow. By mid-2023, the message was clear: carrying on with "more of the same" was no longer viable. I made a decision that would alter the course of my life. I sold my house in June - finalising the financial deal while in Bogotá - and moved out in August 2024 to embark on what I called the Tour for Regeneration. At the end of 2024, I also concluded my international PropTech for Good activities. This wasn't an escape from my life; it was a commitment to foster the conditions for a new chapter. The guiding question became transformative yet simple: What is possible when I cease repairing the past and start creating the conditions that enable life to flourish? That question, I now realise, is one that our urban environments, organisations, and individuals should also be asking themselves.

Letting go, however, wasn't graceful. The identity I had built over more than twenty years – such as founder, initiator, and homeowner – held me tightly. These identities had shaped not only my work but also my sense of self. Letting them go meant facing the possibility of losing everything I believed defined me. The tension between the desire for freedom and the fear of the unknown became the crucible I had to navigate (and still do). What made this moment even more significant was the realisation that it reflected the world around me. Our urban environments, industries, and organisations also cling to traditional thinking patterns, while sensing the emergence of new paradigms. Just as I had to shed what no longer served me, these entities must also learn to let go of outdated structures in order to regenerate.

Crossing the Threshold: Inner and Outer Regeneration in Cities, Landscapes, and Systems

The threshold to a new way of life did not suddenly appear. It unfolded through conversations, driving, landscapes, flights, and above all, choices. I've wandered through Portugal, Helsinki, Riyadh, Oslo, Valencia, Lisbon, Japan, and am currently in Bogotá and other parts of Colombia. As I travelled through these diverse places, I observed cities, villages, ecosystems, and communities with a fresh perspective. I began to understand that "inner and outer regeneration" were not two separate journeys, but two sides of the same evolutionary process. Inner regeneration reshapes mindset, emotional coherence, purpose, and identity. Outer regeneration transforms systems, relationships, places, and the built environment. As I crossed various landscapes, I felt myself stepping out of a linear world and into a living world – relational, ecological, unpredictable, and alive. What was happening within me reflected what I saw around me: a global movement from extraction to reciprocity, from optimisation to aliveness, from mechanistic thinking to the intelligence of living systems. My personal threshold crossing was part of a collective threshold that the world is now navigating (intermediate phase, transition phase, 'in between' phase, “standstill” phase).

Trials, Descent, and Dissolution: A Microcosm of the World’s Regenerative Transition

The first trials and insights arrived in Portugal, as with any genuine journey. Without the structures I once depended on, I became vulnerable to patterns I had never taken the time to address. Travel, study, new relationships, shifting resources, and uncertainty uncovered everything I had been avoiding. I had to learn to listen rather than control, to sense my place rather than ignore it, to move at the pace of relationships rather than prioritise efficiency. These lessons were not just personal; they revealed truths about the systems I had dedicated my career to influencing. Many organisations and cities now face their own trials, stripped of the certainty that once guided them (in other words, most ecological, social, and economic problems of the past are no longer solved by classical approaches). The trials of my journey became a lens through which to understand what our world must endure as it moves towards a regenerative future.

Finally, the descent becomes a transformative journey in which identity dissolves and a deeper truth becomes inevitable. Mine was shaped through uncertainty, financial ambiguity, relational liminality, and the collapse of behaviours that once protected me. During that descent (consciously begun during my 29 days in Japan in March-April 2025, when I wrote the blog “10 Reasons Why Urban Environment Stakeholders Should Cultivate Regeneration”, and accelerated during my stay with Alejandra in Portugal during the summer of 2025), I confronted parts of myself I had avoided for years. It was disorienting and, at times, even humiliating, but necessary. The descent stripped me of my essence and forced me to let go of the last remnants of an identity that no longer served who I was becoming. This inner collapse reflected something larger: an ecological and societal decline unfolding around us. Old myths, old economic logics, and old urban paradigms are all dissolving simultaneously. My descent became a microcosm of humanity's collective decline.

Renewal, Integration, and Return: Embodying Regenerative Leadership for 2026 and Beyond

Renewal didn't happen all at once. It gradually unfolded quietly, almost without notice. It moved through forests and mountains, through silence and ceremonies, through meaningful conversations, creativity, and relationships that valued truth over comfort. Renewal wasn't something I actively pursued; it was something I allowed to develop naturally. As I softened, I rediscovered values I had long sensed but never fully embodied: relational leadership, ecological coherence, and creativity grounded in life. Renewal helped me see these values not only as personal truths but also as guiding principles for regenerative partnerships, cities, organisations, and communities. The renewal of my inner landscape became the foundation for the work I feel called to do.

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Healing occurred through integration, as I united the parts of myself that had long been in conflict. I began to reconcile the visionary with the grounded architect, the executer with the soul-centred essence, the strategist with the partner, the public identity with the private persona. I repaired the gap between home as a physical place and home as a relational space (home is where your heart is and bigger than a house), between external achievement and internal meaning, and between doing work for the world (save the planet) and living with the world (serve the earth). As these parts united, the separation that had once defined my life faded away. This integration became a blueprint for something far greater. Cities, organisations, and societies are also called to reconcile inner and outer transformation by merging the ecological with the technological, the human with the natural, and the systemic with the spiritual. The healing in my life mirrored the healing the world now needs. Today I stand at the threshold of a new cycle, shaped not by wandering but by grounding, creation, and embodied leadership. The Tour ends not because the journey is complete, but because its goal is reached. I have shed what I should have let go of. I have made the descent. I have rediscovered who I am. What is unfolding now is a new chapter that will unfold in the coming years, a chapter rooted in love, belonging, health, system value creation, partnership, and community. And this next chapter is not just personal. It aligns closely with the emerging needs of our time: cities that function as living systems, organisations that act as stewards, and communities rooted in connection, reciprocity, and purpose.

The coming cycle urges me to become a living instrument, grounding my health in place, rhythm, vitality, and embodiment. It encourages me to redefine prosperity through stewardship and system value creation;  co-develop business activities as a living ecosystem for personal, organisational, and urban leadership, and for regenerative investment. It challenges me to deepen love, nurture partnerships, build community, and co-create activities with partners rooted in trust and reciprocity. These commitments are both personal and collective. They offer a path forward for all who seek to create a future that regenerates rather than depletes.

When I launched the Tour for Regeneration in 2024, I wrote that it was time to unlock new potential to step out of the familiar and into a field of stronger possibilities. What I did not yet realise was how profoundly that intention would reshape me totally. Looking back over the past decades and cycles, one thing becomes undeniably clear: the roles I inhabited, the identities I carried, and the transitions I experienced were never isolated events. They were movements within a greater symphony. A deeper rhythm. A collective transformation that many are now beginning to perceive. The Tour for Regeneration revealed itself as a personal microcosm of the world’s own transition. As I travelled through countries, forests, cities, monasteries, and thresholds, the journey mirrored humanity’s wider passage through dissolution, unlearning, and the shedding of outdated maps.

Ending the Tour for Regeneration: A Threshold Moment for 2026

In the same way that global systems began to crumble, I released my home, my business, and my former identity. This was never a detour. It became the lived experience of the Aquarian transition – an in-between state, like the fragile moment when a nymph climbs from the water, not yet knowing it is becoming a dragonfly. And now, just as the first blog opened a doorway, this moment closes a chapter. On December 4th, the wandering Tour for Regeneration reached its end on Monserrate, the 3,152-meter summit overlooking Bogotá, and the regenerative life begins. The skin that needed shedding has been shed. What remains is clearer, heartfelt, and attuned to life. My evolution reflects the world’s evolution. My rebirth mirrors a broader rebirth underway. We are all being invited into new roles for the emerging era. And 2026 marks the beginning of that story: a return to connection, community, partnership, and the creation of a sanctuary, both inner and outer. This moment is not about coming back. It is about becoming. Becoming aligned with the abundant, regenerative way of living that has been calling to us all along.

Author:

Menno Lammers