“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
~Victor Frankl
Sometimes I think that if I could change the world, and run everything the way I want, then the world would be a better place. I’m a good guy. I have good intentions. I want the best for everyone; so it sounds like a good plan, right?
Why not just make me the king of the world? I would have the smartest people in the world serving in my cabinet to solve all the important issues that I don’t know much about. The rest will work itself out.
The truth of the matter is that we’ve all had that thought in our minds at one point or another. It’s our ego’s natural yearning. If only I got my way. If only I ruled the world. An even greater truth is that none of us are going to become the king of the world anytime soon. It would probably be a very lonely job, anyway. Too many responsibilities, too much on one person’s shoulders.
So how do we go about changing the world if we don’t have supreme reign over everything? The bad news is that it’s still our individual responsibility. Despite not being the kings of the world, the changes we make as individuals can and will impact the rest of the world if executed with great precision and passion.
Where We Make The Most Impact
I am convinced that we can create the most change in the world by concentrating our resources where we can have the most potential impact. This focus, unlike spreading our resources thin, allows us to have a more direct impact on individuals.
The part of the world in which we make the most impact, whether we like it or not, is within our families and small circles of friends. We may be successful in converting our family into believers, and they may even turn out to be our biggest group of supporters, or not. The point, however, does not lie in the way they treat us, but rather it’s in our behavior, and the actions we exhibit from our end; the way we treat them!
Being able to express compassion, patience, love, and understanding for the people in our families, despite opposing views belief systems, allows us to expand our ability to empathize with others. These abilities, which in my opinion are critical in interpersonal relationships, will become ingrained in us as second nature.
The fact that we have such a high level of influence on the people closest to us, our families and close friends, will make them more susceptible to picking up on these behaviors and adopting them as their very own. Thus, we spread compassion, patience, love and understanding. From one person leading by example to another.
Taking Impact To The Next Level
While transforming the world for our own families can be very fulfilling, many of our egos will strive for prolific change in the world. In one sense, our egos’ mission is to conquer the world. Whether it conquers it with a message of love or destruction depends on the individual ego.
You may think that family does not need to be a first step, and that you are perfectly capable of changing the entire world without such a close social bond. You’ll soon find out that human beings do not operate on such a paradigm. Whether blood related or not, people tend to gravitate to others, and eventually form a family unit. It’s a survival mechanism.
This is why I say to first work on yourself, then your family, and then the rest of the world. From this powerful core and support system you will have better resources, mental, material, and spiritual, in order to make breakthroughs with hundreds, thousands, or millions of people around the globe.
I leave you with this. Take into consideration how your global goal plays into your mission statement. Discover who you are going to be around your family in order to spread your message. Figure out how you will enroll the rest of the world into your possibilities.