I love a good dramatic change story as much as the next guy. But when it comes to making positive change in our lives (and in the world), sometimes it’s the more subtle variety that ends up being most effective.
The process goes a little something like this:
- Awareness
- Action
- Additional inputs
- Additional action
- Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
In the description below, I use the example of my choices about food as an example, but it applies to any change you feel called to make.
Awareness
Here, the seeds of change are planted and the door to change is opened. A need is seen. A reason for doing something is learned. You see that something isn’t working, or recognize a better way of doing things.
Wherever it comes from, that awareness starts to create a framework, a new way of looking at the world. A paradigm shift – maybe big, maybe small – is underway.
For example:
One example of the potential for positive change through evolution is the food I eat. Five years ago I may have eaten organic food occasionally, but for the most part it just wasn’t on my radar screen.
Enter awareness. Several years ago I started an alternative energy blog because I wanted to learn more about the issues. That in turn spawned a blog on sustainability.
The more I read about the issues, the more aware I was, not just of the positive health impact of organic food, but also of the negative environmental impacts of a lot of factory-farming. I started to feel a need to make different choices.
Action
As you see the need or opportunity for change, you feel compelled to take action. It might not be big and dramatic action. It could be just a small step; sometimes change comes by way of consistent, persistent action on what feels doable and within reach.
As you take action, you start to develop new ways of doing things. New habits form, and what once felt like a stretch way outside your comfort zone gradually becomes “doable and within reach.”
For example:
That awareness didn’t immediately shift my consumption – organic food was more expensive, and I still hadn’t overcome the mental hurdle of paying more than I needed to. But it did make me think every time I went to the store.
Over time, bit-by-bit, I started buying more organic food. By now, I don’t even pay attention to the non-organic produce section.
My migration to organic food happened slowly and naturally, and ultimately it became a new way of doing things. It became part of a new paradigm.
Additional inputs
Part of the magic of having a new framework is that it gives you a place to put new insights that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Maybe you hear a new piece of information that’s relevant to the change you have underway. Or perhaps you have an experience that plants a seed for something more you need to do.
Without the framework, it might simply bounce in and out of your field of view. Like only one half of a strip of Velcro, there’s nothing for it to latch onto. But the framework gives it a place.
For example:
My friend Sara has an organic farm (she is also a marketing consultant, so she’s incredibly busy). A few weeks ago she had several dozen duck eggs that she hadn’t had time to sell. She didn’t want them to go bad. Looking at how jammed her schedule was at the time, and the relatively small return for the effort of selling the eggs (compared to the time it would take), I thought she should just chalk it up as a loss.
She would have none of it, and made a comment that stuck in my mind. “Those ducks worked hard on those eggs. I don’t want to just waste them.” To her, it was about more than money and time management (she ultimately donated them to a food bank).
Ever since then, I have been increasingly aware of waste. I think of all the food that has become a science experiment in my refrigerator, molding and turning to goo until I finally throw it out. Sara’s comment personalized it a bit for me. It wasn’t just throwing out eggs that randomly showed up in the refrigerator. It was throwing out something that ducks I “knew” had put their life force into creating.
Unknowingly, she connected some dots for me. It got me thinking about waste in the bigger picture. How much energy goes into what we consume and what we waste.
Additional action
Those additional inputs, in turn, both add to the framework and spark more action you can take in pursuit of positive change.
Over time, the framework morphs and grows. The actions you take create new habits and (hopefully) better results.
For example:
Does waste still happen in my refrigerator? Yeah, unfortunately. But I’m starting to be much more conscious of it. I'm also more conscious of it in terms of my consumption overall, not just as it relates to food.
My paradigm is morphing and growing.
The big picture
The point of this post isn’t that you should eat organic food. It’s that awareness followed by action – even slowly unfolding action – can have a world-changing effect. Maybe the world that gets changed is your own personal world. Or the world of the people around you. Or maybe it’s something more far-reaching.
Whatever it is, never underestimate the world-changing power of awareness and small steps.
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