Changing the World? Start Here.

“My life is my message.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

To change the world with intention, with purpose, we have to start how and where anyone who has ever changed the world has ever started.

Almost everyone knows at least some parts of the story of Mahatma Gandhi.  He is remembered as a man whose dedication to truth, freedom, and nonviolence helped lead to India’s independence from Great Britain and inspired a revolutionary approach to social change that would ripple out to inspire countless other people, including Martin Luther King, Jr., for years to come.

This is how we remember Gandhi as he was at the end of his life, when he embodied his message.  We remember him as saying, “there are many causes I would die for.  There is not a single cause I would kill for.” We remember him as he was when his hunger strikes were able to quiet riots, and his presence was able to calm the violence of country in tumult.

But Gandhi wasn’t born like this–premade, ready to die for his causes, ready to be beaten for what he believed in, to help lead India to independence.  And I’m sure that the only people who cared when young Gandhi refused to eat his vegetables were his parents or whoever was taking care of him at the time.

No–Gandhi started in a very different place.  When he was younger, he stole money from servants to buy cigarettes.  He was a jealous and controlling husband.  At one point he tried to commit suicide (his autobiography, if you’d like to read it, is downloadable free, here).  He was hardly the man we remember.

He worked his entire life to embody his message, yet he started his journey to becoming his best self, to become the man who could halt a violent conflict with a hunger strike, by starting where anyone who has ever accomplished anything has started: where he was.  When he was.  With himself.  As he was.

One of his most potent, formative moments when he was younger was confessing and apologizing for stealing to his father.  He would build on that step (and the his many other “experiments in truth”) for the rest of his life.  But it started with himself.  With realizing where he was, and moving to change it.  Starting with just a sincere apology.

Gandhi’s most quoted advice (although it is more of a paraphrase), “Be the change you wish to see in the world,”  is the hardest to live, because it is about starting with ourselves.

Sometimes this is not glamorous.  Sometimes it’s not even pretty.  And sometimes meeting ourselves where we are, taking the next step, seems laughably small and insignificant for anyone with big dreams.

Starting Here, Now

Not too long ago, I found myself in the middle of one The Week–one of the worst I can remember, when everything seemed to crash down all at once.  The Week when I was confronted with the fact that I had to cancel the program I had been crafting with passion and love for over a year, two weeks before it would run, losing everything that I had invested.  The Week when one of the most intense romantic relationships of my life exploded in a mess of heartbreak.  The Week when I couldn’t face the fact that an incredibly important person in my life was diagnosed with an awful disease.  For some reason, during The Week, everything happened at once.

I was so angry, bitter, hurt, and depressed.  But I knew I had to start where I was.  And there I was,  on the couch watching TV to try and forget my life, in between crying and reading Harry Potter to try and make myself feel better.  Hiding from my friends and eating lots of chocolate.

My next step, glamorous or not, was–on and emotional level–to figure out how to let go of the pain I was feeling. On a material level–to just get off the couch.  Almost a year earlier I had been (no matter what I felt about it) working at a firm that was a leader in our field, doing innovative work, helping to build a new industry, and getting paid well.  Now, here I was, broke, heartbroken, afraid, depressed, a person who’s next step to doing anything was just: get off the couch.    And then there I was, crying as I walked to work.

Where Are You?

You know that you already change the world.  To do it with intention, you have to start somewhere.  When we think about Changing the World it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but there is really only one logical, one possible place to start: here.  Even if here is just getting off the couch.

Here, now, is the place that can lead you to anywhere you want to go.  Starting here, now, with what you have, no matter how small, seemingly insignificant, or laughable, is how anyone who has ever done anything has ever started.

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth both started as slaves on plantations, without even their freedom.

Ben Franklin arrived in Philadelphia with a dollar in his pocket.

Steve Jobs started by watching his father work on a car in his garage.

So where are you?

Maybe you are in the middle of a divorce. Or getting ready to graduate. Stuck in a job you don’t want anymore, unsure what you do want.  In an organization you’re not sure is effective.  Building something you aren’t sure you believe in.  Or something you are absolutely are sure you believe in, but aren’t sure will work.    Starting out on a new a crazy path that is completely unknown, or trying to  pick up the pieces of something that failed.

How are you? Physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, materially?  What is going on around you?  What are you helping happen?  What are you not making happen that you wish you were making happen?

Be careful as you notice: there’s no need to judge yourself or blame yourself, if it’s not where you’d hoped, if you’re not where you wanted. That’s not particularly useful.  After all, if our goal is to get better, to make things better, the past is a helpful teacher–and the future is our opportunity.  Wherever we are, however we are, as individuals or organizations,  the first step is to meet ourselves there.  To be here, so we can start here, with ourselves.

Wherever you are, however you are, you have the potential and the power to change yourself, to change your life, to change the world for the better.  The first step is noticing and acknowledging where that is, whatever it is.

So, where are you?

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Feel free to leave note in the comments.  You know how people sometimes write things like “I was here?” in places they shouldn’t?  Well, if you’d like,  I would love it if you would do that here.   Leave a marker, like me, to show where you are now  So that you can come back later and see how far you’ve come.  And how everything you’ve done later has built, in one way or another, on those humble next steps.

Here’s mine:

“I am here.  In my late twenties, still figuring things out.  Healthy, but not in shape.  Living in an apartment in a house that jiggles and rattles like an earthquake whenever a truck drives by.  I am dusting myself off after a year filled with heartbreak, failure, and fear.  At the beginning of building something I really care about, fresh with the memory of failure and shortcomings, but armed with the hard learned lessons they gave me.  With debt.  And amazing friends.  With a love of writing and solving problems, and seeing the magic in other people.  I am here. And this is where I’m starting.”