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Change the World: Turn the You into We

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The Reverend’s Speech

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The difference I’m about to explain is so subtle I don’t know whether I can explain it well in a short bit of text. I’ve been working on this as a writing post, as a relationship post, and now finally, I’ve put it with the Change the World series. The story is about sensitivity to the way use words and how those words affect how we see the world, each other, and our place in it. That the reverend was speaking of changing the world is a coincidence that I hope won’t distract. . . .

At to my son’s college graduation in May, I listened deeply to the commencement speech. It took a lifetime to get to the moment — my son’s lifetime. I listened as he might. I listened as a parent who knew what his education cost. I listened as a writer who watched the audience from a wonderful vantage point. I listened as a blogger for words I might share in a Change the World post.

The well-known Reverend who gave the commencement address had two things going for him. He’s the editor of a national magazine, and he’s well practiced at inspirational speaking.

The message the reverend brought was well-written and deeply felt. It was meant, I think, to be about hope as an action. I heard him say these sentences.

Hope is not a word. Hope is choice.

I was engaged in where this would go. Yes, I thought.

Then he spoke of sad things in the world and how we accept and tolerate those situations because we believe that we cannot change them. He used the pronoun we.

Unfortunately, when he spoke of the future and changing what is framed it inside the wrong pronoun. He changed the pronoun to you. Forgive me as I paraphrase what he said. Please know that I’m being true to the message that came across.

You can choose not to tolerate . . .

You can choose not to accept . . .

I wondered what happened to we.

I couldn’t help but think of the graduates on this day they had looked forward for so many years. Maybe I’m overly sensitive. I could be too protective. But I think he could have had a more powerful inspirational impact had he considered the people he was trying to inspire.

You see, the reverend spoke from a podium high upon a stage. He was talking to graduates who sat in chairs listening as they had for most their school careers.

You can stop tolerating situations in which children don’t have enough to eat . . .

In that context, it was almost as if he had given them one more assignment dressed up in inspirational words. This time there would be no grade, no classroom or email support. The test would be the shape of the world.

If only, he had chosen the pronoun “we.”

We can stop tolerating situations in which children don’t have enough to eat. . .

The assignment would have become a shared cause.

The reverend could have changed the world, could have changed how those graduates saw their role, with just one word.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Start a New Job

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Change My Job with a Thought

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Ever hear someone talk about a brand new job? Whenever I do, it takes be back to those nice first day of school feelings.

Life seems light. The world is fresh. Even the kids that that we knew from last year start to look and act better. Everything is new beginnings — new desk, new paper, new pens, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. New jobs are like that.

I bring myself back from the new job fantasy by recalling how long it takes to get familiar in a new place. Every new job takes time to learn the culture, the people, and how to get things done when I need to. That’s a lot to give up once you’ve gotten there.

New beginnings are wonderful and fresh, but being around a while offers the relationships, credibility, and support of a familiar place. I want the values of both without lose the downside of each.

I wanted that enough that I figured out how to make it happen. The trick is to blend the old and the new together.

All it took was a change in the way that I see.

Today, I start a new job, doing the job that I did last week. I let go. I wipe the slate clean. I imagine that I inherited this busy desk from the busy person before me. It’s a good feeling to put that distance between now and Friday.

All of the tasks on this desk held no romance for the person who sat here on Friday. But the new me walks into this job looking at them as filled with promise and so exciting.

Thoughts of someone who isn’t delivering turn from an ongoing headache into the challenge and opportunity that a fresh mind sees. That situation has just become information the person previously in this job shared before leaving. It’s simply a fact on my radar that has no past feelings attached to it. The problem solver in me knows that I’m more than ready to smile into a new approach.

A clean slate is like the first day of school filled with new beginnings– new desk, new paper, new pen, new problems to solve, new ways to solve them, a chance to see what I can do. I take a new look and my old job becomes new like that too.

The people I work with notice that I’ve got a new outlook and soon they have one too.

I’m taking a new job to work with me today. I can feel it already.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Get Some Perspective

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Selective Memory

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As we get to be adults, we have conversations about growing up. Often those conversations center around our parents and what they did wrong. . . . I often recall a college friend saying, “When does it stop being our parents fault?”

I don’t know whether my childhood was happy, I only remember specific memories — even those seem to be a story told from my own point of view . . . as I found out about this one.

I told my older, older brother about my son’s attitude as teenager. I said, “I never had the nerve to talk to my mother that way.”

My older, older bother laughed. He said, “Ah, your selective memory! When your niece was your son’s age, I heard her talk back to her mother . . . how often I thought ‘Oh that’s familiar.’ It was a replay of my little sister talking to my mother. Why do you think I say my daughter is so like her aunt?”

Now I look back and think,”Yeah, I was a brat just like every other 17-year-old kid. It’s the nature of 17-year-olds. Young lions do it to their parents too. It’s part of growing up and leaving home.”

Part of becoming who we are is getting events into perspective. I’ve always been a little slow at catching on, but when I did that day, I saw my son and myself in a new way.

The rest of that year was lighter for one 17-year-old and his mother.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: Help Others Pursue the Passion

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Hey, Brett, How Can We Change the World?

One young man graduated college a year ago. He interviewed and found a job in a corporation. He worked one year in which he came to understand that his passion wasn’t waiting at the desk he occupied every day. This young man looked back on his leaving college interviews.

In those interview rooms, the young man remembered the other recent grads he saw waiting their turn. He realized that they — like himself — had been taking the “natural next step” on a career path. He had a conversation with two friends who agreed that something was wrong for people to be starting their careers that way.

The young man’s name is Brett. Brett believes people leaving college should be pursuing their passion not a job . . . Brett sees that as his way to change the world in a positive way.

Pursue the Passion

Guest Writer: Brett Farmiloe

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This post has nothing to do with the lessons taught by Guy Kawasaki. There will be no Babyface lyrics in this article. It’s about how I, Brett Farmiloe, a recent college grad and your latest corporate dropout, want to do something important, something that matters.

Will you help me change the world in a positive way?

Let me clarify what changing the world means to me. I don’t have the skills to find an end to world hunger, to move nations toward world peace, or to fight for freedom. Yet I have experience and skills that can make a significant difference. My idea of changing the world is tapping into a powerful, yet largely ignored natural resource — passion — the passion of people who do what they love.

The greatest ideas, effort, and productivity come from people who are propelled by passion. The world certainly needs more of these.

Yet the model we’re living is not designed to produce passion. It leads us down well-traveled career paths of 8 to 6 jobs that promise bonuses, promotions, and job stability. The model does not place importance on an individual’s love has for the work, but on the quantifiable measurements an individual brings.

I’m not buying that model.

One month ago, I left a corporate accounting position to continue a project I started in school. The project, Pursue the Passion, challenges individuals to find their life passion. The project began when two friends and I interviewed professionals about their career paths in hopes that we would find our own passion.

What happened along our journey is that I didn’t discover a passion. I developed many. I also found that an overwhelming majority of people have a passion. They just don’t know how or where to start making it the center of their life. Collectively, these reasons have led me to leave the security of a cubicle, to adopt a new lifestyle, and to pursue my passion with all I am.

Here’s how that looks.

In one month, my two friends and I will be couch surfing America to interview 200 people who love their work. We are traveling 14,000 miles in 90 days to uncover career paths people have paved. We’ll be talking, listening, and taking notes and videotaping so others can benefit from the interviews — the wisdom of the people we meet, their triumphs, the mistakes they share, and their lessons learned.

Would you help us make that tour the most it can be?

We need exceptional people to talk to. We need couches to crash on. We need your input on what prevents people from pursuing their passion and what motivates them to take the leap. We want to have lunch with you. We need your advice. We want to spread the message of our tour throughout this great nation, so that Americans will begin to take baby steps towards positive change.

Would you take a moment to leave a comment with any advice or help you might have to offer us? We’d be grateful. Let us know you are passionate too!

Brett Farmiloe, Pursue the Passion.

Thank you, Brett, for living your message. We’re a passionate group here.

Help is on the way.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Change the World: One World-Sized Idea

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Are We Afraid We Would Make a Difference?

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A lucky part of being who and where I am is that I get have conversations about people’s passions and dreams for the future. I hear their heads describing their skills and talents. I hear their hearts explaining how they long to follow their calling.

The wish is always there, often unspoken — sometimes from fear of it, sometimes from a lack of ownership.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a young man. He had some idea of his future, but not yet a whole one. He asked my experience. I said is that, if he were going to make one mistake, I suspected that he would not think big enough.

“Not think big enough,” he pondered that phrase.

“Yes, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone think too big for years, maybe forever.”
He asked for more. I elaborated in this way.

We make our ideas smaller by thinking we weren’t meant to do something. Other folks were meant to change things. We were meant to live with them. Why do we argue for that? Isn’t the opposite an equally valid argument?

Why do we shy away from what we long to be doing?

Are we afraid that we actually could make a difference?

Nelson Mandela knows.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Ghandhi
Mother Teresa
Martin Luther King

They were each one person with a refusal to follow their fear.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

One person can change the world with belief in a world-sized idea.

This is not talk. I truly do . . . plan . . .. to . . . Change the World.

With capital letters.

Why not me? Why not you? Why not all of us?

We can change the world — just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Mandela’s speech was written by Marianne Williamson.

Change the World: Truth and Humility

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Wait a Minute

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A few weeks ago I went to lunch with someone I had only met via email. Our relationship was at best tenuous. He had come on like gangbusters. I had made it clear I wasn’t going there.

Over time, we started over and ended up at the same table. We talked for over 2 hours and I found a person quite generous and charming, who knew what his passions were.

Since that time we’ve been able to do each other a favor and add a couple of mutual friends to the conversation. At one point, we talked about what happened when we first met and how I used to the same thing — come on too strongly and too much in my head. “Head and heart,” I told him, “when you have them together you are so charming. Let the world see you.”

I hadn’t thought much about that second conversation, until last night when I went visit a pair of friends for the holiday. While I was there one of them mentioned that the young man in question had called her. My firend said she was tired of his attitude and jwas about to hang the phone when he stopped and said, “Someone told me this isn’t the way to be. I’m sorry. How are you? What are you doing?”

My friend’s face softened noticeably as she related the story.

She said, “I was ready to hang up and then he said that. So I told him what I had been doing. We had a great conversation. I so enjoyed talking to him.” She was smiling.

What a star! What a charming man she met. He reached out and told her the truth about what he was feeling. He simply said, “I need to start again to let you see me.” Then he did.

He changed the world by his truth and humility.

–ME “Liz” Strauss