My Three Secrets for Creating Change
Math unexpectedly provided me a set of tools that I have used to effect positive change in communities I care about. Growing up in Berkeley, California, I was indoctrinated with a strong ethic for social justice, and my high school teacher Richard Navies was a big part of that process. He was a giant of a man who served as a role model, father figure and teacher for many of the students. Often, he would tell us that no matter what we did with our lives, we had to use our gifts and talents in service to our community. I took his instructions to heart and have used my passion for and skills in mathematics to benefit my community. My training in statistics has armed me with strong technical and critical thinking skills that have guided much of my work over the years and the underlying principles of statistics have influenced my perspective on the real world. For instance, much of math is about understanding change - measuring, predicting and estimating it. There is even a symbol in math shaped like a triangle, named Delta, that represents an incremental change or difference. Our lives are fundamentally always in a state of change from one moment to the next. The question is, do we want to guide and create the changes in our life, or do we want to live in a constant state of reaction to change. Math is a great tool, but systems or communities don’t change because of a single compelling data point or statistic. In principle, positive changes can be realized through a combination of the rationality of mathematics, strong leadership, and a commitment to execution. However, I’ve learned from wise teachers a few secrets about a parallel process that runs alongside the tangible skills and concrete processes for creating the change you want to see in the world.
“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
Secret #1: See the Change You Want
My mom taught me a valuable lesson when I was a kid. She shared with me an exercise that forever changed how I looked at creating the outcomes I wanted in life. In it, I picture clearly in my mind what I dream of experiencing with as many of the sights, sounds, and feelings as I can muster. I completely immerse myself in that future moment. Next, I place the image onto a ship and watch that ship sail off into the horizon. Over the years, this exercise for charting courses in my life have been remarkably helpful. In fact, I’ve learned that my success rate in bringing special events or programs I helped to create or design can be very high when I first lock onto the vision of it actually happening. I don’t know exactly how it works, maybe the experience of the final product in my mind made it easier for me to make a straight bee-line series of steps towards it, or maybe, it helped to crystalize that outcome in some dimension of reality. Either way, my mother taught me how I could be a part of the process of creating future moments, I could create change by design.
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.”
Secret #2: Be Willing to Change
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” is one of Mahatma Gandhi’s most famous quotes and it certainly has been one of my favorites. Given Gandhi's efforts in leading a nonviolent resistance movement against British rule over India, this quote is often cited by people wanting to make important social change. It acknowledges that large-scale change often starts with the individual. Interestingly, it’s not clear that he actually said those exact words. His closest writing to that quote actually is found in a paper about snake bites in which he writes:
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. [i]
I think the sentiment of Be the Change still holds true, but I think there is something deeper here that Gandhi is referring to. He ends his treatise by providing practical advice on how to treat an actual snake bite but, prior to that he challenges us to think about our relationship with the unknown through the metaphor of snakes. He encourages the reader to ask, are we projecting our shortcomings onto them, does our internal health or mental state make the venom more potent if we are bit, or does our fear invoke a snake to act in self-defense? He guides us to focus on our interior world as the key to how we can cultivate our true source of fulfillment, a source that is independent of and distinct from anyone else. I have learned that being willing to ask what any given initiative or project was here to teach me and being open to and changing my own thoughts and behavior are paramount. I know that I must be willing to change.
“I wanted to try to build a bridge of words between me and that world outside, that world which was so distant and elusive that it seemed unreal.”
Secret #3: Use the Power of Putting Pen to Paper
Books have always been a major part of my life. Writers have taught me about the power of creating a world of our own imagining on paper. Swirls of ideas that we float in our minds can be made concrete by writing them down. Whether it’s grassroots organizing or a collective impact initiative, articulating plans that focus on action move a collaborative one step closer to change. People can talk in hypotheticals all day, but it’s another story when the focus shifts to what you are going to do. A momentum gets built with the intention to take the first step and projects start to take a life of their own. Translating an idea onto paper has helped me to see if it makes sense and is in alignment with other aspects of a given project. It’s also been valuable when working with teams. Often, we assume that everyone is walking around with the same mental model as our own, but that rarely is the case. Writing out desired outcomes and the roadmap to get there provides clarity in roles and responsibilities and acknowledges that change is ultimately a process made through a series of steps by multiple individuals. It’s the true secret sauce to logic models, strategic plans and S.M.A.R.T. goals.
“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”
Change is an Inside Job
Change is at the heart of our experiences and mere existence as human beings. It’s at the core of our desires and at the root of our deepest fears. We are complex and the systems managing our interactions are a tangled web of ideas layered upon one another by a succession of leaders, policy makers, laws, and cultural norms. But, it doesn’t mean we have to be resigned to those constraints. Indeed, there are countless examples of societies moving in positive directions through the actions of those who believed that creating a better life and world are possible. The Civil Rights movement was brought about because individuals made a choice to do something different. They sat at lunch counters that wouldn’t serve them, they hired diverse staff before the laws told them it was illegal to discriminate, they boycotted buses, and marched in solidarity. Yes, there were many important leaders that helped to usher in a change of laws and beliefs, but the true power of the movement lay in the collective action of many individuals who decided to be the change they wished to see in the world. Ultimately, external change is an inside job. If we can see our goals clearly, engage in self-reflective practices, and put our dreams to paper then there is no limit to what we can create.
Source:
[i] Gandhi, M., & der Freiheitsbewegung, F. (1958). The collected works of Mahatma Gandhi. Volume XII. https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/the-collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi