I’m trying to find where I read this from a Stephen Covey book long ago, but I may have read it incorrectly. In any case, I follow this line of thought:
“You can’t change everything around you, but you can always change yourself.”
And it has served me well whenever I have gotten down and lost when working to make change happen at any scale. Nobody likes change — and so to truly empathize with the folks you are working to make change with, you need to constantly be changing yourself.
That translates to becoming better at making compromises — which to those who seek radical change will seem like losing. But instead, I see it as simply changing the definition of winning by distributing the gains to be made, so that everyone shares in making change for *their* better.
The goal of positive change is always to seek positive growth — so when everyone benefits from that kind of growth, then a lot more can happen than if it were selfishly kept for the change agent themself. IF you believe that the community matters more than the individual — I certainly do. Just remember that changing yourself constantly can be absolutely exhausting, but I know it to be well worth your efforts. So keep on ch-ch-changing! —JM
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