Five Actions You Can Take to Change Your World

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." —Margaret Mead

For the past two weeks, Glenda and I, along with my older daughter, spent almost two weeks on holiday in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. It was lovely! The high plains desert that surrounds the city are green and lovely because of a particularly rainy spring. The art was lovely, the jewelry beautiful, and the people were welcoming and warm. We spent time with a long-time friend of Glenda’s from her days there at St. John’s College. We had dinner one evening with a cousin we hadn’t seen in several years. Another of our sisters, Leslie, came to spend time with us. She then drove home with me, as Glenda and Toni left for an extended trip to work with HSD learners and Associates in Singapore and then in the UK. We had a wonderful time and a much needed rest and renewal.

Even in that lovely time, however, we didn’t escape the tension and pressure of a world where patterns of public discourse are too often unreasonable, unreliable, and inhospitable. Signs along the highways, in roadside shops, and in yards in the cities, different signs expressed opinion as fact, made patently untrue claims, and urged us to vote one of two candidates whose positions are diametrically opposed. News, when we glimpsed it in newspapers stands or on news feed in our phones told of similarly opposed groups in Europe and Asia who want to shape the world to their views. The day Leslie and I got back to Minnesota, we saw the news that a shooter had apparently attempted to assassinate a presidential candidate.

Of course, people close to us ask Glenda and me how we can use HSD to help. I talk about Generative Engagement, Decision Map, and Conflict Circles, of course. And I believe in the power each of the HSD-based tools to help us see, understand, and influence the patterns around us. I see HSD approaches and understandings as a way to make sense of the world and to move beyond traditional, confrontative, bi-nary approaches to problem solving and decision making.

But underlying it all I feel that the best I can offer is to ask you to remember to take action in five ways:

• We are each a part of a greater whole, and our own health and wellbeing depend on the health and wellbeing of that greater whole. In the long term, we and those who come after us can only do well if we and our neighbors—near and far—do well. What happens around the globe impacts us all because patterns just don’t recognize socio-political or geographic boundaries.
  
  Do what you can to connect with, contribute to, and influence people beyond your local realm.

• Uncertainty and turbulence is never the “fault” of one individual or one group of people. Those patterns are the result of multiple forces that have an  impact on us, the rich diversity of voices and cultures, and the interdependence that exists in a world that is so connected by technology and movements of goods and services around the globe.
  
  Look beyond individual, isolated actions or events to see the world around you.
   
• Patterns become the unit of observation in such a complex world. You cannot know the world by watching one part of it. You cannot understand an individual or group by listening or watching them for one day. Only when we are conscious and aware of what’s happening over time can we make sense of what’s possible.
  
  Watch and explore patterns around you; know which ones you want to increase, which ones you want to get rid of, and what patterns you want but don’t see in the world.
   
• Inquiry is the approach to use in a world that is uncertain and turbulent, as ours is today. In a complex world we cannot know or control the future—not the next minute, not the next day, not the next year or lifetime. We can only understand our worlds by seeing how people behave over time, by listening to what they say consistently across areas of their lives, and by the impact of experiences and outcomes created by words and actions—or own and others’.
  
  Stand in inquiry as you experience the challenges and opportunities around you:

–Turn judgment into curiosity

–Turn disagreement into shared exploration

–Turn defensiveness into self-reflection

–Turn assumptions into questions
                   
of decisions and interactions to know and understand your world in ways that lead you to action.

• Adaptive Action is the only way to move forward when you are stuck in the complexity and turbulence of your world. Adaptive Action invites/guides you to 1) see the patterns around you; 2) use a variety of tools to make sense those patterns in ways that can inform action; 3) take meaningfully informed action to shift the patterns that don’t fit for you; and 4) start the cycle again by looking at the impact of your actions.
  
  Take Adaptive Actions alone and with friends, every day to move toward patterns of health and wellbeing for yourselves, your neighbors, and for people around the globe.

Try these things and let me know how they go. I’d love to gather ideas and post them for many to see.

Royce