Can you let yourself rest?
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.
Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself" Rumi
When I was a little girl I wanted to be Prime Minister.
Or a Blue Peter presenter.
It depended on the day (or episode).
Both of these seemed like such amazing jobs.
You got to help people.
To change things.
To make things happen.
For a little girl with a big heart and an imaginative mind, both seemed wonderfully exciting.
I was the girl who organised the fundraising events at primary school.
I was always asking people to sign petitions and like most children, I had a finely-tuned radar for injustice and unfairness.
As I've grown older I sometimes wonder whether my aspirations to change the world have shrunk or become more realistic?
Reading this quote from Rumi makes me reflect that maybe changing myself is a really effective way to change the world.
I wonder if my desire to change the world when I was younger was a way to distract myself from the messy work of taking full responsibility for changing myself?
That’s one of the things I’ve discovered about change.
I can’t expect things to be different out there if I’m not able and willing to change myself right here.
Yet it often feels as though changing myself can't possibly make a difference in a world facing such enormous challenges.
I'm just one person in a huge human ocean.
The issues are too big and I’m too small.
Surely nothing I do makes an impact on the world.
Do I really believe this is true?
What I've realised is that each choice I make does matter.
Each time I choose to be kind.
To show compassion.
To love.
These choices aren’t wasted.
They are small acts that accumulate invisibly over time.
Enough people making small changes add up to world-changing shifts.
Nothing changes until one day it does.
Things stay the same, until they don't.
If you knew that making small changes to create more joy, ease and kindness in your own life would make a significant difference in the world, what would you want to start doing?