I work with “positive change agents” which I define as people committed to making the world a better place AND making themselves better people. We call ourselves many names: cultural creatives, social entrepreneurs, change makers, sustainability activists, and evolutionaries, among others.
Making change in the world is not enough. I’ve seen the incredible shortfalls that happen when people commit to positive change in the world but refuse to work on themselves. And personal development becomes insular and self-serving at best if it is not coupled with contribution toward a larger whole. Both are important.
Those of us who are on fire with this dual commitment have five areas we need to work on:
1) Mindsets
These are the attitudes, beliefs, worldviews, perspectives, mental models, and mental states that we need to cultivate to stay positive, attentive, proactive, and compassionate. Mindsets comprise the root of the rest of our work: without good mindsets, the rest of our work is undermined. By itself this is a huge area, as it involves things as simple as encouraging ourselves throughout the day, as well as affirmations (and what Tony Robbins calls “incantations”), limiting beliefs, and the grief and wounds that when unresolved hobble our best efforts.
An example of a useful mindset is the recognition that there is an ecology of change agency, and that all of us positive change agents are working complementary pieces which are all important. The opposite of this attitude or perspective is the belief that what I’m working on is the only worthwhile thing to work on, or the most important. No. It’s the most important for you. And that’s OK. We can work on different pieces, and still support each others’ work.
2) Tools
These are the processes and methodologies that we employ to create specific results.
The New Age movement gave us hundreds of great tools and thousands of crappy ones.
So change agents have the challenge of sorting through all the available tools to find the most effective ones for a particular purpose.
Examples of what I consider to be high caliber tools include Marshall Rosenberg’s process titled Nonviolent CommunicationTM (NVC), Permaculture design, Financial Integrity (Your Money or Your Life), Ken Wilber’s Integral Framework, Holacracy, and the 8-Shields Model.
3) Skills
Having a tool is one thing. Being skillful with a tool is quite another.
Developing skillfulness takes intention, time, and dedication. And when you couple strong mindsets with a high skill level in a high caliber tool or process — the return on the time and energy invested is phenomenal.
Bottom line: it’s not enough to have a great tool. We have to be skillful with the tools we have. (That said I would rather have a great process and be mildly skillful in it, than to be incredibly skilled in a mediocre process.)
Example: maybe I’ve never seen a hammer. You give me one and tell me it’s useful for nailing two boards together. I bend the first three nails I touch and I conclude that hammers suck. Incorrect conclusion.
Example: two friends of mine attended an NVC workshop with a less-than-skilled presenter. The opportunity arose to work on a real situation with an audience member, and the facilitator did not know how to handle it. One hundred people walked away thinking NVC sucks. Incorrect conclusion.
4) Resources
These could be financial resources, but they don’t have to be. It could be land. Or people resources. In some cases, solid mindsets help us develop interior resources (such as patience or perseverance) which in turn strengthen our mindsets and skillfulness. A book can be a resource. Or a computer.
Resources channeled toward the common good are essential. High quality mindsets, tools, and skills that are resource deficient have little positive impact.
One of the disempowering mindsets many change agents have is an aversion to marshaling or commanding resources. And that is just sad and tragic. The belief is, if I have assets I am selfish or greedy, or I am participating in inequality. However, the resources are absolutely necessary to sustain the message and the action. We can have mindsets, tools, and skills, but without resources to get our message and work out there our impact is unnecessarily restricted.
5) Community
This could be a community of practice (some people use the Buddhist term sangha), a community of support, a mastermind group, or simply people we connect with and with whom we have fun.
This element is easily overlooked.
Community sustains us and keeps us going. In the best of cases, our community holds us in love — and also holds us accountable to our word.
Community, ideally, gives us feedback and perspective. It is easy to become isolated and disconnected, and then cynical and depressed. Community gives us emotional buoyancy, and keeps us true to ourselves.
Cultivating community is a constant process, and an essential one.
All of these five categories of things are necessary. By themselves, none of them are enough.