What moves the change you seek to make?
Anger, frustration, revenge, self-affirmation, fear. It is human to feel all that. Yet, while they are great fire to start the fuse, it’s better to move past them as the explosion approaches, else they will spread.
Empathy, kindness, joy, selflessness, care. They are much slower to burn, more complicated to find and express. Yet, when they reach the core, that’s the type of enthusiasm that sticks and scales.
There will never be enough of that.
Both nice and rude are roadblocks to change.
One because it hides a truth, the other because it distracts from it.
Being in the middle is worth the effort.
We are stuck in patterns.
We do the same things over and over again. React to the same things in the same way. Behave the same way with the very same person. Think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, fall into the same narratives.
We do this until it becomes our reality, who we are, what we breath. And it is often self-destructive.
If only we could take a step back, point the finger at the pattern, and laugh.
In the urgency of now, we often make the mistake of looking at systems as if they were uniform and uncomplicated.
Technology increases the chances of such a misunderstanding. We are led to believe that tools and apps magically solve incredible problems as we look at their success ex post, failing to consider the various factors that have contributed to it, or the pains they have brought about, or the multiple reiteration they had to go through.
And so, nowadays, when we have a system that does not work, or that could work better, we usually look at technology for the solution.
The problem is that by doing so we focus our attention on a manifestation of what is going.
Change rarely starts at a superficial level. The only way to make it effective is to start from the roots of the problem, moving gradually horizontally and laterally, preparing for what is about to happen and managing the different circumstances.
There is nothing magic in such a process.
News, magazines, social media, broadcasters, experts, webzines, blogs, radios.
They are all out there fighting for our attention. And of course they exaggerate the things they say and they write.
Here’s a double reminder, particularly useful in these days of overexposure and quick bursts of fear.
As consumers, we can decide what to dedicate our attention to. It’s often not easy, but we can concentrate on the job we are here to make and cut out all the rest. No matter how dramatic, alarming, important the news of the moment is framed to be.
As content creators, we have a choice to make between trying to shout louder and use a softer tone of voice. If we decide for the latter, it will be tougher at times. But when we go for the former, the message we want to share will simply fade in the overwhelmingly buzzing noise that jams our audience’s ears at all times.
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