Here’s Why You’re a Changemaker!

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Today, I want to focus on, do you know that you’re a changemaker?

So the question is: First, what is a changemaker? And before I answer that, I will just tell you that the posts that I want to focus on today that connects to that is the post that came out today. On Wednesdays, I always post about the Expansive method. And so the post that I posted today says, “Become aware of the larger transformation taking place in your life at this moment.” At this moment in time, the more you participate intentionally, the bigger the transformation, and this is where the changemaker comes in. So what’s a changemaker? So a changemaker is a term that means that you are consciously participating in an act of social action towards social transformation. That’s the origin of the word.

So you might think the population who are social changemakers are people who do social transformation, right? Social activists, ecological activists. But I want you to think about it from an expansive perspective, and I’ll give you two examples. So for example, when my two sons were smaller, (now are adults and live independently), but my older son was six-years-old and my youngest son was nine months old. I took my son out of first grade and began homeschooling. Now I didn’t plan to homeschool. I certainly didn’t know much about it, but he went to first grade in the public local school and after a month, I said, ‘okay, they’re crushing his soul. This is not good for him.’

I had studied adult education and holistic education in graduate school, and I knew better for what I wanted to give my son of what I had learned and not this, again, this public school that was just crushing him. From my perspective, when I was looking, it was just, he was slouching and just walking more and more defeated. And I was not going to have that. So, I found a family in Israel at the time where I was living and who was homeschooling. And I asked them, how do you homeschool? And I took him out of school and we began homeschooling.

And so where is this a changemaker?

I was not just homeschooling or teaching my son math or to read and write. I was aware of the fact that I was making a social statement. That was a political statement, but it was a personal statement because I knew consciously that I was teaching my son to be, or my two sons as my nine-month-old kind of grew into right, to be independent thinkers, to be creative thinkers, innovative thinkers, critical thinkers, you know, to learn holistically versus compartmentalized by subjects, but to see the holistic picture and how the different disciplines interconnect because our world is interdependent.

And so I was consciously doing a social action in order to better the world in order to have two beings who came into the world for me to take care of them, to do that in a conscious way. And the minute I did this in a conscious way, I felt that I was doing more than just homeschooling. I felt I was living with purpose through homeschooling. And that fits into the post today: become aware of the larger transformation taking place in your life.

At this time, you see, homeschooling for us was a transformative experience. A profoundly transformative experience and so fulfilling spiritually, emotionally, physically, materially and spiritually. It was so fulfilling for us. And so that’s how you become a changemaker because here I’m homeschooling my two children, a small act, nobody knows about it, but I’m a social activist, right?

,And so you’re probably doing something today or in your life that maybe is not directly what we would call social action. But if you do it with intention, then you become a change maker. And that’s what spirituality is about. It’s not about having some inner peace like dabbling in spirituality, some inner peace for two minutes, some grace, some gratitude. It’s about, you know, all the teachings, all the principles and all the practices of spirituality are about each one of us doing the self-inquiry and the growth and the change and the transformation in order to raise the consciousness of ourselves, the people we touch, our world and the planet. That’s the purpose of it. So we’re all changemakers as soon as we bring intention into our daily life and our actions, interactions, and transactions.

And so that’s why I say, do you know that you’re a changemaker? Maybe you haven’t thought of it, maybe what you do in your life, you haven’t thought of it as social justice, but if you bring some attention to it and you look at what it actually serves and you expand your consciousness a bit, then suddenly you can go, ‘Well, this is my social action for today.’

It doesn’t take away from joining or supporting or being out there and supporting other organizations. It’s not this or that, but know that you’re a changemaker as soon as you put intention into what you are doing. I’ll give you another example. So I’ve been married for 30 years. We just celebrated 30 years in September. And you can imagine, 30 years of being together, we’ve gone through a lot and we’ve had to work through a lot because part of being in a partnership and life partnership is in order to grow emotionally, spiritually, and professionally, on all the levels to grow individually, to grow side-by-side and to grow together. And so we’ve been through a lot because we’ve grown a lot.

And so when we would work through things, I would bring my feminist lens into our conversations or our conflicts. I would bring my spiritual self in the one where, where intuition is denied or intuition is not paid attention to. I would bring those social issues into the conversation. I wasn’t just working on my specific argument or challenge with my spouse. I was bringing in my awareness of transforming the planet through us transforming. So then two people have transformed in a certain way– my spouse and I. Our kids get to see that, our friends get to see how our relationship grows and changes, and this way it ripples out, we’re helping change the world.

And I’m very driven by this. I’m very driven by changing the world and not just my little world. So for me, whatever I do, I always think of, ‘How does this better the world?’ Take, for example, what you eat, how you eat, where you buy your food. If you buy food that has high vibrancy like organic food from the farmer’s market. If it’s just been picked today or a day ago, and you’re eating it, then you’re eating this high-vibration food. It’s very different than just whatever you eat, processed food from the supermarket. So everything you do, even just feeding yourself, can be an act of social justice or ecological justice. And that’s why I say, do you know that you are a changemaker?

So I want to leave you with another post that I posted on Friday, where I usually post a quote by somebody else because that just fits in here. And the quote is by somebody called Kimberly Jones. And the quote says, “Don’t let people pull you into their storms. Pull them into your peace.”

I’ll say it again. “Don’t let people pull you into their storms. Pull them into your peace.”

And so “in our peace” is about creating a field of inner peace for yourself and then having it radiate out, so that when you’re on a zoom call with your team, or if you meet with someone, or you’re talking to your partner or to children, to your parents, the cashier at the store, whatever, whoever you’re talking to, you have this field of peace that you’ve created. And you’re inviting people into this field versus going into their drama and their storm.

Now, easier said than done. If you’re highly sensitive, if you’re an empath, it’s easy to go into other people’s storms. It’s like, if you go into a room and somebody is all upset, you feel frazzled if it goes on and suddenly you’re frazzled. If they feel because of you, that they are kind of in a storm, then you feel even more, ‘Oh my God, how do I find my center?’

So it’s easier said than done, but this is the spiritual practice. It’s my spiritual practice. It’s your spiritual practice. It’s everybody’s spiritual practice. How can we create a field of consciousness, of peacefulness, of tranquility, of ease, and then walk around with this? Imagine it’s a bubble. It’s not just, ‘Can I have some peace? Oh my God, I’m so stressed. Can I have some peace?’ No. Imagine that you’re inviting peace into a bubble and you walk around with a bubble, so you’re protected. You’re protected in this bubble of ease, of tranquility, of peacefulness, of the color blue or green or whatever is relaxing for you. And you’re walking around with that bubble. And so whatever you do and whoever you interact with or whatever action you take or transaction you do, you are emanating that peacefulness. And so this again is you being a changemaker because you decide to live with intention today.

I’m going to be a bubble of peacefulness and I’m going to walk around like this and whoever I interact with, I’m going to bring peacefulness into the world and that’s going to bring peacefulness for me. Now I’m on a mission. I’m not just, ‘Can I have some peacefulness?’ It’s, ‘No, I’m gonna tap into the peacefulness I have inside me and emanate it wherever I go.’ Suddenly, you’re in service. So you see, that as the spiritual practice, that is what spirituality is about: to raise this consciousness of our planet, of humanity and nature in our planet. And that is how your transformation becomes more potent because you are aware of the larger picture of your transformation and what you’re doing and how you can live with intention and affect other people.

And that’s how you become a change maker.

So I leave you with that. Walk around your day and say, ‘Where am I a changemaker?’ And if you haven’t noticed yet, pay attention. Are there places, wow, I am contributing to making the world a better place? I’m actively doing it because I care about this issue or about this person or interaction or this cause, or my work, whatever it is.

And the more you are aware of what you’re doing, the more fulfilled you feel, because you’re in service and you’re doing something that’s meaningful versus just doing something in the material world. You’re doing something in the emotional and the spiritual world because you’re bringing meaning into it. You’re changing the world when you’re doing it. So you feel fulfilled, and see: Where are you a change maker.

So I leave you with that, and I bless you with becoming a bubble of peacefulness that you can walk around with and just spread peacefulness– conscious, intentional peacefulness throughout your day as a changemaker and feel that you can do it in these small acts. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing. These are small acts as well.

Blessings for the rest of your day, the rest of your week, and weekend

Blessings.