Epilogue
How to Think About Tomorrow
I WAS ENCOURAGED BY MANY PEOPLE TO MAKE THE LAST PAGE IN the book “a call to action” so readers who were intrigued, interested, and inspired by an “everyone a changemaker” world would put down this book and immediately become part of it. It felt pretentious for me to give you a prescription for how to get more involved in your own life. But a colleague of mine recently shared some reflections that she and a friend developed while attending a Singularity University (www.singularityu.org) program. I really found them meaningful, and for all of you who are contemplating jumping off the high board into the pool of social change, I hope this mix of advice and actions bring you closer to the water.1
Lessons on Social Entrepreneurship
Take Responsibility for Your Life
Transform your mind-set from waiting for other people to approve, agree, or judge the worth of your ideas to staying in the driver's seat and taking other people's reactions and ideas as input for further iterations of your ideas. To do this:
1. Put your ideas and self out there.
2. Observe how others respond.
3. Use their feedback to analyze and improve upon your idea, but do not take the feedback personally or let others label your idea as good or bad or right or wrong.
4. Once you have incorporated the feedback in a way that you are comfortable with, share the idea again.
5. Keep repeating the process until the actions you need to take are clarified in your own mind.
Stay Objective
Your first job is to prove the worth of your idea to yourself by examining all possibilities rather than proving the worth of your idea to someone else.
Once you have done that work, everyone else will be convinced.
1. Learn to observe before taking sides or forming conclusions.
2. Take time to observe the big picture. You will be successful if you can implement a strategy that is a win-win situation for all. If you do this, your work will be a series of pieces magically falling together rather than a situation where it is a fight every step of the way.
3. Respect others and see yourself as an equal with others (not below, not above). No matter who it is. Changemaking involves empowering others as equals and working for everyone to reach their highest potential.
4. After careful analysis and observation, stand up for the good; in an entrepreneurial world where all is equal, it is what lasts.
Act
If there is something you want to do, then do it. We live in a chaotic world, and acting creates advantages as it opens up possibilities.
1. Start at the top, working with the best people you can find.
2. Be comfortable with not knowing the outcome.
3. Keep things moving.
4. Have a “nothing is impossible” attitude; aspire to the highest level change you are willing to tackle.
Problems
1. Don't have them. Only have solutions.
In the 2007 movie The Bucket List, while looking at the ancient pyramids at Giza, Morgan Freeman turns to Jack Nicholson and remarks, “You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’” Their answers determined whether the souls were able to enter or not.
Enough said. I hope that I, along with everyone in this book, have brought joy to your life, and you will be ready and able to pass that joy onto others.
And let me know how you're doing. Please visit www.changemakers.com/Rippling.