Change as an integral part of your life.
Throughout the years it became clear to me that change was and has always been an essential part of my life. As a rebellious child I used to go against the flow, not accepting the things I saw around me, always speaking up when things didn’t seem to be right, often protesting to things that seemed cruel or disrespectful to me.
I have always had a strong opinion about many things: about equality of gender and of race, about the rights of babies and children in our society, about the fact that globalization and logos impact poverty, about the ever increasing gap between the very rich and the poor, about those business leaders doing it for the money, about the fact that humans are turning into robots as there is hardly any room left for expressing true feelings in our society anymore.
For many years I’ve been envisioning a future that was different. I’ve been dreaming of a world where people are treated as equals, employees are considered as human beings instead of assets, babies and children are protected by their elders and our society develops fundamental rights for those who are most vulnerable.
“I’ve been dreaming of a world where there’s room for genuine feelings and where people can just feel and be people again.”
To make my dreams come true, I spent quite some time trying to convince others to see things from my perspective, to adopt the same vision if you like. I spent a lot of energy in trying to change others to accept what I thought was a better future. Every time someone told me to stop being difficult, to accept things the way they were and let it go, I became even more convinced and fought even harder. For many years, I spent loads of energy on trying to convince people to want a world which I believed was a better one.
The Epiphany.
Until one day, following yet another difficult discussion with someone about birth rights, it hit me. All these people with different opinions about life were not trying to discourage me to change, they were not purposely trying to hurt me, they were not narrow minded nor stupid… they were just showing me what the world looks like today. So thinking back on it now, having all these people disagree and telling me I wasn’t being realistic, is probably one of the most precious gifts I ever received in this world.
The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that I had been living in a dream world, thereby completely rejecting the one I was actually born into. It took me many many years and a lot of effort to fully accept and love the world I was born into. It was when I did, that I realized that only then I was ready to bring the changes I had always dreamed of.
The Present.
So here I am today, helping people and organizations to change. Every day I go out there, I talk to people and I try to understand what their world looks like today. I then do everything I can to accept their world as the truth, I try and rule out my own perceptions and start to build from there. When working for organizations, I bring the truth of the employees to business leaders who might envision a different future, who might consider that employees are being difficult or should let it go and move towards the envisioned future. I then try and make these business leaders see the world of their employees, without perception …. and build from there.
So now I stop sharing my vision of what the world should look like in future. I accept that what people tell me is their world …. and build from there. Ofcourse I still have my vision and I definitely know where I’m going but change can only happen by accepting what is here now.
