Improve the world, and begin with yourself

Tom Breur

8 November 2015

“Improve the world, and begin with yourself”, my mom used to say. What she meant was that before you lay the onus on someone –anybody– else, you owe it to yourself (and your colleagues, for that matter) to start change where it originates. Within yourself.

There is something in human nature that seems to make us all (me, too, certainly) wish for change to originate somewhere else. “If only XYX would bla-di-bla!” Somehow we hope or expect someone else to magically take responsibility for the situation we’re in. But there is no magic. Being “response-able” implies ownership of your life, and doing something about it. Yourself. That’s what taking responsibility is all about, in my opinion.

As Chris Avery wrote in his wonderful little gem (2001) Teamwork is an Individual Skill, “If you want things around you to change, first you must change.” We live and work in complex social systems (as in: Systems Theory, ie: Senge, Sterman, etc.), where cause and effect aren’t always clear and often intertwined. In this hairball you can only start change with yourself. The simple truth is that you are the only place where you have leverage to make a change. Any change.