Changefactor

“…at the end of the day it’s really impossible for one person to make a difference and thus the more clearly, absolutely, utterly, irrevocably, unchangeably clear it is that it is impossible for you to make a difference and make the world better… the more you must!”

changefactor — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 23:41:42 +0000

I recently stumbled upon an interesting documentary titled “Stress, portrait of a killer”. Dr Robert Sapolsky is showing there his results of the research on baboons which he led for many years. As much as the stress factor is an inseparable part of the message in his research, for the purposes of this blog I would like to underline one of the observations: change of the cultural/habitual behaviors CAN be achieved within a one generation of baboons! Why wouldn’t it be possible then with humans?

Have a look at this speech, which he gave at the Stanford University graduating class in 2009. Among all the interesting points about the similarities and differences between human race and other animal species, we find messages which can strike us, make us reflect on ourselves and teach us the lesson about the nature of change.

This beautiful message coming from Dr Sapolsky speech is addressed however to people whose mental construction was already shaped by years of being raised in the outdated system. System where the values and beliefs on how the society works is not actual in the present times and is getting dangerous for the future generations. I’m not saying it’s too late, it’s never too late to learn and relearn, but our systems of beliefs have strong roots in what we’re growing up on. Moreover the more we face that something couldn’t have been done differently harder it is for us to think that it actually CAN. And it really can. Otherwise we wouldn’t move as a civilization. More even – we would not have a civilization!

Yet some changes can take billion years, evolution of one species for example, and that’s totally reasonable and normal. But in the face of a danger time is not our ally, its ‘resource’ is becoming deficient. We need to find the efficient ways of dealing with problems not only of now, but also and even mainly – of the future.

How much easier would it be if we could grow up with different values systems and where what we think now seams like a huge mountain which is almost impossible to jump over, would be just a simple, natural way of doing things. How to make it happen then? We can create that world starting from those for whose future in fact we’re working on – our children.

Here I would like to introduce another remarkable man – Sir Ken Robinson and his talk on ted.com about the issue he addressed in his newest book – The Element

For those who would like to see more of Sir Ken Robinson here are couple links more:

http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJAL21IE9fY&feature=related

http://vodpod.com/watch/1354819-video-sir-ken-robinson-the-element-psfk-com

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change part 2

changefactor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:24:37 +0000

That’s a continuation of the post I made last time. Have a look what one of the greatest teachers on motivation says about that matter.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change

changefactor — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:26:31 +0000

The best example of it I had while trying to install and ‘design’ this blog. I was trying really hard to create the best layout I could. And what I could was only to use a template with some little personalized adjustments. This shouldn’t be too hard, should it? Well, not quite… at least not for me and not for the state of mind I was in while I was pursuing my clumsy attempts. And in the worst midst of my ‘personal’ failure I couldn’t find words to describe the ‘stupidity’ of the blogging software… I’m not sure if I should even mention how many hours it took me to finalize it, so lets just leave it as – too many

Finally while going through a blog-making-depression, almost giving up on blogging, writing, using internet and computer in total forever and ever I called my dear friend, who happens to be a bit younger and a bit more experienced in such matters. Within next few minutes I had it fixed. So what was that magical trick I could not figure out for… much too long? Well, I was just simply stuck on Appearance part instead of looking at it from a different – wider perspective and checking all other options available in a creation process, like for example Pages (those who use WordPress might know what I’m talking about exactly, those who don’t – can look at it as a metaphor )

Once I’ve learned to look from another perspective, it was so easy to figure out the rest. Has anything changed in the software itself?

No.

The only thing that really changed was my way of looking at it.

How many times we face that truth? How many hours we spend on trying to figure out different tasks in our lives associated with work, friendship, love, children, our emotional or mental state, health and so on…? I know from my own experience that as it was with my layout creating – much too many.

How can we then diminish that waste of a precious life span? Well, sometimes we find the way by ourselves, sometimes we do it with a help of others. Sometimes simple walk in a park is an enough solution, some situations need a more invasive almost ‘surgical’ operation on our sight and brain. Nevertheless it can be done and this ‘doing’ will for sure pay off in the future, giving us space and time to finally just simply live.