How to deliberately take action
The chance of our lifetime (3/3)
We plan, God laughs. (Yiddish proverb)
This moment is unique in what it offers us as humans. To grasp this opportunity we must act, and we should do so wisely. The transformative framework will guide us through the changes ahead. It consists of the five dimensions of transformational work, the four principles, and listening as the essential skill.
Welcome to the last part of this series, entitled The Chance of Our Lifetime. The opening two parts described the crises we are navigating and illustrated the change we could create. This third section will explain how to achieve that change.
The five dimensions of transformational work
We want profound societal change to create a humanity at one with nature. This work unfolds in five dimensions. Taking care of them all will help us fulfil the potential of every transformation.
The first dimension is the personal: fall in love with yourself
We are the start and end points of every transformation: our inner work leads to outer impact. This inner work has four aspects:
The gift we embody: we are unique and must understand our uniqueness to step into our power. What are we here for, and how do we want to pursue our dreams?
Knowing and working with our limitations. They are the raw material for connecting with ourselves and discovering our true voice.
Our consciousness and the task of expanding our minds and our thoughts.
We need to understand our role as humans, how our inner lives are connected to reality, and how our consciousness creates our world.
The second dimension is ecological: reconnect with nature
We see ourselves as being in control of nature. We separate ourselves from nature and from ourselves. This separation is the source of the ecological and societal destruction we enact. We must turn the relationship with our human nature and the environment around us into a nourishing and caring partnership. Nature is life-giving and life-preserving; we can benefit from and take part in that support.
We must give nature the space to regenerate and heal. We have to foster diversity. By doing this, we can create resilience that will help us navigate the climatic and environmental changes that lie ahead.
Society is the third dimension, and it’s about fostering agency
We have created societies that hold us in the prison of our smallness and neediness. While our inner work is the personal key to transformation, changing our societal structures is the collective key, and both are connected. Societal work, just like personal work, encompasses four aspects:
How we raise our children through childcare, schooling, and the adolescence we help to create. We must reorganize this according to our nature as social creatures instead of aligning it with technical possibilities. We have to focus on agency—even a toddler is self-driven and empowered. We have to nourish everyone’s intrinsic motivation and focus our support on independence and self-leadership.
How we organize our decision-making in the political sphere, again focusing on agency and full participation so that everyone can fulfil their potential.
In economics we have to relocalize and create resilient and integrative structures.
Our built environment. The spaces where we live, work, travel, relax, and recover. They fundamentally shape our daily lives and relationships with ourselves, nature, families, and communities. They are part of the toxic culture we have created. Building differently will open our minds and create different societies.
Our communities are the fourth dimension: connecting through difference
Returning from a fragmented and polarized state means returning to communities. In humanity at one with nature, communities are the building blocks of our lives and a great learning area. They are the place where we can relearn to connect, where we can heal, and where we can learn to hold each other’s differences, values, identities, cultures, and experiences.
A child’s development evolves in the tension of being held, attached, and gaining freedom, autonomy, and agency. Our communities will have to maintain the delicate balance that parents achieve, constantly negotiating the participation and freedom of all their members.
The underlying paradigms are the last dimension: we have to change the storyline
Underlying principles and paradigms govern everything we do. So, the fifth dimension is about both understanding and shaping paradigms. We have to understand the current paradigms and how they work, in order to change them. We have to make things transparent, as we can only change those we face.
Specifically, this means changing our understanding and use of power, from “power over” to “power to”. We must find our way from fragmentation to integration, and from being separated to understanding that we are interconnected with every living being.
The four principles of transformational work
While the five dimensions of transformative work give you an understanding of where to work and what to keep in mind, the four-step approach will help you understand how to act.
Work holistically
Always work on all five dimensions simultaneously. Everything you do touches all five dimensions, though not always to the same extent. Working holistically means inviting all perspectives to shape you. It means ensuring that all voices are heard, including those of the next generations that your work will touch.
Work with potential
Every place, every organization, and every being has potential. In our work, we can either cultivate or diminish that potential. We are not used to looking for that potential, so to work with it is an invitation to learn and sense the infinite possibilities that are given in every situation.
Work with guidance
We are embedded in infinite intelligence, and that intelligence is here to support and guide us. Unlike us, this intelligence sees the big picture and is willing to share that with us. Working with guidance means we leave our ego, old beliefs, patterns, and ideas behind, to be guided by our inner voice, which is connected to infinite intelligence.
Work efficiently
Nothing in the universe is either useless or extra; there’s no “should” or “could be”. We do what’s necessary, no more and no less.
Listening: the most important quality
Acting accordingly means going with the flow and doing what’s necessary. It’s not about planning. The essential quality for that is listening: listening to your self and not to the radio station of your ego, listening to the moment and not thinking about tomorrow or yesterday, listening to nature and presence instead of what’s in it for us, listening to infinite intelligence instead of believing we already know everything.
We have to practice and foster that listening. It’s a lifelong practice; meditation and bodywork can support us. It demands us to empty ourselves. Only if our minds are empty can we listen and receive. Only by leaving all those ideas, philosophies, and mental models behind can we open up to the abundant presence we are already living within.
So, if you want to take action, start by listening.
Read the whole series “The Chance of Our Lifetime”. The opening two parts described the crises we are navigating and illustrated the change we could create. The third section explain how to achieve that change.