“[Remember] the unadulterated political joy that millions of Americans felt 13 years ago when Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first Black president. They also feel like quaint snapshots of what seems now like another country,” CNN wrote as Obama turned 60.”
As we remain mired in a global pandemic with fears of more spikes and potential new lockdowns, hope and change feel like a distant memory or perhaps even a cruel joke. As we watch terrible scenes of chaos in Afghanistan, we can’t help but think of 20 years of a mission with the cost in the trillions and countless lives, only now to see the draconian Taliban return and women fearfully hiding in their burquas–all of their hard-earned rights gone like mist. And though I could go on — lost voting rights, a near MAGA-led coup of our government, an unimaginable climate change report that threatens the extinction of humanity — I search instead for a different path.
And I find it in the work we do in systems change. . Because we know that systems that abound in nature: in people, families, communities, and countries, can and will change. We just need to keep our Vision strong, dive in to understand the system we want to change, and then apply the right actions at the right points of leverage to bring about the change we need in the world.
Healing the universe reborn
When we speak of systems change, we are using proven techniques that steer organizations large and small through a thoughtful, actionable process of focused change (we outline the details of this in our free download, The EILEEN FISHER Story, which you can get here).
If we think of any system as a hulking heavy item, we can throw our shoulder against it and shove and only throw our back out. It’s immovable. America is like that to the nth degree. But if we apply leverage at critical spots with the right fulcrum to balance it, we can pry the hulking thing up, ever so slightly, and reposition ourselves a bit more firmly underneath it. The immovable has become movable. Now anything is possible. Everything is possible! Change just happened. We have hope. Here we go!
So we keep applying the correct pressure and keep shifting through those aforementioned leverage points and soon the entire thing has shifted. We know it works, because we’ve done it with heavy lifts like the global corporations Nike.
Look in the Mirror: that’s the one person you can change. And it starts with You.
Our business for a quarter of a century has been moving large organizations toward the greater good. You’ll see our values, which we apply in every setting here, that pulls us all toward a more sustainable future, and do we ever need that now!
The pandemic revealed to us at Seed Systems that these same principles can be applied on a personal level. Through our coaching services, our work with people at our retreat center and even through virtual connections, we can all start to apply the change we know our country, our communities, and our families needs. Maybe we are that tipping point for America.
We have significant global challenges ahead of us, but they impact each of us in countless ways, compromising our own health, vitality and sense of purpose. It may take a while to heal all that ails us, but the first step always begins with ourselves. We can each make the choice to act now.