~by Haley Lynn Gray~
Written at the end of 2016.
This has been a year in which my life was turned upside down — and back again.
I’ve suffered so many losses and so much pain. Yet it’s so much less than what I’m seeing coming out of Aleppo and other countries. We’re coming hot off the heels of an incredibly bitter election in the United States, and moving forward with a president who is controversial, to say the least. It would be so very easy to blame him for all of our problems and to expect the government to fix everything for us.
Instead, I ask that each of us take responsibility and focus on doing our part to change the world around us. Don’t like something? Speak up. Focus on changing the little things around you. Do what you can. It won’t be perfect. But you will start making a change.
I believe that a lot of the issues around race we’ve seen since the elections are a reflection of deeper problems in our society that need to be focused on and healed. We can’t just blame that on the government. We’ve had demonstrations and protests this year. Those are indicative of a deeper problem that each of us is responsible for allowing to exist.
We have to come together and focus on bringing change to the world. One small step at a time. Even if you don’t think you can, how will you know unless you try? So often we give away our power to “others” because it’s just easier. Yet each of us holds so much power. Let’s exercise that power and make the world a better place. We can do it.
My challenge to you as 2016 comes to an end is to find one way that you can make the world a better place.
A note, some years on
I’ve left this as it was written, because dated things should look dated rather than being quietly updated to seem wiser than they were.
The part I’d still argue for is the middle of it: that waiting for someone else to fix a thing is how the thing stays unfixed, and that the scale you can actually affect is usually much smaller and much closer than the one you’re angry about.
That holds in a business too, and it’s most of what I’ve written about since. The problem you keep describing to other people is frequently one you have some authority over — less than you’d want, more than none — and the gap between complaining and acting is generally a decision rather than a capability.
The same year I wrote this, I spent a considerable amount of time on policy work that did change something, at a scale I would not have predicted when I started. It was slow, unglamorous, and it worked. I’d put more weight on that now than on the general appeal.
More on changing things when you have no authority to.
About the author
Haley Lynn Gray is the founder of Leadership Girl, of In2itive Biz Solutions, and of the Women’s Entrepreneur Network — a community of more than 77,000 women in business.
She writes here about what happens when running a business starts demanding that you lead one. More about Haley →
