WorldSave

This may seem like a silly question to you. Clearly, change happens through change. It describes itself. Yet, more specifically how may stump you. Some would think that to initiate change you need to make someone else believe in a different idea, paradigm, whathaveyou. Then, we think “The world will change!” But it isn’t about shared belief. In fact, that’s entirely irrelevant. A world where everyone believes the exact same thing would be rather dull.

If change isn’t about belief, what is it? It is about action. Okay. So you change your answer to: Change is making someone else do something differently. In this case, something that benefits the world. Unfortunately, you would still be wrong. We cannot make anyone else do anything differently. Only an individual controls their own actions. In fact, we are only responsible for ourselves. Okay. So how can we possibly expect change?

I read somewhere once, forgive me that I do not know who said it, that we should be the change we want to see in the world. And that is specifically how change happens. You change, and only you. Your habits change. Your ideas may change, but they don’t have to. Typically, your beliefs will either change, or will at least now match your habits.

It is very typically for people to rally, to believe in something, to want change, and then to do nothing about it. They sort of expect the world to change and they’ll do it when the time is right. But they do not understand that the world will not change if they do not change. The world is made up of many, many people. If they all thought “I’ll wait for the world to change” then guess what, the world never changes. What needs to happen is, each individual thinks “I want to world to change, and I want it to be as I am acting now” and then they act in accordance with that change, change will happen. Why? Because it is happening.

Now, clearly one people changing isn’t a whole lot. Its not going to create a lot of fuss (at least, not usually). So then what? That’s where WorldSave comes in. A place for people who are initiating change by changing themselves. A place where we can interact and think of ways to better ourselves, and ways that we can find out what is wrong with the world and change our lives so we no longer support those problems. Furthermore, you will find that leading by example is the best way to change someone’s mind.

Although change isn’t about changing others, you will still find that they do change when they see something they like, or that makes sense to them. If they see a glowing, happy individual, healthy and satisfied with life, they are going to want to know what you’re doing right that they seem to be missing. Curiosity initiates conversation. Conversation initiates an idea. An idea initiates a belief. A belief initiates action.

Unfortunately, this cycle can get caught up between idea:belief and, more frequently, belief:action. That is where is rests upon each individual to change themselves. Nobody can give anyone else that push to action. Only you can push yourself.

I said before that shared belief isn’t a component of change. It isn’t, but belief is a component. Shared belief is dull, and will create a stagnant world. However, belief around a central idea “making the world a better place”, or any similar idea about change, is useful and is a component of change. This does not mean that each belief must be identical. It just means that each belief needs to lead to an action that initiates that idea and turns it into reality.

So think long and hard about it. What can you change about yourself that turns an idea into reality? That matches a little better with your beliefs? Do you love animals but eat meat? Do you love nature but pollute? Do you want to end human starvation but you consume processed food? You want peace but promote violence? Pick one thing you want to do differently and just do it. Then you will have made change.

Lia Cross

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Recently, a friend of mine is having trouble deciding what to do with his life. We’ve all been there. We have a lifetime in front of us and no clue what to spend it on. We may have passions, but we’re not certain we can make a living with those passions. Or we’re just totally at a loss for everything. No clue.

Not only this, but many of us are stuck in jobs that we do not love. We still don’t know what we want out of life, but we do know that this job just isn’t it. I know I’ve been there, and I know a ton of other people who know that experience all too well.

So what does one do when stuck like that? They find out what their true purpose is.

I have a few resources I would like to share with you. I hope these two sites don’t mind me sending you their way because I have found them both extraordinarily helpful in both my life and in getting WorldSave up and running.

The first is about how to know what your true purpose is: http://www.relfe.com/life_purpose.html

The second tells you how you can find that purpose out in a relatively easy manner: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

Granted, I haven’t tried the second one yet. We got WorldSave running before then and I feel like this is my purpose in life. Still, I may yet give it a go to fine-tune my purpose and to really get an understanding for it.

I would like to add my two cents now about being unhappy about your job, wanting to do something but either not knowing what it is or how to do it, and finding true purpose in life so you can be satisfied as well as productive to the rest of the world.

First, about being unhappy in your job. What are you doing? Really? Why are you wasting your time? Your energy can always be better spent doing something you enjoy. Even if you need the money, you can always make it work to get a better job. Always. You, as an individual, are a unique being with your own lessons, your own wisdom, and you can find a way to share that with others and make money. So, if you are unhappy in your job, follow some of the steps above and find out what your true purpose is. Then seek it. Don’t quit your job, not yet anyway. Make sure you are secure in your new way of life. Make sure your new source of income is flowing and you will be supported in a switch. You may want to leave your old job as soon as possible, but you can’t do anything if you’re not supported. Rule number one is to take care of you. You can’t usually take care of you without some cash.

If you don’t know what it is you want to do, as I said, try those steps above. If that doesn’t work, write a list of all the things that make you happy. Things you enjoy. Go crazy, make a HUGE list. It can be ANYTHING. Take your sweet time with it. It can take days if you want. Search every nook and cranny of your soul until you feel satisfied that this is a complete list. After you’re done, circle the things that are also valuable to someone else. The things that can make someone else’s life richer if you did it. Then re-write your list with those circled things. If you couldn’t find anything on your list that you think would be valuable to someone else, you’re probably not approaching it in the right way. I’m not talking about valuable as in “I can type, so I’d be a good secretary” or “I can drive, maybe I’ll be a delivery person.” Not at all. I mean something like “I know about health, and I can make people healthy” or “I know how to grow things, I can teach people how to grow their own food.” Things like that, things that are truly valuable–not just in a monetary way but also (and more importantly) in way that adds lasting value to their life. Think of: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

Moving on… Pick the things on the new list that you truly feel you would enjoy most. Or, if you’ve done the “true purpose” exercise, pick things that match that purpose (things you feel strongly about). Now you have a list of things you can pursue and would 1) make you satisfied and 2) be of value to the rest of the world. Congratulations. Now, about getting started…

Find a way to express this new idea. You want to teach people about time management? How about start a blog to make money from it? That’s a simple way to get started in your free time. Want to teach people about health? Start holding lectures at some local places for a small fee, or no fee at all if you want to get some clients. Write a book. Write essays for a paper. Teach people how to care for their pets properly, including nutrition. It can be anything, really. Use your ingenuity. When whatever you choose takes off the ground, then you can spend less and less hours at your other job and eventually just leave it entirely.

Finding a purpose in life is very important. You don’t need one to survive — of course not. So many people survive without knowing theirs every day. But in order to survive happily — to thrive — then you may be interested in figuring it out and actually pursuing it. All I know is that I was sick and tired of grocery store jobs, of retail and nasty customers, of bosses treating me like less than a person. If you can relate, then do it your way. Become your own boss. Do whatever it is that makes your life satisfying to you and worthwhile to others. Add value to the world, don’t take it away like so many other people do.

Lia Cross

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As I worked in a position, until recently, that put me into contact with a high volume of people, I’ve noticed a thing or two about patience. Most people have it and are gracious, but one person who is impatient and negative seems to make up for every twenty people with patience.

What is patience, when should we have it, and when should we not have it anymore? A discussion of this kind can only be 100% conclusive when applied to a specific situation, and even then not always, but generally, I think guidelines can be laid to help people keep themselves in check.

The first thing we should do to work on patience is to identify the things that make us impatient. For some people, it’s standing in line at a grocery store and watching an elderly woman count out 99 cents (or more) in change, penny by penny. For others, it’s being nagged by a parent, significant other, etc., when they already have things on their mind. I think identifying the things that make us lose it is almost half of the battle.

We are largely controlled by our subconscious. The reason people get into the same arguments over and over is because our bodies make us into creatures of habit. Perhaps your girlfriend makes a huffing sound when she’s angry. You hear that, and your muscles automatically tense, because you know that sound and you know she always does it when you argue. It seems silly to evaluate it rationally now, but that’s what the subconscious does. If you can pinpoint that moment, that thing that gets you annoyed, then it becomes easier to avoid it or fend it off. If you say “Not this argument again,” then you’re one step closer to having a discussion about the situation and perhaps end it, rather than the same old argument.

Another way to avoid a situation where impatience flourishes is to manage your time properly. Nerves tend to set people on edge and make them react intensely and unhappily. People in a grocery line who are stuck waiting often say they have to be someplace in a short time, and thus are angry that they have to wait. Life will never be perfect, and although no one can time their day perfectly either, it seems that so many people expect the world to unfold for them, and get angry at those who can’t control certain aspects of what “went wrong.”

One way to know when to gather up your patience is when you start to feel that anger and look at the person it’s directed at. Ask yourself if that person deserves your wrath or unkind words, if it’s really their fault, and if it is, if it’s constructive or moral to take out your frustrations on them. Think about how the other person’s day is going, what kind of a situation they’re in. I think once you ponder all these things, most of the time you’ll find it’s not worth it to get angry - and maybe the thought process will calm you down as well.

Also good for anger and nerves are breathing exercises. Kind of like that “count to ten” saying, breathing is a great way to relax a person at any time. Sometimes when I feel tense and stressed before I go to sleep and it’s keeping me awake, I do a short breathing exercise to take the tension out of my body and clear my mind. Breathing in through the mouth, take a deep breath in for ten seconds, focusing on collecting breath downward toward the navel. Hold it for a moment, then breathe out for twenty seconds, slowly. Do this as many more times as you want. If ten seconds in and twenty out is too long, just double the exhale from however many seconds of inhale you take.

If everyone took steps to increase their patience, were friendly and understanding in tense situations (without letting themselves be stepped all over, that is), I think the world would be a better place. Even if it wouldn’t solve global warming, poverty, or huge social problems we have now that people may find more important than common courtesy, our day to day lives often include a lot of time out in public with others, and much of the time, our days might very well be more enjoyable if people, and ourselves, were more patient.

- candela.

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I realized that not everyone will understand what is meant by the WorldSave slogan: Find the bars to your cage… and break them.

Breaking a cage is obvious enough, but what about these bars?

The quote comes from paraphrasing the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. In it, he mentions how, if you don’t know where the bars to your cage are, how can you break them? You may want to break them, you’re raring to go, but you just don’t know how because you can’t see them in the first place. An example would be the hippie movement. They wanted to tear down something. Change something. But they didn’t know what they were fighting against. Not specifically. What were the bars holding this society together? How could they break them to bring the meaningless society down?

WorldSave hopes to help you identify the bars to both world and personal cages. We hope to help you figure out whats standing in your way of a better world. Once we know the problems, we can move to change them. When the problems go away, we’ve effectively broken a bar. Eventually, when all the bars are broken, we have demolished the cage, and we should find outselves standing in a bright, open, free world. An example of a broken cage and free world would be the eradication of poverty and/or world hunger. It would be a healthier world with healthier people, who are at least a little less pissed off at each other. It would mean less war and more global cultural understanding and tolerance. It would mean total non-violence. Everything and anything that would make this world a better place is a cage torn down.

As for your personal cages, I hope you can find whatever it is that is holding you back. Tear down that cage that makes you scared to do what’s right. Break the bars so you take responsibility for your own health and don’t settle with your sickness. Don’t just step out of your cage—break it. Totally tear down the walls so that you couldn’t run back into it, couldn’t be captured again, even if you wanted to. Set yourself up for success. Do what you know you need to in order to accomplish your goal not just today, but tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until you find the cage has decomposed into nothingness.

Tips on how to succeed in your personal goals and break down your cages will follow in subsequent blogs. As for breaking down global cages, that’s what WorldSave is all about.

Lia Cross

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Every so often there comes a time when you have to do something you may not like, yet you know that it is the right thing to do. You get knots in your stomach, you feel sick, and even if you want to do it, it still isn’t any easier. Things of this nature may include apologizing to someone you seriously wronged, standing up for someone or something even though the consequences may be dire, such as losing your job, or intervening in someone’s life in such a way that they may hate your guts—but you know that they will be helped for it.

All these situations are difficult, not just because of the possible consequences, but also because we may not always be positive that it is the right thing. For instance, apologizing to that person after the fact—in one case, you don’t stir up the past and thus both parties go on with their lives. In the other, you bring up a hurtful memory but in the spirit of trying to make things right—or at least in trying to show respect and voice your sincerest apologies. The question comes when you consider whether or not the apology is even wanted. Then it becomes a question of: Am I doing this for selfish reasons, or do I really think that I owe it to them?

In the case of possibly losing your job, you may know that the right thing is to stand up for a good cause, but the consequences could be harming yourself and your family, with the strong possibility that nothing will even come of it. What is right? How can we really know?

The third scenario is a little more obvious. To intervene, we would hope, is the right choice. To not do so is already harming the person and, if something really bad happens, you’ll be partially to blame. However, can you live with someone hating you? Can you deal with the pain of wondering if it was really right, really necessary, and whether or not you just made a bad situation worse?

Knowing what’s right isn’t easy, and doing it is even harder. Yet, I encourage everyone to always persevere. Always do what you think is right. If you realize later that its not, then make amends. Don’t just think short-term, but think long-term as well. You probably should apologize, even if it ends up backfiring. They’ll get over it, and so will you. You probably should voice your concerns even if you lose your job, because if that career is leading you down a bad path then you probably don’t want to be there anyway (consider it a chance to re-evaluate your life and career), and not doing anything in the face of “evil” is just as bad as doing harm directly, so you can be sure that intervening with someone is the way to go.

These are so few examples, but I hope they got you thinking about something in your life that you need to do that may not be easy. Either you’re being lazy, or you’re scared, or you feel it is impossible at this moment. Whatever it is, keep trying to always do what’s right.

Lia Cross

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