5 Qualities You Need to Change the World
Have you ever dreamt of changing the world?
Did you ever imagine that you could truly be great and make the world a better place?
Here’s the catch: There are so many challenges and struggles that come up everyday that it is difficult enough to manage your own life, much less make an impact in the world. Perhaps you have tried to make a difference and failed. Or you tell yourself that you would contribute to society “someday”.
Why do some people change the world and some don’t?
Some people have talent—like Michael Phelps, who has the natural physique of a swimmer. Or Mozart who started composing when he was five years old.
But most people were born ordinary and there was nothing really exceptional about them, yet some people have done things that have shifted the course of history.
So what makes these people different?
Here are qualities that five ordinary people who have changed the world possess that you can adopt for yourself to create an impact in the world we live in.
Quality #1: Love (Anne Sullivan)
The four-letter-word again. Isn’t Love a cliche when it comes to making a difference?
Hear me out.
Love is a motivating force that drives us to care and empathise with another person. Empathy allows us to see the world through another person’s eyes, and by extension, to care about them.
Case in point is Anne Sullivan. Anne was the teacher of Helen Keller, a famous activist who impacted millions of people who were blind and deaf.
Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing when she was 19 months old. She was an unruly child who bit and scratched people. As she was blind and deaf, her disabilities made communicating with her extremely difficult. The turning point came when Helen’s parents engaged a teacher, Anne Sullivan. During a tantrum, Anne made Helen come out into the yard and pumped running water into Helen’s hand. While Anne pumped water, she spelled out w-a-t-e-r on Helen’s hand and Helen suddenly understood that the letters were linked to the words. Hellen and Anne had found a way to communicate. From that moment, Helen became an insatiable learner and went on to be an inspiration to many disabled people around the world.
Perhaps the easiest way to share the love is to remember someone who has made a difference to you.
Who was the equivalent of Anne Sullivan to you?
Do you remember the love that was shown in that moment?
Can you show that love to someone else and pass the love on?
What happens when you pass on the love?
Quality #2: Charisma (Rosa Parks)
We all have our social networks and most of us choose to use our social networks for personal or professional benefit. We hang out with our friends at cafes, connect with our colleagues for work, or spend time with our families.
It is undeniable that nurturing our relationships with the important people in our lives is necessary.
But you also want to ask when was the last time that you used your relationships to make a real difference?
In 1955, there were laws for racial segregation on buses in the U.S.; some seats were reserved only for white people. When a white man boarded the bus, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and was arrested. Rosa Parks wasn’t the first black passenger jailed for breaking bus segregation laws, but none of the previous arrests resulted in anything different. Unlike other people who have been jailed for violating the bus segregation laws, Rosa Parks was deeply respected within her community. Rosa Parks had friends everywhere, and was friends with common laborers and college professors. Her ability to connect and unite people caused people to come together in a movement. Her arrest would draw tens of thousands of protesters to rallies and ignited a movement that ended segregation laws in the United States.
Today, racism is still well and alive, but race relationships have come a long way since that day in 1955. Rosa Parks passed away in 1977 but the movement was passed on from one person to another, culminating in the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
When the desire to create change is genuine, it moves others to create change as well. When you make a difference through your connections, others use their connections to make a difference and the change gets passed on.
Who can you ask today to join you in a cause that you care about?
Quality #3: Courage (Malala Yousafzai)
The very definition of change means that you would need to go against the norms. It can involve challenging other’s mindsets, to do things that are difficult. To stand out, to be different and to say that this is something worth fighting for involves courage.
Courage is about doing the right thing even though you are afraid. There are things in life that scare you but to make a difference, you need to say yes, even in the face of fear.
Malala Yousafzai was born in Pakistan in 1997. Her father gave her the opportunity to go to school even though the common belief was that girls do not need to go to school. She spoke out actively for girls’ rights to learn and this made her a target. One day, a masked gunman boarded her school bus and shot her on the left side of her head. She recovered, but instead of living a quiet life, she decided to redouble her efforts for girls’ rights to education by opening more schools for girls. In 2014, she became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
While you may not experience life-threatening circumstances like Malala, making a difference would often encounter resistance from others and it takes courage to overcome these resistances.
When you are courageous, you create opportunities for others to be courageous as well. When Malala set up schools for girls to study, those girls plucked up their courage to go to school.
Who can you inspire to be courageous through your courage?
Quality #4: Unstoppable (Terry Fox)
Life is difficult. With bills to pay, people to deal with and neverending deadlines, the obstacles in life never seem to end.
It can be tempting for you to say, “I don’t have energy to give further. I need to take care of my stuff and I can only make a difference when I have everything handled.”
However, these obstacles will always be there. Unless you do not give in to the reasons you tell yourself and overcome the barriers in your way, the difference you make will be limited.
When times get tough, the question that you need to ask yourself is not, “When can I stop?” or “When have I done enough?” but rather, “What can I do more of?”
Terry Fox was a Canadian distance runner. His right leg was amputated in 1977 after he was diagnosed with a form of cancer, though he continued to run using an artificial leg after that.
In 1980, he began the Marathon of Hope, a cross-country run to raise money for cancer research. He ran the equivalent of a full marathon everyday across Canada. Today, the annual Terry Fox Run has grown to involve millions of participants in over 60 countries and is now the world’s largest one-day fund-raiser for cancer research; over C$750 million has been raised as of January 2018.
I know of people who ran their first race or marathon because they were inspired by Terry Fox. I also know of people who have done their own personal version of Terry Fox and raised money for a cause that they believed in.
If a man with one leg can run a marathon a day, what can you do?
If you were unstoppable like Terry Fox, what can you truly accomplish?
Quality #5: Responsibility (Greta Thunberg)
Responsibility is knowing that you are a part of this planet that we live on and that change starts with you. It is acknowledging that you have the power to change and make a difference.
Greta Thunberg was an ordinary Swedish teenager until she started the “Fridays for Future” movement. The series of school strikes eventually inspired hundreds of thousands of people all over the world to take part in the Global Climate Strike. At the end of 2019, science magazine “The New Scientist” said that 2019 was the year the public “finally woke up to climate change”, largely thanks to the work of Greta and the Extinction Rebellion group.
In her famous United Nations Climate Action Summit speech, she told the audience: “I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.”
“Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
Greta Thunberg calls upon every single person to act. She knows that when you choose not to act, you are condoning the actions that others have taken.
I know that as a result of Greta Thunberg’s actions, I’ve been more mindful of how my actions impact the environment.
What about you? What are the actions that you have chosen to condone and say that it’s ok to turn away?
What can you be responsible for today?
Conclusion
It’s easy to look at these five people and say you are not like them, that they had something different about them that allowed them to be extraordinary.
But the truth is that each of us possesses these qualities to some degree.
It all boils down to this: The difference between these ordinary people who change the world and other ordinary people is that the people who change the world practise these qualities consistently.
Most ordinary people choose to exercise these qualities sporadically and live mediocre lives. An ordinary person chooses to be courageous and stand up for justice, but only for that moment. An ordinary person chooses to show love to another person, perhaps only when there is a connection to the other person. An ordinary person chooses to recycle and not use plastic bags, perhaps only when it’s convenient to do so.
Yet in the moments that an ordinary person manifests these qualities, a little change happens.
Imagine what can happen if you were to exercise these qualities consistently?
Each of us has the potential to be truly extraordinary if only we allow ourselves to be.
So pick one quality that resonates best with your character and start making a difference today by putting it consistently into action.