” If you want to change the world, first change yourself…..”

….Recent events on the news have taken me back to my youth where ‘Protect and Survive’ was household reading and my fears were confirmed by reading Raymond Briggs ‘When The Wind Blows’ and thinking, “That’s it, we’re doomed.” We lived with a backdrop of posters which said things like, “You can’t hug your kids with nuclear arms” and others with pictures of ‘Neutron Ron’. As it turns out, the war we feared didn’t happen but to me, at the time, it felt only a moment away. We tried hard in our own ways to change the world and if felt like we were raised in a time of protest. CND rallies, the miner’s strike, Greenham Common and protests to bring down the then record unemployment figures. Some things did change for the better but others did not. Watching the news now it feels like I am being transported back 35 years or so. At that time if felt like we tried hard to change the world in many ways. Looking back it’s difficult to see what changes were made however the process allowed people to change themselves. It gave people the opportunity to question their beliefs, their actions and the impact those actions had on the people and with them, the world around them. In his blog ‘Single Dad Laughing’ Dan Pearce wrote: “If you want to change the world, first change yourself, then tell others how you did it. Never demand that people change. Inspire them to change using your own change as an example instead.” Sometimes the views, beliefs and perceptions we have can be the very things that have a direct impact on our wellbeing. Holding onto a thought without question or challenge can place us into a cycle that is hard to escape. Challenging that thought though can be the very thing that allows us to move on with our journey. Asking the question, “What evidence have I got that this is correct or otherwise?” and “Is this a thought, a feeling or a fact?” could be the key that opens the door to a brighter tomorrow.