Change is Scary, But We Need to Be Better
We can't make the world a better place without working on ourselves
In yesterday’s essay, we approached the idea of personal development in an omnipartial context. To co-create the future we want, we have to put in the work on an individual and systemic scale. Change is hard to deal with, but we need to embrace it. I’m offering more insights into personal development today, and you’ll find some really cool resources at the bottom of this article.
We’ve already addressed that we’re all one and that we need to learn to listen in yesterday’s essay. But how else can we change for the better?
Acceptance
Here's a great little puzzle: If you want something or someone to change, you first have to accept them exactly as they are. Acceptance is powerful.
If I want to change, I first have to accept myself. If I want any part of my life to change, I have to be at peace with it. As they say, “what you resist persists,” so being angry at something or resisting it is futile. If we hate something in our lives, we have to accept it and realize that’s just what’s happening. Only then can we make a change.
Accepting what we can’t change
I’ve discovered another interesting dynamic paradox of personal growth in becoming more of an omnipartial individual. Some things we can change, grow, heal, and take the effortful process of trying to improve. There are many, many paths we can take. There are also things we can’t change.
For me, there've been paths of meditation, doing work as a man, recognizing my privilege, and acknowledging what it means to be a US American.
There are ways that I need to grow, but there are things I can’t change. In some ways, I need to accept myself as I am and focus on harm reduction. Some cognitive and implicit biases are just part of my life, and I need to make sure that I reduce their adverse impact. That’s true for a lot of us.
Harnessing the power of community
Another thing that's been useful for me is recognizing that I don't have to do this alone. There are many great things that I can do in communities and groups, and I highly recommend the Mankind Project for people interested in men's work.
Everyone should try a 12-step program and figure out how to make amends for some of the harms they've caused in their lives. So working in groups or relationships is where we learn lessons and get feedback, and then there's integration.
Integration is a powerful part of learning a lesson, as we have to really think about how to apply the resolution in our lives.
Dynamic tensions and cognitive biases
Those are all interesting tensions:
Self and other
My voice and your voice
Confidence and humility
Accountability and forgiveness
Healing and acceptance
Change and harm reduction.
None of these are easy. This is an incredibly nuanced space we’re in. Not only that, but we’re up against it. Many outside forces love manipulating us. I have learned how to inoculate myself against manipulation, and I recognize my reality. Having the capacity for critical thinking and sense-making have been really powerful pieces.
I find looking at a list of our cognitive biases and logical fallacies really useful. Once you learn what these are, you can see what's happening. It makes it a lot easier to not be captured by other people's opinions and ways that they might want to manipulate us. Here’s an awesome comic explaining how cognitive biases affect our thinking.
There are many interesting things about thinking like a scientist, like in The Story of Us by Tim Urban. The whole point is taking in a ton of information. Using this approach, I have a very diverse media diet, taking all these different perspectives. At the start, it was a lot. I started being more thoughtful about what I believed, and I took in what I did and didn’t like. Getting your information from more sources can counteract confirmation bias and open your mind to other viewpoints. All Sides Media is a great resource for news across the political spectrum.
But the real piece is taking ideas, sharing them with people, listening to their feedback, and being willing to correct ourselves. We're trying to come up with durable ways of understanding the world, and part of that is asking people for critiques.
Coping with change
Someone said to me recently that if I want the world and democracy to change, I first have to accept it as it is. That's how I’m growing right now. It’s not easy to accept change, diversity, and differences. It goes against our human nature.
Fish live in schools, birds in flocks, bison in herds, and humans in tribes. That’s our evolutionary quirk. We are used to a few hundred people in our life that we can really trust. After that, all those changes are a threat.
We need to recognize this because our current democratic experiment is intense. We’re dealing with a society with differences, cultures, religions, perspectives, and lived experiences. That's a wild experiment, and it's hard.
We are creating this global, national, and community level of difference. We can do so much cool stuff because we have all this diversity, but we are not innately built for that. That's why we have democratic systems, culture, and processes that can help us.
Sometimes I find myself wrestling with something being hard, not wanting to change, or disliking critique. If you struggle with this, remember it’s okay. We’re not built for these things, and it’s something we need to learn how to do. We're choosing to learn how to do it because it benefits all of us.
I’ll share many resources in the future, including why we're tribal, afraid of change, and why we protect our identity. These are all worth paying attention to, but they require effort and support to change, and that's why we can't do it alone.
Self-awareness
We need to be open, curious, willing to make changes, and accept that we're part of the problem. All of these skills that we can do as individuals help us engage more effectively in collaborative communication and different processes.
We might need to face that we messed up or that we have amends to make. If we’re not willing or able to do that, that makes it harder. Those who grow as individuals can face really hard things with resilience. If we’ve done enough healing, we can engage with topics that are too threatening and dangerous for certain people for various reasons, such as trauma or exhaustion.
It's not easy to engage with extremists or give love to people causing serious harm. So personal fortitude becomes a gift to that larger conversation.
We have the power to change things
Our culture and systems need to evolve. Let’s remember that they are us. We are democracy. We are the United States. Here’s another way I like to think about this: While I can be frustrated with traffic, if I'm in a car in traffic, then I am traffic. I’m part of that. In the same way, I am this country. I am this history. I am this system.
As individuals, we are fundamental agents of much bigger things. We influence them, and they influence us. Culture can act as a magnet to get us to where we need to be. If we try to go beyond it, it will try to pull us back.
Our systems also influence us, and we can easily adapt to them when they change. As individuals, we need to be the ones that demand that change. We must get to the place where we stop tolerating divisiveness, manipulation, and a democracy where people with power have disproportionate influence. It’s not okay, and we have to speak up.
I don’t want to understate the power of any individual to make significant cultural or systemic changes. There are amazing growth opportunities, and we need to embrace them for a better future.
What’s coming for the Omni-Win Project?
You’ll see more content from these four strategic themes, resources, and essays on specific topics relating to each piece.
Here are a few things to look forward to:
Understanding who we are through biology, neurobiology, and philosophy.
Age-old wisdom that we can tap into to understand more about our world.
How we can learn to be resilient and accepting.
Shadow work, mindfulness, healing, and trauma healing.
Self-awareness and engaging in growth, recognizing how we need to grow.
How we can identify our values through cool exercises.
Being authentic and becoming more effective voices for change.
Personal communication skills, sensemaking, and thinking.
So there are many cool things to look forward to, and you can read all about them here. Do these topics interest you? Stay tuned and subscribe if you haven’t already.
I’m launching the Omni-Win Project podcast this summer on July 4th, where I’m talking to experts in all the different fields supporting an omni-win future. A website is coming and lots of great resources.
I’ve included some really interesting resources at the bottom of this article for you to check out. Don’t forget to scroll all the way down if you’d prefer to watch the YouTube video for this article.
Thank you for being so interested in co-creating the future of democracy.
Extra resources for personal development and cognitive biases:
"Finding the root of the problem"
Personal Development resources:
The Developmentalist: Character Development Exercise
The Developmentalist: Worldview Questionnaire
The Developmentalist: Are You A Developmentalist?
Cognitive biases:
"The Backfire Effect" from the You Are Not So Smart podcast
Hidden Brain Podcast Mind Reading 2.0 Series:
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-double-standard/
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/why-conversations-go-wrong/
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/mind-reading-how-others-see-you/
If you prefer to watch your content, here’s a video on the topic of this essay:
You can find more information about the work I do in conflict transformation on my website: http://www.omni-win.com
You can schedule a call with me here: https://calendly.com/duncanautrey
Don’t forget to check out the rest of my posts as I discuss how we can work together to ensure we all win.
If you’d like to see more of these weekly round-up posts, subscribe to Omni-Win Visions here on Substack:
It would also be great if you could subscribe to my YouTube channel, where you can watch more of my long-form content, authentic discussions, and weekly content: