So what is a Conscious Change maker? What does it mean to align your inner & outer worlds?
As my work gravitates towards supporting female change makers. I have been considering these questions alot recently and would like to share my thoughts with you here.
So what do I think it actually means? An online search has brought up blogs from two other women, so I will incorporate some of their ideas here, while also exploring my own interpretation.
A conscious change maker is someone who is working to make a positive social and environmental impact in the world.
While also doing the inner work to make the changes within themselves too. In fact, the desired outer changes are not possible without the inner work.
A conscious change maker is someone who is seeking a spiritual path and is doing the inner work to help them grow and flourish. To be present and productive.
So, what are 10 clues that you are a conscious change maker?
Your Intention to Love, no matter what, is the absolute Key to Happiness
– Robert Holden
- Choosing Love over Fear
Making a conscious choice to choose love over fear is key to making change happen. While we are stuck in our fear based paradigm of judgement of each other and ourselves, then we will never be able to move on from the cycle of suffering which it brings. I first really started to understand this, from listening to the wonderful Marianne Williamson, an American author, spiritual leader and activist. Her book A Return to Love made a massive impact on me – it’s based on her teachings from the self-study guide A Course in Miracles. She explains how applying the principles of love to life can aid in healing and bring about personal transformation.
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
–Marianne Williamson
- Having a strong sense of purpose To know what your purpose is and for all of your goals and activities to be aligned with it. Your purpose is like a North Star which helps guide and keep you on track. It helps to ensure your time and energy is used in a productive way for the things you really care about. I think it’s around integrating your work with who you are and how you live your life. In the past our work has often been siloed from this. However being a conscious change maker is about bringing your work into the core of who you are and not being apologetic about that.
People are looking for confident leadership with clearly defined values, and that only comes from a clear sense of purpose, anchored in our core. Our core is the solar plexus area in our body, our power centre, our ‘sun’ centre. As the sun is a star, this is the star centre in our body!
Just as people have navigated by using the stars over millennia, we will guide people home by shining bright from our purpose. A conscious leader allows herself to shine her brightest light.
– Emily Johnsson, 9 attributes of a conscious leader
- Daily spiritual practices To me being a conscious change maker involves having daily practices which help keep you aligned with my purpose. I have a Miracle Morning Routine with meditation, exercise, affirmations and visualisation which help me to stay focussed and on track. I also do regular yoga and body balance classes which are all about strengthening my core and staying present. As your fitness and wellbeing help you to stay focussed, disciplined and able.
- Choosing to be happy now You can decide at any time to live your life in a way which makes you happy. In a way which best resonates for you. It may seem hard at times but your response to life, your attitude and how you show up, is always your choice, no matter what your situation. As WW2 concentration camp survivor Victor Frankl noted, “the last of human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Easy to say, hard to do when there are bills to pay and the whole economic landscape has changed. I know. I’ve been there too. But it’s been in those times, against all odds, when I’ve employed the power of deliberate intent using “high vibration” thinking, feeling and visualizing, that things have changed. It’s time to do so again. For all of us.
Cheryl Brewster, Inspiring Conscious Changemakers
- Knowing who you are going to serve I think being a conscious change maker is about being clear on who you’re here to serve and aligning that with your purpose. The more that your work can be in service to those people, and to help them solve their specific problems, the more effective you will be at making change happen. Just ensure you do it in dialogue with them, that it’s in service to what they actually want and not through a top down or siloed approach. It’s about doing the work in a way that’s integrated and holistic.
- Be present I think being a conscious change maker is about always trying to be present. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is a book which really blew me away. It’s all about the power of living in the present and how you can learn to do it. Through techniques like mindfulness and yoga, we can start to bring more presence into our life. Ekhart describes how living in the present moment is the key to developing a sense of profound bliss, love, and unity with everything in the universe. If this interests you I also recommend his more recent book The New Earth. Where he explores how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness, is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world.
Realise deeply that the present moment is all you have.
Make the Now the primary focus of your life.
– Eckhart Tolle
- Trusting your intuition Being a conscious change maker means being tuned into and trusting your intuition. Meditation and prayer are two tools to help develop this skill. I like the idea that prayer is like asking for help – whether that be to the universe, God, the life force or your chosen deity – and that meditation is actually listening to the answer. I like to get up early in the morning, as it’s a time when I can check-in and listen to my intuition more clearly. It is a time when I feel clarity and when answers ‘appear’ to my current challenges and problems. There is a scientific explanation for this. As when we first wake up, we have theta brainwaves – which are a different frequency to those when we are conscious – which can help us access unconscious problem solving. In fact early in the morning – sometimes called the ‘witching hour’ – is a time of heightened connection to a more intuitive world.
- Co-create & collaborate Collaboration and community mindedness are keys to being a conscious change maker and helping achieve a sustainable world. To secure the future of our people and planet, we have to replace competition with collaboration. The good news is that the overall response of people to the coronavirus pandemic was community-minded, we worked together to help and support each other through it. A positive outcome has been to step back from the busyness of our lives and instead start valuing those things which money can’t buy; time with family and in nature, creating and making instead of spending and consuming. Now, more than ever, we need to continue living like this and see how we can use it as a blueprint to move forward.
- Be Focussed Being a conscious change maker involves being in service to the work and staying focussed on that. There are more distractions now than ever, so it’s vital to find ways to keep doing the deep work. To do this find routines which work for you e.g. switch off the wifi and smartphones, leave meetings and emails until later in the day; so you can do the deep focussed work when you are at your most productive.
Now is the time to say no to all distractions, noting that some of those distractions we have previously allowed because they were keeping us safe – in hiding. Every moment we allow distractions to have power over us, we are living out the energy of the old, limiting paradigm. Every moment we stay focused on our service and the higher purpose of our work, we are being the change. We allow ourselves to seek the support we need in small or big ways so that we can move forward in a state of flow. Focus equals flow equals impact.
– Emily Johnsson
- Cultivate a nature connection Time spent in nature is always time well spent. In this busy, ultra wifi connected world, we need protected time where we can just switch off and immerse ourselves in nature. The more we can do this the more we can re energise, recharge and tap into our innate creative and intuitive abilities. I don’t see how this is possible without regular time spent immersing yourself in nature. Whether a camping trip, a quick walk in the country or sitting under a tree in your local park, it’s all invaluable and is never time wasted.
So this is my initial public exploration of what it means to be a conscious change maker. How does this resonate for you? Do let me know. What do you think? What have I missed? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below or email: [email protected]
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