Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. ― Rumi
Source: Change
I enjoy Rumi. He wrote poetry that yielded lasting messages.
We live in a world where people want to change the world, rather than themselves. However, the world changes when we change ourselves. I transform and move beyond who I was, even the second before. As I change, my view of the world shifts and the world appears new to me.
It reminds me of Marcel Proust‘s quote: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Leaders who believe they can change the world for others are mere managers. Leaders change the world for themselves and invite others to join them in sharing their view of the world. There are not two identical views.
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About ivonprefontaine
In keeping with bell hooks and Noam Chomsky, I consider myself a public and dissident intellectual. Part of my work is to move beyond (transcend) institutional dogmas that bind me to defend freedom, raising my voice to be heard on behalf of those who seek equity and justice in all their forms.
I completed my PhD in Philosophy of Leadership Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA. My dissertation and research was how teachers experience becoming teachers and their role as leaders.
I focus on leading, communicating, and innovating in organizations. This includes mindfuful servant-leadership, World Cafe events, Appreciative Inquiry, and expressing one's self through creativity. I offer retreats, workshops, and presentations that can be tailored to your organzations specific needs.
I published peer reviewed articles about schools as learning organizations, currere as an ethical pursuit, and hope as an essential element of adult eductaion. I published three poems and am currently preparing my poetry to publish as an anthology of poetry.
I present on mindful leadership, servant leadership, schools as learning organizations, how teachers experience becoming teachers, assessement, and critical thinking. I facilitate mindfulness, hospitality retreats. and World Cafe Events using Appreciative Inquiry.
I am writing and researching about various forms of leadership, how teachers inform and form their identity as a particular teacher, schools as learning organizations, hope and its anticipatory relationship with the future, and hope as an essential element in learning.
Teacher as Transformer 
Good points, right on.
Thank you.
I’m wondering if they don’t say that to get people to stop questioning authority?
Leslie
I struggle with this. I try to change, when I can. But when I see such poverty and war and discrimination, I want to change the world. I know it’s not possible except in my own small ways. I help where I can, I speak and work against war and oppression, and I am actively anti-racist. If I can influence just one, I will have done well.
It is very difficult to not. I wonder if it is more about doing what we can and saying what we can that allows us to make the change possible.
change is difficult but it keeps happening right under us
It is always happening. I think the most difficult change is the one that is imposed on us and takes away our voice.
Changing oneself is changing the world…if only more people would understand that!
It is easy to say those words and much more difficult to live them.
I work very hard with myself daily. I work at being a good person, friend, pet owner, human being… And as humans we make mistakes, but working to fix mistakes and bettering self should always be the goal.
Yes, self-forgiveness and self-compassion are important to that process.
People can exhaust themselves working so hard to be better people as though their mere physical efforts will change the world. But it is the inward Un – worked for change of heart and mind and human spirit that effortlessly achieves the more physical and material changes in individuals. A natural flow that brings about natural inner peace and the outward flow of energy that gently and positively changes our world around us without the need for personal struggle and heavy burden of responsibility that so often leads to depression for its bearer. Relax…breathe deep! Smile and the world will smile with you! 😀
Thank you for a wonderful and inspirational comment.