The state of the world, or at least the state of the world that’s portrayed to us, is pure chaos.  We encourage and promote martyrdom and victimhood for the sake of our feelings not being recognized.  I am 100% guilty of that myself.  I am human and I know we are all susceptible to the things that go through our heads.  I know we worry about our value and worth and that our ego demands attention and recognition all the time.  I know that our society has promoted and pandered to the ego, believing attention is the most important thing we can ask for.  We’ve equated attention/recognition and money with survival and power.  We’ve convinced ourselves that power is the only way to survive, believing power and dominion over others somehow makes us more important or more likely to get ahead.  We still haven’t learned that power makes us targets, that power has its own level of responsibility, and that power comes in various shapes, forms, and sizes.  Power over others is limited and tenuous. Power over ourselves is absolute and can be harnessed for the greater good.

The leadership in this world leaves something to be desired—and that isn’t targeted to any one leader in particular.  I think part of the problem is that we have We have all fallen short remembering what the goal is, that we are here to work together to improve our state not our standing.  One of the key lessons we need to remember is that it isn’t about being right, it’s about doing what’s right.  We don’t have to agree on anything except doing the right thing.  Some may argue that our definition of the right thing may differ—and that can be true—yet we also have an innate knowing of right and wrong.  We are also born knowing compromise and that there is a middle ground.  We are born with the innate desire to lift people up.  It’s only as we are exposed to different beliefs around power that we start to shift toward the idea of personal power.  We all know what it feels like to not be heard or to be left out—and the truth is it doesn’t feel good.  But that isn’t the cue to find a way to assume all control, it’s the cue to find a way to make ourselves heard or to realize we need to find a different audience.    

We aren’t here for a long time and it is human nature to find a way to leave our mark.  We like the idea of being remembered but it is more important to question WHAT we are remembered for.  There are ways to be remembered that have nothing to do with power.  Instead, we can be remembered for looking for the right thing in all situations.  We live in a divisive culture where we think it can only be one thing or another but the mark of maturity is looking for that middle ground.  I don’t have to agree with all you say but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in parts of it.  We tend to make people all right or all wrong and that isn’t the case just as we know we aren’t all right or all wrong.  In Robin Sharma’s Leader with No Title (see my series on that as well)—seeking power (or the wrong kind of power) means nothing in the grand scheme of things.  We all have power in our lives, more than we allow ourselves to realize because we waste that energy on trying to control people and how they see things and what they do instead of controlling our emotions to arrive at the best place.  To change the world, to be the example of change, to do the right thing is to see the value in what is said over worrying about proving a point.