Creating Change

This program is about creating change, both in our own lives and in the larger community. Group members are encouraged to think about memorable changes, and to explore challenges that they’ve faced in bringing about change, what makes us resist change, and particularly memorable changes that they’d like to make happen.

Member Preparation

In preparation for this session, please read through the following quotes, and spend some time thinking about times when you have created change in your life, your family’s life, or in the larger community.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together." – Vincent Van Gogh

"Every generation needs a new revolution." – Thomas Jefferson

"People don’t resist change. They resist being changed." – Peter Senge

"Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change." – Confucius

"Change is the law of life and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." – John F. Kennedy

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." – Anne Frank

"Things do not change, we change." - Henry David Thoreau

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." – Arthur C. Clarke

"There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it’s often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place." – Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveler (1824)

"For the mind to flower it has to go beyond what it knows." –Mother Meera

These questions provide ways you may want to approach this topic. Remember to focus on just one or two of the questions, if you choose to use them, as this will allow you to explore the topic in more depth.

  • How have you been involved in creating change in your life, your family’s or in the larger community? Was there a change that was particularly memorable?
  • What are the challenges you had to confront in bringing about change?
  • How do you react to the statement that people naturally resist change?
  • Is there a change that you’d like to bring about, either in your own life or in the community? How are you planning to make that happen?

Further Exploration

 

 

 

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