Why Changing The World Starts Within Us: My Journey To Becoming a Changemaker
This essay was a winner of the Global Changemakers Essay Competition 2020
Three years ago I was a year out of university, I’d recently moved from Australia to Germany and I was looking for a job. But not just any job. I had studied Sustainable Development, and I wanted to find a job where I could make an impact.
During my degree, one of our professors had warned us that it would be hard to find work with meaning. “There’s just not much money in it”, he told us. “You’re going to have to create your own jobs.”
Now we were finished and most of us were indeed struggling to find work in our field. I remembered the half-jokes we’d made when we felt overwhelmed about the depressing stuff we were learning: maybe the best thing to do with our sustainability degree was to buy a piece of land and just try to live sustainably ourselves. Suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I mean, how could we make a difference if no-one would even hire us? And what did creating our own job even mean? How were we supposed to go about it?
So there I was in Germany trying to figure this out. Then I was at an event one evening and I met one of my co-founders-to-be.
He had already been working for a few years in one of those highly sought after jobs in a well known NGO. And it turned out it wasn’t the dream job he had imagined: he actually wasn’t happy there.
The more people I talked to, the more versions I kept hearing of this same story. So many inspired, talented people out there want to make a difference, yet either can’t find a way to get paid doing so, or they land a job where they don’t feel they are really having an impact.
The thing I didn’t expect was just how many of these people actually had ideas for social impact projects of their own. Projects they would start if they lived in their dream world. They were like secret entrepreneurs waiting to be hatched. So why hadn’t they started yet?
The easy answer would be: not enough money. Not enough time. Not the right knowledge or skills. And those things definitely play a role. Yet when you scratch below the surface, the real barriers run much deeper.
What if I fail?
Who am I to even try?
What if I ruin my chances at a career if it doesn’t work out?
What will people think of me?
Where do I even start?
Whatever our version of ‘I am not enough’ is — it holds us back from getting started. We’re afraid. So we don’t start at all.
In my case, my internal story went something along the lines of: if I start my own business, I am failing at being a proper adult with a respectable job. It will just be an extension of my exploration years — gap year one, gap year two, university, study abroad, internships, and so on.
I mean, I did all those things so that I could land a highly sought after job in a well known NGO, right? And now I’m about to throw that all away?
But something deeper was tugging at me. The feeling, the intuition, that there was another path for me, one I had never even considered, one which might just lead me exactly where I needed to go.
So I took a leap into the unknown. And ironically I took the most inception-worthy leap I could find: I started creating programs to support other people making that same leap.
One of the most amazing moments at the beginning of my journey was the first workshop of our first ever program.
I looked around the room and almost could not believe we had really made it happen — here were real people, taking part in a real program which we had created ourselves, seemingly out of thin air. I almost burst with excitement and gratitude. And talk about inception: I created a program to empower changemakers, and empowered myself along the way.
I never imagined that becoming a social entrepreneur would be such a personal process. I’m learning about what excites and drives me, about my strengths and fears, about my own ability to make stuff happen. And of course, just how much I don’t know. It’s a humbling path, and one that’s filled with joys, challenges, learning, passion and a lot of hard work.
I think we sometimes overlook this part of it. On the surface, changemaking is all about the outside world. Changing systems, changing policies, changing power dynamics. These things can feel overwhelming and disempowering. Yet it helps me to remember — and freaks me out a bit — that we already have an impact all the time, with every conversation, decision, action and inaction. This is something within our power.
So if we want to be proactive shapers of change, we need a healthy dose of inner clarity. What’s important to us, what kind of impact do we want to have?
Don’t worry if you don’t have this inner clarity yet. It’s an ongoing process and if you’re like me, you’ll start to figure it out on the way.
And then you’ll probably realise that you need to get to know yourself on a whole new level to be able to navigate the inner obstacle course which lies ahead. Because unfortunately, the first leap over the first obstacle of getting started is generally not the last.
As a changemaker, there are times when I feel I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, where I feel stuck. There are times when things feel hard and messy and uncertain. Fears, doubts and limiting beliefs can show up when you least expect it.
And in those moments, what keeps me going is knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing. Knowing my purpose. Knowing how to recharge my energy and stay resilient. And having the trust and courage to take the next step back into the unknown, knowing that it doesn’t have to be the perfect step. Sometimes just taking any step in any direction is enough to get unstuck.
For me, learning that I don’t have to be perfect has been a big obstacle to overcome. That I don’t have to know everything before I start. That I don’t have to be an expert. I just have to be open and curious to learn and try and maybe fail and learn and try again.
In our crazy, complex world, I think this is an invaluable capacity for anyone, but especially as young people leading change. People might sometimes question our ability, knowledge or experience, or we might question it in ourselves. But let’s be honest, most of us humans are just figuring it out most of the time, right?
Yet every time we take a step and we show ourselves we are capable, that what we do matters, we build our confidence in ourselves and our trust that change is really possible. And we show others around us too.
If we can be brave, so can they. If we can make a difference, no matter how tiny, it must be possible on a bigger scale too.
Maybe this sounds overly optimistic and naive — oh these young people, still believing they can change the world, right? Well that might be true, but we desperately need that kind of optimism, and as young leaders this might be one of our greatest strengths.
So, dear changemakers, let us keep getting to know ourselves, being courageous and facing our inner obstacles, so that we can make a real impact.
And let us remember that we are already enough: we are all we need to change the world.
Global Changemakers has an unshakeable mission of supporting youth to create positive change in their communities. A global pioneer in supporting youth-led development, they have trained youth from over 180 countries and provided grants to over 360 youth-led projects, which have had a combined impact on over 6,2 million people. www.global-changemakers.net
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or Global Changemakers.
