THE SCHOOL OF LIFE VIDEO SERIES: Why You Can Change the World!

Although it looks like the world is set in its ways, it is, in fact completely open to change by those who dare to swim into the stream of history.

Why the World Stands Ready to Be Changed

One of the things that separates confident from diffident people is their sense of how feasible it might be to change the status quo. Broadly-speaking, the unconfident believe that history is over; the confident trust that it is still in the process of being made – one day possibly by themselves.

The way we enter the world carries with it an inherent bias towards an impression that the status quo has forever been settled. Everything around us conspires to give off a sense of fixity. We are surrounded by people far taller than we are, who follow traditions that have been in place for decades, even centuries. As children, our understanding of time hugely over-privileges the immediate moment.

Last year feels, to a five year old, like a century ago. The house we live in appears as immutable as an ancient temple; the school we go to looks as though it has been performing the same rituals since the earth began.

We are constantly told why things are the way they are and encouraged to accept that reality is not made according to our wishes. We come to trust that human beings have fully mapped the range of the possible. If something hasn’t happened, it’s either because it can’t happen – or it shouldn’t.
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