How to Start Creating Change When You Feel Stuck
When it comes to creating change, there’s no such thing as “too small” an action.
Sure, there are ineffective actions. And certainly unsustainable ones. But both of these are dependent on taking action to begin with.
And no action toward a desired change is too small – especially when we first start.
To that end, here are Omkari Williams’ ten recommendations for making change, no matter how small the action you take: (with commentary from me)
(Williams is the author of the wonderful book, Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World without a Bullhorn.)
1. Narrow your area of focus.
If we’ve learned one thing from Trump’s “flood the zone” tactic, it’s that we simply can’t focus on everything all at once.
So don’t try to.
Instead, identify one or two areas you care deeply about and work to create change there. For me, given my professional role in the education world and what brings me alive, I typically focus on school curriculum (what and how students learn) and LGBTQ+ rights, especially as it relates to young people.
Find what you are most passionate about and trust others in the community to work on what they are most passionate about.
2. You can change your focus.
We never make change within a vacuum and we are always held within a context.
So if conditions shift, we can shift too!
Williams writes that for her, “when Trump started putting babies in cages at the southern border of the U.S., that knocked a focus area off my list until that situation felt stabilized enough for me to return to my main area of concern.”
Shifting from one focus to another daily reduces our impact, but responding to the evolving needs of our communities requires us to be light-footed in our approach. I like to think of it as “focus on one thing; care about it all.”
3. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Small, imperfect, consistent steps with a vision in mind > fast, giant leaps into the abyss.
When I get excited about something, I have a tendency to 1) jump all-in and work on it without pause, 2) create a 5-step-plan to make it happen and 3) give up on the whole thing within three days.
I burn myself out without even doing much.
Instead, find a pace that is sustainable – perhaps just one small action a week at first – and then build as your capacity does. Williams calls this being “radically realistic” with ourselves – it might not feel like we’re doing “enough,” but that’s okay.
4. Build relationships with others interested in your area of focus.
At the last school I taught at, we ended every staff meeting with these words: “what we can’t do alone, we can do together.” It was corny and I hated it every time – but it held within it a truth that our culture incentivizes us to ignore.
We can’t solve basically anything alone.
A tangible way to do this: find a group or a person already working in your area of focus. Attend their organizing meeting or ask them to go for a walk. Listen to their stories, inquire as to why they care about this issue, share your desire and excitement, and then ask how you can help. And then – here’s the key – follow through (no matter how small your follow-through is).
5. Center antiracism work.
This might feel a bit “out of the blue” in the midst of this list, but it’s really, really important in all changework.
No matter what the change is we seek to make, racism and racialization has an impact – we carry with us the effects of white supremacy in our bodies and our institutions, no matter who we are. Education, climate change, expanding voting rights, housing insecurity – all of these impact people differently based on their race and ethnicity.
Therefore, any changework that has a chance at being sustainable and effective has to involve antiracism in its approach.
Here are three questions to consider in order to do this:
Who is most impacted by the issue I care about — and how does race shape that impact?
Am I centering the leadership, voices, and solutions of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities in this work — or just my own perspective?
What racial assumptions, privileges, or lack of knowledge might I be bringing into this work — and how can I be accountable for them?
6. Talk about what you are doing.
A friend once told me “never take action alone.”
And I admit – I’ve ignored that advice quite a bit. But when I’ve been most effective, it’s because I’ve talked about what I’m doing or want to do. Here are my two favorite ways of doing this:
First, commit to take action. Then, share with people: “I really care about [focus area] so I’m going to [action.]” Listen for resonance and feel for it they might be interested. “Would you like to do it with me?”
Ask people for help finding a way to act: “I really care about [focus area], but I don’t know who is working on that here in [place] – do you have any ideas?” Listen for ideas. If the person also cares about the focus area, ask if they want to join in an action.
7. Look for the intersections.
People don’t have to align on focus areas, beliefs, tactics, strategies, and everything else. Sometimes it’s enough to connect with folks working on similar topics and moving toward similar goals:
Climate change – water rights – litter and park cleanup.
Police reform – prison abolition – ending cash bail.
Increasing minimum wages – building tiny homes – increasing income taxes.
Purity politics sabotages opportunities for connection. Instead, we can weave relationships together with folks who care about different issues, but want similar outcomes.
8. Consider what legacy you wish to leave behind.
The poet David Whyte has this beautiful quote:
Perhaps the greatest legacy we can leave from our work is not to instill ambition in others,…but the passing on of a sense of sheer privilege, of having found a road, a way to follow, and then having been allowed to walk it, often with others, with all its difficulties and minor triumphs; the underlying primary gift, of having been a full participant in the conversation.
The legacy we leave often has more to do with the posture we’ve embodied than the tasks we’ve completed – the results we’ve accomplished.
In our changework, while we have our goals and our dreams and our desires, the most important action we can take is to take action – no matter the results or the outcomes.
What will people say about the actions you chose to take (or not take)?
9. Celebrate wins.
Big, small, tiny, and everything in-between.
Often we can get so lost in our problem-solving we forget to pause and see Beauty happening in the midst of it. Or we get so distracted by catastrophe that we fail to celebrate the anti-catastrophes.
It’s vital that we keep an eye out for the great things happening, even as we seek to change the less-than-stellar.
My favorite monthly mail comes in the form of the Good Newspaper because it doesn’t shy away from naming the terrible things happening, but it focuses on the progress being made in the midst of it – I find it to be a small antidote to the despair of the daily news. 🙃
10. Make a plan.
I’m going to pull a section from the Gentle Change Starter Kit for this one:
A key element of gentle change is that we hold the outcome and ourselves with gentleness. This means we don’t just choose an action to do and then commit ourselves to it with reckless abandon forever.
Instead, we experiment; we play; we tinker. We try something and pay close attention to its impact as well as how it feels for us. The goal is to find actions and ways of engaging with the world that are meaningful and sustainable.
Once you’ve made a commitment to act and you’ve explored the focus area you have passion for, it’s time to do something.
Take a moment and remind yourself what you want to be a commitment for. Think about the future you want to embody into being. And as you do, take a few deep breaths and try to feel it in your body. Then move onto the next step.
This doesn’t need to be set in stone, but it should be something you can conceivably accomplish this week based on your schedule and energy needs.If your schedule is tight and doesn’t allow for anything “extra,” consider who you will see and the spaces you will move within. What actions might you take in these spaces, perhaps conversationally, that will create a relational impact?If you have time to engage in action separate from your day’s typical events, consider what supports you will need to make it happen: people, time, energy, resources, etc. What can you do to lower the barriers so it is more likely to happen and be impactful?
If this is a new kind of action, it’s normal to feel defensiveness, hesitation, fear, or some other emotion. Especially if this is taking you out of your existing comfort or control zone. You might remind yourself: this is just an experiment and you have autonomy and choice. If this doesn’t feel good, you can choose to not do it again.
No action is too small.
