Be the change you want to see

Every now and then I read a post by Brian Gardner and he recently blogged about how received a Twitter reply from Sarah McLachlan

Be the change you want to see in the world.

It turns out there is no reliable documentary evidence for who originally said it, but it’s supposedly a derivative of words Mahatma Gandhi once spoke.

Regardless of its origin, I find a tremendous amount of truth within those words. They are encouraging, and challenging, in the same breath.

When you see something you don’t like, or that needs to be fixed, be that change.

Don’t sit around waiting for somebody else to do the work that you want to see. It’s possible you might be waiting a very long time, if not forever.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this quote, but it’s definitely a very powerful quote, and one that I should remind myself of more often.

For my part, I took some baby steps some years back to implement a small action based on this philosophy. One of the core values that I always stress is that of integrity. As a result, I’m always incredibly frustrated at what we Malaysians call “Malaysian timing”, or globally known as being “fashionably late”. It’s a tiny act, but I always do my best to ensure that I’m always on time, regardless of whether I know the other party is going to be late or not. It might not matter to the other party that I’m stupidly on time, but every time I do it, it helps me reaffirm my belief and integrity to myself. It’s a silly thing to do in Malaysia, but it’s something I want to take a stand on anyways. I’ve still ended up being late from time to time, but I’m constantly improving and fine tuning my process, and that’s what matters.

On on unrelated note, I’ve just purchased a book that he recommended on that post. I was tempted to buy it a while back but didn’t go it, this time I’ve taken the plunge. I hope it doesn’t disappoint.

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