Sadhguru Quote on Transforming The World and Where To Focus Your Efforts First

“You cannot transform the world without transforming the individual.”

Sadhguru, Inner Engineering (Page 262)

Beyond the Quote (300/365)

Just like you cannot transform a wall without transforming each individual brick. Or a football team without transforming each of the individual players. Or a relationship without transforming each of the individual actions. What most people miss, in my opinion, is the immediate opportunity in exchange for a grandiose vision. Our opportunity to change the world is right in front of our faces every day, but so many of us are too busy thinking about how we can change the whole world and are doing nothing instead.

I shouldn’t say “nothing” because I’m confident that many of us are doing some intense planning, visualization work, and goal-setting—but, how far does that really go in making a difference? The answer is, nowhere until those plans, visions, and goals are acted upon. And some of them will be acted upon and it will all turn out great. But, the vast majority, in my estimation, won’t get acted upon at all. Life gets in the way. Things tend to get chaotic and work loads increase. Distractions will continue to distract you and before you know it, everything you had planned will be forgotten. Or it will get pushed so far on the back burner that you won’t even remember you put it there.

Think about how this pertains to you. How many times have you wanted to transform the world and thought up some great ideas to one day implement? And how many of those ideas made their way to the light of day? If you’re anything like the rest of us, my guess is not many. We tend to have way more ideas than we could ever rightfully act on. And part of the reason why so many of them are so hard to act on is because of their sheer scale. In order to transform the world, you need a world’s worth of resources! You need an abundance of time, money, energy, effort, or skills that can be scaled across the globe—and that’s, to say it lightly, unimaginably hard.

Which brings us back to the main point—don’t miss what’s right in front of your face because you’re too busy in your head thinking. Thinking about how you can change people’s lives at a massive scale with your massive business, or massively successful book, or your massively followed social media accounts, if only you could figure out a way to get there. Or thinking about how it’s the responsibility of the people who have the massive businesses, books, and accounts that should be doing all of the changing for you. Or thinking about how you would act if you were in their shoes that would be so much better than how they are acting.

Just, stop all of that. Enough with the hypotheticals. It’s not what we need.

What we need are more people who are going to come awake to reality, take responsibility for their own lives, and reach out to help the lives of those around them. That’s what we need. We need people who are going to pick the trash up in their own neighborhoods rather than just cursing all of the litter. We need people who are going to donate food, clothes, and toiletries to those less fortunate rather than people who are going to amass incredible wealth and resources to maybe give away later. We need people who are going to be honest, open-minded, kind, vulnerable, forthright, and who are going to take the initiative to build connections with the people around them rather than people who are going to hide away from the world because nobody is acting that way towards them.

Don’t get it twisted. You don’t create a massive business, a massively successful book, or a massively popular social account and then change the world—no. You create a massive business, a massively successful book, or a massively popular social account by changing your world along the way. Think about it like this. If you’re not willing to help one person out of a group of ten, what makes you think you’d be willing to help 10 people out of a group of 100, or 100 out of 1,000, or 7 million out of 7 billion? That escalated quickly, eh?

Get really good at what you’re doing right now, where you are, with what you have. And continue to improve from there each day. Let the rest unfold how it may.

In a Tweet:

Most people miss the immediate opportunity to make a difference because they're too busy formulating grandiose plans.

Our opportunity to make a difference is right in front of our faces every day, but we're too busy thinking to even realize.

Small actions > Big plans.

— Matthew Hogan (@MattHogan123) October 30, 2020

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This post became the introduction for: 30 Sadhguru Quotes from Inner Engineering on Spirituality, Love, and Understanding Life

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