Are You Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

Are you part of the solution or part of problem to what currently ails our nation?

Arianna Huffington posed this challenge at two different events this past weekend that I was fortunate enough to attend. On Friday night, I heard her speak at a book party in celebration of her latest thought provoking book, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream. On Saturday, she spoke via Skype to 370 current and aspiring authors each of whom has something to offer on creating positive change.

Arianna's message was clear and consistent: we need real, grass roots workarounds to our current situation and that effective workarounds are going to be personal, active and highly engaging right where you live. Relying solely on political change is unlikely to produce the meaningful change we need right now.

Clearly, anger abounds across the nation over what has become of our political process, not to mention the ethics and integrity of how we conduct business. Arianna points out that this anger is found not just within the Tea Party, but across virtually all walks of life. While anger seethes across widely different groups, it would seem that most people spend more time pointing fingers and placing blame than they do figuring out what they can actually do about the situation.

Sure, voting someone out of office may seem like active engagement, and if that's where your passion lies, go for it. But, could relying on a different set of politicians and party slogans wind up producing more of the same? Is changing who holds political power and hoping they do something better really an effective workaround? Is changing political office holders just another form of rearranging the deck chairs as the Titanic sinks? Could relying on someone else to do something just be another form of personal abdication?

I heard something in Arianna's messages over the weekend that resonated with themes I have been exploring here over the past many months: is it not time to look at your own self in the mirror and ask what can you do to work around the predicaments in which you might find yourself?

Arianna offered some wonderful examples of people in varying circumstances who have taken on a personal role in creating change. She tells of the guy in the Pacific Northwest who started a website aimed at helping others in predicaments similar to which he found himself -- unemployed but with skills. While trying to find a job of his own, he reasoned he still might be able to use his skills to help others and so launched a site offering his services to those in need. Not only has he been besieged with positive responses, but the idea has taken off in numerous other parts of the country. What a concept -- people helping people even in the time of their own need.

On the other end of the spectrum is the New York based world class interior designer who is donating his services along with some supplies to help brighten homeless shelters and provide a more uplifting environment for those currently in need.

Whether or not you resonate with either of these approaches, consider the fact that in each instance, one individual chose to stop thinking or griping about the problem and got engaged in creating small workarounds that could be acted on personally, locally and right now. That is a central theme in Arianna's message which she is carrying to the nation and around the world: it's time to move from complaining about things to becoming personally involved in creating some part of a solution.

In many ways, this is the message I have been extolling in these articles over the past two years. In the past couple of weeks, I have been arguing that "the universe rewards action, not thought" and that many of us are sitting around avoiding life rather than taking active response-ability for the change we want. In articles going back many months, I have raised issues and offered thoughts on improvement ranging from how some people seem to be trying to change the world through anger (Are You Trying To Change The World Through Anger?) , how we have become a nation of victims (When Did We Become A Nation Of Victims?) and how changing your mindset can change your life (How You Frame The Problem Is The Problem).

These are but a few articles all addressing the same issue: it's time to stop complaining and criticizing everyone else, and get off your "buts" (but I can't, but they won't let me, but someone else is in charge) and start doing something right where you are, right now. You all know that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. This and many other bits of wisdom have become modern day clichés; however it could be that these clichés are really just common sense not so commonly applied.

For those on one side of the political spectrum, Barack Obama promised hope and the prospect of meaningful change. Whether you agreed with the promise or not, it's pretty easy to see the dysfunctional fighting we call a political process. Many people have dropped the ball, hoping that real change would take place through the ballot box. Rather than taking the message of personal response-ability and becoming personally engaged in the change, many of us have relied on hoping someone in Washington would do it for us.

Now is the time for each of us to become more personally engaged and to do what we can to make a difference. You may not have the power or ability to change the whole system; however, you can contribute to making a difference, even if that difference appears to be small and only in your own backyard.

What do you think? What could you do to become more personally engaged? What small step could you take to help move things forward?

I would love to hear from you about your ideas, about what you have done to work around the challenges you are facing, or about what you have seen a friend or neighbor do that has been effective.

Please do leave a comment here or drop me an email and let me know your experience.

***

Russell Bishop is an Educational Psychologist, author, executive coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California. Watch for my new book coming out in January, 2011 Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work. You can find out more about Russell at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell by email at: Russell (at) lessonsinthekeyoflife.com

 

 

 

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Comments

[extremejacob]

02:52 AM on 10/10/2010

I'd say "not part of the problem". What ails the world now is pretty much the financial equivalent of a hangover after the housing party ran out of cheap credit. It's too bad that more people didn't choose to save money instead of spend it. A simple cure is to save more and maybe next time don't spend so much. Sometimes I'd like to shout it out from the roof tops in the hope that more people would hear it. But yes. Some people did spend the period of 2000-2010 saving money on their middle class salaries rather than setting up home equity loans to furnish new countertops and patio expansions. Some people did choose to live below their means even as they made as much as their neighbors living above their means. To them/us this recession has been a nonevent. Seriously. If you're not spending 105% of your salary in the pursuit of wants but rather 60% of you salary just being satisfied with your needs and some of your wants, you'd be much better off. What we need is to rediscover some personal financial responsibility. Sure the banks were enabling this excessively exuberant and crazy behavior, but people were crazy too.

[Kenz300]

09:13 PM on 10/03/2010

The propaganda wing of the right are relentless in their campaign to get the Republicans
back in power so:

1. They can deregulate more --- like they did for Wall Street and the oil companies
(25 years of deregulation and lax enforcement helped get us into this mess)
the legacy of G.W. Bush

2. They can give tax cuts to the wealthy --- don't get trickled on
if you live paycheck to paycheck
(these won't contribute to the deficit -- or so say Republicans --what a bunch of hypocrites)

3. They can cut social programs like social security and medicare
(these will contribute to the deficit --- say Republicans )

4. They can support the oil, coal and nuclear industries and slow down any
meaningful development of an alternative fuels industry.
I guess the spill in the Gulf was a small set back to their plans --- spill....baby....spill....

I guess the mining disaster in which miners lost there lives was a small setback.

I guess the little problem of all the nuclear waste that has been sitting around
for 50 years and needs to be stored FOREVER is a small setback.

Bush and the boys ran the country into a ditch and on the way out threw the keys
to the next guy and said "I hope you fail".

What a bunch of self centered losers.

Democrats need to speak up and not be drowned out by the spin doctors of the right

[martintillier]

10:45 AM on 10/03/2010

Where blame is deserved its appropriate, the creators of third world America would laugh all the way to their condo's if they knew that some of the advice given to their victims was in the vein of self-help and down-sizing. Laudable though self-reliant,community-minded action is,it will not stop the outsourcing of jobs,or the proposed destruction of welfare and health-provision opportunities for the poorest. The "get off your butt" ethos is all very well,but it also smacks of self-blame,as if legitimate complaint about corporate and governmental incompetence and corruption were somehow just people whining about something they could change by growing their own veg or starting a community self-help group. Big change requires big aspirations, big aspirations require political leverage. Political activism and collective action need to go hand in hand to the gates of power and demand change, otherwise all the positive localised action is just peanuts to the real strength of action needed to enact meaningful political,economic and social change,starting with grass-roots action is fine but it is inevitable that it must go much,much further. The anger that Arianna describes will not be assuaged by merely starting community self-help groups, but will grow as long as there is no meaningful political change,and as long as industry continues to outsource jobs and treat the working middle-class with contempt.

[extremejacob]

03:06 PM on 10/10/2010

I would respectively disagree. I think achieving some form of basic financial literacy would be a big step forward for many people. Maybe it's a problem this is not taught in schools, but it's also a problem when people aren't teaching themselves. Maybe self-help groups are needed. I mean, consider your lifetime earnings (available from your annual social security statement) and then consider your net-worth. Now, consider the difference between those two numbers. For most people this number is huge. Many people have had the actual choice between having $500000 in the bank and deriving $20000 a year from that in passive income or spending $250000 on a house and paying another $250000 in mortgage interest. Most people chose the latter and now they find they can't make the real estate tax payments anymore. And they're utterly clueless about what happened to them. See this anecdote for instance. http://lackingambition.com/?p=367 It shows a lot of what frustrates the "responsible minority".

[Kimberly Christine]

01:15 AM on 09/30/2010

I love working in my community, but it doesn't rent a flat for my children. Sorry to be a killjoy, but I think most people do depend on others for their paid livelihoods. I exchange goods and services with my friends (clothing, meals, child care) but it doesn't pay the rent. I live in the fourth-poorest city in the nation, and I don't have the means to get out. I am already living the lifestyle discussed in the article, and I'll tell you, I'd rather have a paying job. I am worn down with worrying over how to scrape by. I don't really want to be unemployed scrabbling for crumbs and pretending that what happens in Washington either doesn't effect us or cannot be changed by us. Neither are true. I feel a little bit like this author is sort of working for the bad guys--to me this seems like we should just try to get by and not worry our pretty little heads about the big decisions. I like working in the community garden...I'm just sayin' is all. Don't forget about remaining engaged politically.

[John Luca]

05:05 PM on 09/29/2010

Thanks Russell. It's a very fascinating question as to what makes people able to take action and what paralyzes them. Stated simply, being allowed, encouraged, and supported to take thoughtful, incremental risks, for which you will be held responsible and rewarded, in all aspects of your life, leads to a happy, productive, and fulfilling life. Parents must do this with their kids. Teachers can do this with their students. We can do it with our friends, in business, and in social and romantic relationships. We need to be edge-dwellers--not over the edge, not always asleep under a tree far from the edge--but near enough to the edge to be engaged and vital. But you can't expect someone to wake up at thirty or forty and become someone who works his edge every day after he's been coasting for years. We don't want to coddlers, but people need examples, coaching, structures, and encouragement to regularly work at their edge. The damage to the economy and the pain it has caused has been a wake-up call to many people who had been coasting for too long, myself included. We are being asked to step up. Scary, uncomfortable, but also exciting and full of possibility. Those of us in coaching and the mental health field and education have the opportunity to support the ideas and practices that help our clients find the strength, tools, and commitment to live their new lives successfully in accordance with their deepest values. Yea!!

[Mary Reynolds Thompson]

11:55 AM on 09/29/2010

I was one of those 370 authors attending the conference at which you and Arianna spoke. I was deeply inspired by both of you. I've always believed that it's not just the earth that's been smothered in concrete, but our own wild souls have been suffocated, too. We forget that we're creatures who emerged out of the Earth and carry 4 billion years of earth wisdom in our cells. We've become too tame. The movie "Network News" comes to mind: "We're just not going to take it anymore." And we shouldn't. We should be the ones on fire, not our poor planet. I don't want to hear myself, or anyone else saying, "but that's just the way it is." "Just the way it is..." is what got us into this mess. Thoreau wrote, "In wildness is the preservation of the world." It's time we became a little less obedient, a little less tame.

[polidoc]

04:29 PM on 09/29/2010

Mary, thanks for your poetic response.

I spent the weekend in Washington D.C., with a few thousand activists gathered to protest the barbaric practice of mountaintop removal. These people are ready to fight for their human rights and their environment.

Being from California myself, I had never heard, nor could I have conceived of the notion of mountaintop removal. No, you must leave that kind of thinking to people who can easily put money before profit. There are slightly more expensive ways to extract coal, but the rewriting of the Clean Water Act by the Bush administration allowed extensive mutilation of these virgin mountains while eliminating jobs. Even more bewildering, much of this coal is being shipped overseas. All the while, the people waters and land of the Appalachia faces rape and plunder.

You can find out more about the Appalachia Rising event here: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/09/27/appalachia-rising-rallies-in-washington-d-c/

[polidoc]

04:40 PM on 09/29/2010

clearly - I meant "profit before people". Thanks for observing the correction.

[Shelley Nomad Chef]

05:23 AM on 09/28/2010

Your post resonated with me. I live in London, but am American. So one of the ways I try to keep in touch with American culture is to read the New York Times. I've noticed the finger pointing and blame getting stronger in the op-eds and columns and see that it is a reflection of collective thinking. The thing that frustrates me is that these well educated, well intentioned opinion makers have stooped to or been overcome by the same useless anger that plagues America. I find myself regularly commenting on their posts with thoughts about personal responsibility and often receive angry responses that say the government or big business is at fault - for nearly everything. We are the government and big business. They are a reflection of us. So, why not start, as you suggest, in our own back yards to make the changes that would be good for the country as a whole?

Complaining about how many are out of work is not as nearly useful as helping people get excited about how they can use their skills to re-invent themselves as entrepreneurs. Looking for government solutions is not as useful as helping people think creatively how they can find solutions in their own lives that will have a ripple out effect. Providing examples of how people have bounced back from temporary defeat is also important. We all need to be flag bearers of hope and action, but sometimes we also need support.

www.bruisedandbattered.com

[dora rice]

02:04 AM on 09/28/2010

my contribution is to go vote and vote for honest candidates and not just along party lines.

[huffpostreader10000]

01:06 AM on 09/28/2010

Great. Wonderful. But please stop this game of word mutilation. Changing "responsibility" into "response-ability" doesn't make it cool, much as it may seem so. Neither does changing "disease" into "dis-ease". Plain English works just fine.

[Bucket-Of-Love]

03:24 AM on 09/28/2010

Thank you for pointing this out.

Fanned for citing non-manipulative use of English.

[Russell Bishop]

11:31 AM on 10/02/2010

So sorry you chose to focus on the trivial rather than the actual point of the matter. Personal engagement or response-ability is precisely what is missing for so many people. Blame and responsibility as in fault finding seems to take precedence over actual involvement in the solution.

[marinade]

08:28 PM on 09/27/2010

sort of sounds naive

run along kids, do some finger painting.....ignore the fact that your democratic government is nothing more than a source of cash for big business

[Russell Bishop]

11:32 AM on 10/02/2010

another nice missing of the point. If you aren't part of the solution - I would suggest that this means engagement in the solution, not finger painting.

[MarsAmbassador]

07:33 PM on 09/27/2010

We are ALL part of the problem. That's the problem! Ergo ipso facto we can ALL be part of the solution! But THEY don't want that, THEY like us right where they have us. Who are THEY? Let George Carlin explain it to you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr7ePrCAqzo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHmF1G8AyWY&feature=related

[Marcus01]

08:27 PM on 09/27/2010

A lot of people know who is running the country. When they speak up about it they get labeled and marginalized. Keep up the good work, MarsAmbassador. One day the brainwashed masses may wake up.

[MarsAmbassador]

07:31 PM on 09/27/2010

People are broke so they bleat about taxes. But taxes are the lowest they've been since the 50s. The problem isn't with taxes, it's with the lack of disposable income. Which is a result of Corporate America stagnating wages for the past 30+ years. The Real Purchasing Power of an American is HALF of what it was 35 years ago. A single income family had more RPP in 1973 than a dual-income family has today. Inflation has outpaced income and we have all gone into debt as a coping mechanism. Our savings are depleted and yet Wall Street marches on. You want to blame someone for being broke, then blame Corporate America for shipping all our jobs overseas, blame Reagan for dismantling our industrial capacity in favor of a debt-instrument based financial economy that isn't based on actual tangible assets that provide jobs for Americans. America used to produce 80% of the goods on the planet, now China does. Unemployment is high because Wall Street used to invest in America for profits, resulting in jobs. Now they have complex financial instruments that BYPASS that entire system entirely, giving them profits but without having to actually invest in America to do it. Hence the facts they have profits and unemployment keeps rising.

30 years of declining savings:
http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-BJ505_ROI_Sa_20080501170150.gif

George Carlin knew who owned who in this country:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI&feature=related

[Tsakonas]

07:09 PM on 09/27/2010

I'm no hero, but I did keep visiting local restaurants and coffee shops and kept lawnboy employed when it wasn't really affordable to do so. After two years the businesses I supported are still here and lawnboy went to college with a little more change in his pocket. I was no savior, but I did help and evidentially someone else did too.

Some believe the individual is more important than the collective and look where that attitude gets you in a crisis. Call me a socialist for believing the collective is more important than the individual. Don't take your citizenship and privilege to participate in our free market for granted. Our gov has provided each of us access to the most numerous, wealthy group of consumers in the world who are ready to buy your products and services. There is no excuse for people making millions of dollars and paying single digits percentages and less in tax. They would be nothing without access to our free market and it is their obligation to pay the fee for using us to get rich. Selling Americans out for foreigners is despicable. We need to support America first!

[ForVivi]

07:43 PM on 09/27/2010

The macro-economy is built with many micro-economic gestures such as your keeping the lawn boy employed. I patronize a crummy mom and pop store so all my dollars don't go to Walmart.

[Riley74]

06:45 PM on 09/27/2010

If you think you're part of the solution you are part of the problem.

[JShankel]

06:23 PM on 09/27/2010

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.

[tomteboda]

01:41 AM on 09/28/2010

I thought the same when I read the headline. Chem nerd.