Agent Of Positive Change

Introduction

A commitment to tradition in a dynamic world can only lead to misery and stagnation. Nothing in the world is as constant as change. Change is permanent and at the same time unending. Consider the significant innovations of yesteryear; they did not stay stagnant; they were improved upon to keep them relevant.

Imagine you are someone who wants to communicate your ideas through the written word before the 15th century. You must have an entire monastery of highly trained monks, slowly and meticulously copying the words you have laboured to produce with quill and ink, possibly through a hired scribe.  Then, Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439, and the world of publishing changed. Now the mass production of your idea would be accelerated exponentially. 

But there was still the problem of your slow pace at producing a legible script for your book.  What must the first users of the typewriter, a mechanical wonder, have thought in 1878, over four hundred years after the printing press was invented? Well, the typewriter was a fixture in the world of writing for the next one hundred years. 

You may remember if you are old enough, the next innovation — the word processor! This allowed one to check over a paper before printing it, and it also checked for spelling errors.  When everything looked correct to the writer, they pushed a button and heard the familiar smashes of type keys inside the machine. The curve moves at high speed from there to the word processing application on a home computer, to better and faster software, and then fast forward to mobile devices. As I write this book, this paragraph is being typed on 4th generation ThinkPad with integrated cloud connection, where it can be sent out over the air to thousands of people with a click of a button. Perhaps by the time you are reading this, the technology will be obsolete, replaced by something slicker and smarter.

To say that you need to learn to adapt to change is an understatement. Notice the shortened timelines between innovations in the above example. With today's global collaboration, it will only get faster. You simply must be prepared to change if you do not want to be left behind.

This book is meant for those who are tired of the status quo in their lives. And are fed up with being only spectators in this advancement of society. If you are keen to rise from your slumber and make a difference, this book is for you. If you have decided to no longer tolerate business as usual, or a life that you consider to be average, then consider this your clarion call to impact your generation and the ones to come. It aims to stimulate and challenge everyone that 'good' can become 'better', and 'better' can become 'best'.

Change in itself is dynamic, and without a commitment to change, you cannot make any difference in the world. It is for those who are at a crossroads of either maintaining as-was, or as-is, but are also open to travel on the unfamiliar path to get uncommon results. If you're excited about new horizons, new heights, new possibilities and new challenges, I wrote this for you.

But if you've arrived and no longer aspire for anything better, I implore you to keep an open mind as you go through the following pages. It is a book that will confirm your deep-seated instincts about the new and the better that lies beyond the veil of usual. I hope it will push you above the hurdle of vague limits, and what fakes as impossible. And most importantly help you see that perfection is a journey and not a destination.

If you are averse to change, then it is the premise of this book that you are averse to success. If the norm is okay with you, then change has no chance, and of course, you have no place in the transformation that is happening across the world. It is not right to be passive in an active and very dynamic world. In any case, you are either on the playing field or a spectator, or perhaps a cheerleader.

Ultimately, change starts with a decision; a decision to alter the norm and pave the way for bigger and better. The outward manifestation of that decision is the offspring of inward determination. Without a change 'within', no change can happen 'without'.

The truth is that we have all been built by the Creator to be agents of change.  That is your calling, and that is your purpose. Every human is created to effect one change or the other. When God desired to create a world to bring Him glory, He made the man, Adam. God said I have made a world, manage it.¹ He gave humans a change management portfolio including fruitfulness, multiplication, replenishing, subduing and domination. When He desired to save that world from sin and corruption, God called Abraham to massive change. He told him to leave his father's country and go to a new one.² Abraham was such an old man, yet God called him to leave and start a family that would become a nation. When God desired to deliver that nation from slavery in Egypt, He called Moses to leave the land of his father-in-law to change the whole economic system of Egypt.³ When the world was ready for a Saviour, God gave us Jesus⁴, who has been the cause of two thousand years of change through His people and the influence of His teaching! Humans were created and placed on the earth by God to bring about change. We are here to make a difference, to rise and shine our lights, dispelling the gross darkness of our world.

You are invited to journey into this book, a primer for change because the good of the world depends upon you taking your rightful place as an agent of change.  Irrespective of where you are in life, I want you to know that you are not an accident, there is an eternal purpose for your existence. So, brace yourself as you go on an adventure that will change your life forever.

PART I: THINGS HAVE CHANGED

Chapter 1 — Characteristics Of Change

People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

—Steve Jobs

Imagine a baby.  She has just recently had a whole new world opened up to her, because she has learned how to crawl. This is wonderful! Now she can go places. All this time, she had been sitting there or lying there. How frustrating it was to see a colourful object out of her reach in the distant corners of her nursery.  If only one of the big people would come in and pick her up to carry her over there. Then one day, quite by accident, she realized she could relocate by placing her hand down this way, and then moving her knee up that way, and repeat, and, what's this? She has moved!  What a discovery!  She soon becomes quite adept at travelling in this way. There is almost no place she cannot go in the house.  She could not be more satisfied with her world now. What more could she possibly want out of life?

But wait, what is that slightly older child doing? Is he walking on his legs like one of the big people?  Oh, this will not do. She must learn to walk.  But, does she really need to? I mean she has become so proficient at crawling. Maybe she could just crawl the rest of her life, lots of babies crawl anyway.  But no, she must learn to walk. Unlike the way she accidentally learned to crawl, she will have to consciously work to make this change. This leap forward in her development will involve some hard work, pain, and possibly babyish embarrassment and humiliation. But she must. Every baby faces this reality, and every developmentally healthy baby will eventually conquer this challenge. No one needs to tell them that they must grow, and that they must learn this skill. But at some point, along the way, we grow up to become big people, and lose some of our natural drives to change. We get comfortable, and inertia becomes the easiest path.

Ironically, the same baby that pulled off the challenge of crawling and walking months earlier will latch onto breast milk for as long as possible; making the weaning process that should be easier seem like a crumbling world.

But why does this happen? Why do we lose so easily the instinct and drive to make progressive changes? It is simply because there is a powerful force inside of us keeping us glued to easy, familiar and comfortable ways of life. So, we must do the hard-mental work to stay open to new and better ways of doing good old things. You probably have heard the saying, If it's not broken, why fix it? It seems to agree with my background, as we don't tend to tamper with anything that is working, even in the face of opportunities to make improvements. But I now find myself in developed nations where utility upgrades for gas, water, and broadband are made even while the current installations are working well. One fact that cuts across such positive change is that, although they come with short term or immediate costs, long term benefits are often realized.

    You may ask, how did we get here? Well, you and I have witnessed an acute rise in the development of science and technology. The past 100 years have been revolutionary as the world consistently approaches almost supernatural levels of human invention, technological transformation and scientific revolution.

Would you believe that at a point in time, if you wanted to speak on the phone, you had to go through a human proxy? You dial to connect to the operator who then connects you to who you wanted to speak. Then came the switch technology that eliminated the middleman, and shortly after we had the proliferation of the rotary dial home phones. They were at that time revered and in most cases inevitable domestic devices for telephone communications. If you were born after the year 2000, you possibly have only seen rotary dial phones in old movies or the museum. For those ancient phones, the time it took just to establish a connection to the person you want is long enough to finish two short conversations today. Fast forward, then the advent of the higher Gs like 3G, 4G and even 5G smartphones that are now so light and can be kept safely in the pocket, that is beside the many functionalities that only mega computers can handle before.

The digital transformation that brought us smartphone has been arguably as disruptive as much as beneficial. Pondering on the benefits, the number of day-to-day items a single mobile phone has replaced is mind-boggling. Cameras, radios, diaries, satnavs, dictionaries, address books, calculators, debit cards, alarm clocks, mirrors, stopwatches, and torches are just a subset of what mobile phones have replaced. So, your smartphone is practically fitting all those items (and more) in your pocket! Although smartphones have made many landlines and telephone kiosks obsolete, they are now reliable options for online business on the go.

Computers and typewriters have also evolved over the years. We've witnessed the exciting transition from the bulky mega computers that consume so much electrical energy, with low memory space and limited efficiency, to the new generation mini-laptops and tablets with better processing power and portability. Your typical mobile phone now has the computing power of supercomputers that once filled large rooms. From 1956 to date, we have had over one trillion-fold increase in processing power. That has made it possible for phone service and now electronic communications fly in milliseconds.

Gone are the days when it takes weeks or even months to build websites. With the right tools, expertise and content, you can get a live, functional and secure website launched in under one hour. Generally, the world is getting faster for fast items like fast food and instant coffee; and also the time getting shorter from order to delivery of products and services.

There is a recent innovation that is just on the cusp of booming, and that is self-driving cars. Several companies have made fast headway and are beginning to test them in large cities. So, be on the lookout now while walking or driving as 'a ghost' in a Tesla may just pull up next to you. The closest I have seen to this is on TV, in a series called Knight Rider. Let me borrow the words of my grandma here, Wonders shall never end.

I learnt recently that scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, United States have developed a gut-probing pill. This will allow doctors to explore problems in the gut that until now have required a patient to be anaesthetized, and needed the use of an invasive scope down the throat. Many gut-related diseases are ravaging the populations of third world countries that this little pill will be able to help solve.

In June 2019, I was sent a clip of a robot making a local delivery in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. I haven't seen them physically before but can imagine the feeling of a robot delivering items to your front door. Can you also imagine the level of intelligence that went into building such ground-breaking technology? It is a smart technology that helps the robot make intelligent decisions based on variables encountered: road traffic situations, weather, intruders and maybe even thieves. This technology would have incorporated some cameras, sensors and built-in GPS at a minimum. For sure, this pioneering innovation has transformed the world of package delivery. Very soon, possibly with Alexa introduction, you might start having a conversation with robotic delivery agents! Also, with drones now able to bring airports to a standstill, if such effort is positively channelled, I'm convinced it's only a matter of time before we start getting drone deliveries at home.

You and I are constantly changing! Have you taken a second, third and possibly fourth look at those birthday pictures of when you were 5? Did you see changes to when you turned 15 or 20? Perhaps you are 30 or 40 already and looked back on your teen days with deep-seated wishes you could get back to those clothes sizes. Years have gone by, and you definitely have changed drastically; ranging from height, weight, looks, and so on. These changes are not just physical but also emotional as well. Your priorities have changed; your posture to life has changed. It also stretches to relationships. Look around you, you don't have the same friends you had at ten, and your pals have come and gone at different ages and stages of your growth. You will agree with me that a lot has happened to you in the time you have spent on this side of eternity. And hopefully, this next statement lands well:

There will be a lot more changes in the remaining time you have left on earth.

But the good news is that, while you may not have had reasonable control of your choices and changes over the years, you have an excellent chance today to change yourself and your world going forward. You cannot choose your family for example, but you can change it by becoming the change you desire. The choice is yours.

Everyone is either a victor or a victim of anything at any time. With regards to change and its dynamics, you don't have to be a victim. You only need to understand that the future belongs to those who are active and not passive. Fortunately, victory begins in the mind, and success rests with the decisive. You can radically change your life when you decide to alter the norm and pave the way for bigger and better. As stated earlier, the outward manifestation of man is simply the offspring of inward determination. Also, without a conscious change internally, no significant change can happen externally. Today, some people just sit back and wait to get lucky. However, you cannot get the prize until you are ready to pay the price. You need to sacrifice and adapt to the demands of change.

Are you equipped for change?

Yes, you are.

We are all agents of positive change, victors and not victims of change. Consider those that have impacted our world today; they all began with an idea. How much of innovations you can conceive and cultivate will determine the extent of your relevance in our fast-moving world. Foresight is vital in this discussion. In a later chapter, we will explore its power and benefits fully, to make positive change.

How far you can see will have a fundamental impact on the degree of change you can produce. If you can conceive it, then you can achieve it. How long will the solutions you are providing last? God told Abraham to look around and that He was ready to give to him only as far as he can see.⁵ How far can you take the opportunities around you to change the course of the human race and standard of living? This 'seeing' ability will be required to guide your thoughts and help you become creative and eventually relevant for both yourself, family, your immediate community and the world at large.

Generic Characteristics Of Change

To set the scene for the following chapters, let us consider some generic characteristics of change.

Change Is Inevitable

The Creator has designed the universe to be subject to periodic, consistent, and sometimes radical changes. There is a grand plan in the mind of our Maker. He has created change to sustain the course of life and the integrity of creation.  When you look up to the sky, it is always moving and, science says, the cosmos is in constant motion. The earth revolves around the energy of the sun, so how can we stand on this planet and still be oblivious to change? In case you haven't realized, we live in a dynamic world, so, before you get too comfortable, you better get ready for change. It is inevitable.

Perhaps you think you can run from the changes you see coming. But how is that possible?  Running from change is like running from a tiger while you are on a treadmill. You will run your legs off, and still, you will be caught. The change will overtake you, and either sweep you up in it, while you adapt to it and grow from it, or it will run you over, leaving you behind with all the others who refused