How to Change the World: John Paul Flintoff at TEDxAthens

Wouldn't we all want to change the world? John Paul Flintoff gives some simple, yet very important and powerful strategies that anyone can use to change the world.

If you had the chance,
would you change the world?

(Audience): Yes

Thank you.
There is a little delay.

Of course you would.
Because I didn't say, save the world,

I said change the world,
improve it.

Make it better than we found it.
And we all want to do that, don't we?

Great! Because I'm here
with the happy news

that you can, and you do,
and you will change the world.

But all too often, partly the reason
for your hesitation just now

we often think, "Gosh changing the world,
that's going to be really hard work,

perhaps impossible,
probably not much fun."

And we leave it to someone else,
someone really important.

They'll do it.
And that's a real shame,

because we are all capable
of changing the world

and I am trying to explain how
it's going to work for you individually.

I am not going to tell you what to do.

So one of the reasons
why we tend to hold back that way

has to do with the way
that we've been taught history.

Essentially we are told that it is about

the kind of the things
that certain big individuals,

usually men, have done over the time.

The great British historian, Carlyle,

once said that "History is but
the biography of great men."

And if you don't happen
to think of yourself

as a great man already

that may leave you feeling
a little bit left out.

But luckily, happily, Leo Tolstoy,
the novelist, came along.

This is him in his glory. And Tolstoy
came along and said that history

is more accurately considered
to be an infinitely large number

of infinitesimally small things

that we all do and don't do everyday.

What does that mean?

It's easy to understand what he means

if you think about an election.

You vote for this party,
or you vote for that party

or you hate them all
so you don't vote for any of them.

But we all know
that whatever you do,

has an affect on the outcome.

It helps to determine
the final result, we all know that.

But what Tolstoy is saying,
is that everything you do

and everything you don't do,
has an affect on how things are.

It shapes the way the world is.

It's really useful and healthy

and satisfying to take
some responsibility

for yourself in that sense.

So what can we do about it?

We want to recognize

that we all make history all the time.

And if you don't recognize that,

if you don't realize what
I've just tried to say

you may be one of those people

who complains a lot
about the "status quo".

And the Status quo is
a horrible abstract noun.

Nobody likes it,
it feels really oppressive,

but if you notice that
you have some responsibility

then that's good.

So I'm going to offer you another way

to think about the status quo.

I want you to think instead
of a powerful king on the stage.

If you like, you can shut your eyes

and imagine what a powerful
king on the stage looked like.

It might be a really big crown,

it might be a golden throne,

and I would say, "No! Those only
tell you that he is the king."

What makes him powerful?

What makes him powerful
are all that other people

on the stage flat on
their faces before him.

And if all of those people sat up,

turned their backs on him,
went to sleep,

told jokes, smoked cigarettes,
played the trumpet,

it would have an enormous
effect, wouldn't it?

He would no longer
be a powerful king

even without him
doing anything differently.

So all of the power comes
from those over whom it is exercised.

And you can imagine,
if you imagine that stage,

imagine just one of those people
getting up, turning their back,

and playing the trumpet,

it would have an amazing
sensational effect, wouldn't it?

It's a kind of extraordinary thing.

It's like a human version
of the butterfly effect

that physicists talk of.

One flap of the wings

and you have a really distinct
change in the weather.

And so it's really rather wonderful.

We can see it when
I talk about the stage

but what about in real life?

What about your life?
Your everyday life?

If you don't like the status quo,

how can you get up

and turn your back and
do something better instead?

Well, there are lots of ways

but I want to have
a little experiment in this room.

I want to see what the human
butterfly effect can look like,

and what I'm going to ask you to do,

is one of the most beautiful
things you can do,

to be a human butterfly.

Don't do anything yet, okay?

Turn to your neighbor,

and it's going to be someone
you don't already know,

so its someone behind you
or in front of you.

And I want you just to smile,

and say what your name is
and introduce yourself

because you don't get
to choose your neighbors.

The people who are sitting
near you are your neighbors.

Now I've explained it and given
to you a little bit of extra time,

because I know that some people
are listening on translation.

I don't want them to be shocked
by you turning around

and introducing yourself
before they understand.

So now if anyone
is listening on translation

can you put your hand up

to tell me that you've
already understood this?

OK. Thank you.

So now please just quickly
introduce yourself to each other.

Now. Off you go!

(Chatter)

Hello, John-Paul.
Nice to meet you.

Thank you. Thank you.
That's great!

What a lovely sight!

(Applause)

Congratulations to all of you.
Thank you.

It's really important to recognize
that these neighbors around you

are not the ones you chose
but they're the ones you've got.

And it's really lovely
to introduce yourself

in a friendly way to your neighbors,

but it's easy at TED because everyone
here is obviously really lovely.

But I want you to promise,
that when you go home,

you will introduce yourself
to another neighbor,

who is not someone
who you chose,

and just see if you can spread
a little bit of the love that way.

So that's a little thing you can do.

Meanwhile,
I want to move on

and I want to talk about certain
types of political action we can do,

other than saying hello
to our neighbors.

The great American political
scientist Gene Sharp,

has spent a lifetime collecting

198 forms of non-violent political
action, an amazing variety.

He wants to encourage people to use

some of the things
that have been used before.

So he has put all of these forms

into basically three groups.

The first one is highlighting an issue:

That can be drawing
attention to an issue

that nobody knows about,

or it could be drawing
attention to an issue that

everyone knows about
but they do not take it seriously.

So highlighting an issue
is very important

and we can all do that.

I'm sure lots of people in this room

have already posted things
on Facebook or tweeted about them.

And that's very light-weight
and easy, but valuable.

But sometimes highlighting
an issue can be really dangerous.

You're putting yourself at some risk.

So I'm going to tell you about
the White Rose group.

That's this group in this picture

who are now national
heroes in Germany

because they stood up to fascism.

And they didn't want to be a part
of what the Nazi regime were doing,

so they sent letters
to their fellow citizens.

They wrote letters,
they printed them on a machine

and they sent them at random,
to people throughout the country

whose names and addresses
they got from the phone book.

Can you imagine the effect
when you get one of those letters?

In order to give
themselves the appearacnce

of being a great nation-wide network,

they also, at great risk,
travelled across the country

with their printing press
and with their letters,

so they could send them from
Dusseldorf to Cologne

and Dresden to Berlin and Munich,
and you get the picture.

So that's what they did.

So sometimes just
highlighting an issue

can be incredibly
dangerous stuff.

It can be easy,
it can be dangerous.

The second category is
withdrawing your consent

from something you disapprove of.

So I could tell you about
Moses and the Israelites

who didn't like the way the Pharaoh

was carrying on,
so they got out of Egypt.

It's quite simple
withdrawal of consent.

But I want to tell you about Rosa Parks,

a seamstress who,
one day, in the 1950s,

decided on the bus
in Montgomery, Alabama,

that she was not going
to give up her seat

to a white person
as the rules required.

And one reason why I like
her story, is that she said

she was too tired to go along
with the system any longer.

So you don't have to be full
of energy and enthusiasm

to change things.
You can just be quite tired.

Another reason why
I like Rosa Parks' story

is that she didn't actually run
everything that happened afterwards.

That was her thing, she was a spark

that led lots of other people in the black
community to do amazing stuff,

But she didn't run everything.

So don't worry, you can start
something and if it's any good,

people will follow and
they will take it on.

That's ok, you can relax.

And the third thing
I like about her thing,

is that she started
with something very small.

It's very hard to believe,
with hindsight,

that lots of people at the time

thought that what they were
doing was campaigning

to change the rules
about where black people

were allowed to sit on buses
in Montgomery, Alabama.

But actually of course
their success and their ambition

increased over time, so within
a very remarkably short period,

they had desegregation
across the whole of the U.S.,

which is a previously
unthinkable achievement.

So you can start
with something small

and you will become
more ambitious as a result of it.

So that's withdrawing your consent.

The third broad category is building

a better alternative to what
is currently available.

So I could tell you about
Charles De Gaulle

who set up the French government
in exile in the Second World War,

bacause he didn't like the ones
that was in Vichy France,

but I want to tell you instead
about my friend Richard Reynolds,

who lives in a tower block
in South London,

in a rather unattractive
part of London,

he wouldn't mind me saying that.

He lives in a high floor
so he doesn't have a garden.

So one day he
started to go downstairs,

and look around in the area
where he lived,

and he found bits of earth,
and he would put plants down.

He wasn't a very good gardener,
so some of the plants died

but he got better and
some of the plants survived.

And then some
of his friends joined in,

and then complete
strangers joined in

and then the local authority said,

"You can't do that,
it's not your land."

But they carried on anyway,

because they
are Guerilla Gardeners.

You see, and Richard is the leader

of the worldwide
Guerilla Gardening Movement,

and if you look him up online,
he is Richard_001.

But the thing is, the reason why
I mentioned this story,

is that anything you do, can be an
inspirational example to someone else.

And Richard is an inspirational
example, he is a leader.

One other little thing I'd like
to point out about Richard,

is [that] his great blessing is
he doesn't have a garden.

If he'd had a garden he wouldn't
be a Guerilla gardener, would he?

The thing that you see is
a lack or a short coming

could be the thing that's
really the making of you.

So that's quite an encouraging
thought, isn't it?

So, all of these people
can be an inspiring example.

I've taken great care
to tell you about things

like desegregation
or fighting fascism

which is sort of terribly important

but also to tell you
about someone

who just wants
to do some gardening.

Because when you're changing the world

it doesn't have to be
changing the whole world.

And something that you perceive
to be very important to you,

it could be just changing your world
in a way to make it better

and gardening is fine.

So what are you going to do?
I'm not going to tell you.

Often we feel like we're impaled
on a kind of a paradox:

We really want to do something,

but we have no idea
what it is going to be.

And one way to resolve that

is to think about
the things that you enjoy.

And so I want you
to think about that.

The positive psychologists
are people who got fed up

with being negative psychologists

and saying what's
wrong with people.

They wanted to find out
what's great about people

and share that knowledge.

So they did a test.

One of the things they did,

they sent out two groups of people
to find out what gives people pleasure.

The first was sent
to do hedonism,

if you like having a foot massage
while eating chocolate.

And the second group was sent out
to do something meaningful.

Meaningful to them,
I'll come back to that.

The results came in and the people

who'd done something meaningful,

had a much deeper and longer
lasting sense of satisfaction

than the ones who'd
done the hedonism.

That something about
them had changed inside,

they felt, I'm the sort of person
who does that thing, which is nice.

So, changing the world
is actually nicer

than having a foot massage
and eating chocolate.

But the thing is, what is
something meaningful?

You impose the meaning
on what you do, not me.

I can't tell you
what is meaningful.

I can give you an example:

You could walk
your neighbor's dog,

and really feel resentful and
really hate the whole thing

and just not really
be happy about it.

Or you could walk
your neighbors' dog,

because your neighbor's unwell,

and you know that
they'd feel really happy

for you having done it.

As you would feel
all puffed up with joy,

you'd feel like a really great person.

So the same thing,
can be either good or bad.

You impose meaning, not me.

So you need to think what actually
is something meaningful to you,

and one way to do that
is to ask yourself

what have you done in the past
to make a difference,

that made you feel good.

And what are the dreams that you've had.

But if you really want to cut
to the absolute nub of issue,

you must ask yourself this question:

What would you do if you knew
you couldn't fail?

As if success was magically guaranteed.

It's important to ask
the question in that way.

So you get rid of the boring answers

that are sort of achievable,

and you don't really want to do them.

Go for the one that is
absolutely sensational,

and you are really passionate about,

because then you will persist with it.

So you do that.
Ask yourself that question,

keep that question from now
to the rest of your lives.

And then once you've
come up with an answer,

I'll hope it would be something
so magnificent,

you're almost embarrassed
to tell anybody because it's so great.

And then there is a danger:

What might happen then,

is you put it on a shrine
and it will be like an icon.

Or it will be like a beautiful painting

that's been beautifully painted,
has got a beautiful frame

and you know just where it's going
to go in the whole way at home.

But nobody is painting it,
so it's not going to happen.

And you are using static thinking.

We might want to move away
from static thinking to process thinking.

Instead of thinking
about the end result,

start thinking about it
as a process.

One person who can help us with that,

is the german philosopher
Nietzsche, who said:

"Not every end is a goal.
The end of a melody is not a goal."

He's got a point but
what does he mean?

Well if you go to a concert,
you don't say,

"I wish this music would finish
and then I can really enjoy it."

You enjoy it as it goes along.

So start thinking about your mission
instead as a piece of music.

It's already started. Can you hear it?
I think it sounds great.

So that's what you want to do.

What is great about noticing that,

it is a process instead of an end result
that you are after,

is you then liberate yourself
to stop being freaked out

by the sheer monumental scale
of what you want to do,

and you enjoy every step,
because no one did anything

in all of human kind
except in small steps.

And Neil Armstrong
didn't wake up one morning,

and said, "I'm going to the moon now."

Lots of people had to go
to the office and do stuff.

So we can all do that.

We have to notice the smalls steps

and the great thing about smalls steps
is they give you courage.

There are mini victories, they move you
onto the next small step,

that's not quite so small,

and so you can use those as a way
to encourage yourself.

So you've got your mission,

you've got the need
to find small steps,

but if you really want
to pin down the small steps,

ask yourself this question:

What can you do
in the next 24 hours?

Because if you can't do
anything in the next 24 hours,

what makes you think
you will ever start?

Ok, so you've got the mission,
you've got the small steps,

and now you're going
to need to find some allies.

You're not going to do
much all on your own.

So one way you can do that,

is to try and draw a map
of your support network,

the people you already know.

Do it like this,
put yourself in the middle,

put the names of people
around the edge

who give you support
and to whom you give support.

So on this one you can see
I'm giving a lot of support to William.

He is giving me nothing back.

What do I do about that?
I'll have to work it out.

But the relationships
that are most useful,

and psychologists use this
with addicts and alcoholics,

are the ones that are reciprocal.

So you can see Sonya and Ben,
both are reciprocal relationships.

So you might want to draw this map,
it is quite interesting.

And then go and ask
those people for help.

You must actually ask them to help you.

You might think, "I can't ask,
that's awful, a real imposition."

But people like to be asked,
because it means

that they are wise and kind
and generous and sensitive.

But the only reason people
don't like to be asked,

is when they can't see
a way to say no.

So you say to them,
"Would you help?

And by the way if you can't,

either now or at any time
in the future, I really don't mind."

And you have to mean it.

And once you've asked them
in that way,

why would they say no?

And what you have done
then is liberate them

to be an active part of your mission.

They will want to do things,
to really be part of it.

And they'll phone you and say,

they've seen something
in the newspapers.

So that's great.

You may also find that
there are other people,

sort of activists all over the country.

This is my country, the U.K.

You may find people spread
all over the place,

and you can go and find some of those.

And I want to end, by giving you
some account of my own experience.

Because I feel a bit dishonored,

standing in front of you and say
anyone could change the world,

if I didn't try to say something
how I've tried to do.

So some years ago,

I got very seriously freaked out,

very depressed about climate change,

and peak oil, result shortages,
that are coming.

And I didn't know what to do,

I thought we had to change
the whole way that everyone lives,

we had to get much more
self-sufficient, more resourceful,

stop flying things around the world.

Everyone has got to start growing food.

They've got to start making
their own clothes,

doing all sorts of things like that.

So I joined all the campaign
groups you can imagine

and there were wonderful

and we did some great stuff
joining these networks nationwide.

After about a year,

I realized we were doing
some amazing stuff

but I was seeing all the same faces.

Lovely faces, but all the same faces.

And I wanted everybody to change,

not just the seasoned campaigners.

And I happen around then to read
a book by Alistair Mackintosh

which talks about how it's
no good being a campaigner,

if you're not a good neighbor.

And it kind of hit me
in the head right there,

so you know why I've now asked you

to think of each other as neighbors.

I felt like, what can I do with it,

so I can resign from
these campaigners,

and I went to work on my street,

and I had an allotment where
I was growing my own food.

And so I went to the allotment,
filled a sack full of apples

and I went home.

And I have a wonderful beautiful wife
and daughter,

little daughter at the time, Nancy,
and so I grabbed Nancy's hand,

I didn't need to take Nancy,
but she gave me courage basically.

And so I took the sack and the apples,

and I carried Nancy along with me.

We knocked on every door,
and people opened the door

and I said I'm taking the risk.

Yeah, a man with apples and
a lovely daughter isn't a big threat.

And they opened the door
and I took the apples,

and so that was nice
to get to know people a bit better.

Then, the sneaky bit
was six months later

but forgive me, because
it came from the right place.

I deliberately grew
too many tomato seedlings,

and I put them all in a box,

and I grabbed Nancy's
lovely hand again,

and we walked on the street,
and knocked on the doors.

We'd said, "Hello", then
Nancy again said, "Hello"

and I said "Oh dear, I've got
too many tomato seedlings"

and I gave it to them,
and they took them.

And I know for a fact that
many people in my street

that year for the first time
started growing food.

So I hadn't had to freak them out about
climate change or resort shortages.

I just got them growing a plant,

that was kind of the solution.

So I was very lucky,
it was possible in that way,

to find the happy solution that way.

Nancy drew a picture, this is
a reenactment for you.

So I had been lucky

and by chance I discovered
something that's really important

which is: Try to emphasize the positive.

Because as the late philosopher
Reynold Williams once said,

"The key is not to make
despair convincing,

but to make hope possible."

You are on a journey,
it starts now.

You might as well make it fun.

Thank you.

(Applause)