Be the crystal-seed of change

crystals forming in a solution

There's a quote attributed to Ghandi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world.  I'd like to add to this idea:  You'll be more effective if you find the right time and place and connect with others. In my HS chemistry class, I learned about supersaturated solutions. Materials with the potential to form crystal structures are heated with water to form a solution (dissolved mixture). Then let it cool.  Now, crystals "want" to form, but need a basic unit of that structure to build around.  

Then you drop in a "seed crystal" (like a grain of salt) and watch the magic happen; the crystal pattern branches out like a complex snowflake.
In my experience, social change is often like this.  
At my high school, lots of people liked tossing discs with friends; I found out about the sport of Ultimate and a team formed, branching out from my knowledge of the game.  
At my college, there was a need for more options for counseling and support and other services; a few people with ideas started meeting and a service networked from us, adding trainers and trainees, and creating an organization and a service that lasted 15 years after I graduated. 
Ghandi too had ideas, adapted from Thoreau, that were a good fit for nations of people dominated by overwhelming physical force; they formed a movement that spread even as it was beat down. Other ideas, such as different ethnic and religious groups living in harmony in India, did not find a supersaturated solution to grow in.  
Martin Luther King is sometimes said to have found a movement ready to happen and he got out in front of it. I would say that his personality and ideas, some of which emerged when he threw away a prepared speech and spoke of having a dream, were the crystal seed around which the movement formed. 

from the wikipedia entry for "seed crystal"

   Be the change you wish to see in the world.  Change will happen when the solution is there, ready to crystallize around you.  Watch for it.  
     We humans can add one more trick that chemicals can't; we can modify the shape of the crystal see, modify the image of the change we wish to see.  Our ideas are already formed in part by the people around us; we may as well do this consciously, choosing ideas that fit our ideas but also fit the people around us are asking for, ready for, and be that version of change.  If you wish to see change in the world, you can find a movement ready to form, and help crystallize it.  Maybe you'll form a team, or maybe the change will spread into something larger, hopefully greater (I qualify this with "hopefully" because:  if change is to spread like a living system rather than to turn to stone and crumble, you must be willing to lose control of change once it begins; but maybe that's a topic for another day).

Partners in change

    In couples counseling, I see a common dynamic of people focused on wanting the other person to change.  Apart from being a recipe for resentment and tension, it also simply doesn't work too well.  Just as we are the expert on what we need, we also have more power to change our own minds and behavior than to change someone else's.
    That doesn't mean that doing so is easy.  It is hard to see your own areas of weakness, to see the possibility for changing what you have accepted as "just the way it is," and to see when you're focusing on the parts of the problem that are hardest to change.  You are the expert on your current life and mind, but you may not ask the right questions, or see the full possibilities for your life and mind to be operate differently.  This is why individuals seek help from a psychotherapist, or other consultant.  This is why couples counseling can start with individual sessions, or at least start with an orientation that a relationship includes individual wishes, attitudes, ideas, histories, and desires combined in a larger pattern of communication, coordination, and commitment.

     Whether the pattern we are hoping to change is a personal habit of thoughts, feelings, or actions, or something socially larger like a marriage, family, organization or community, it's much easier to change a system that we're participating in.  In fact we'll, do a better job of selecting the appropriate direction and tools for change when we know the territory and the resources and can harness healthy forces already in play.
    Here again, though, we may get caught up in problematic patterns of relating and have trouble seeing other perspectives and other options.  This again is where a consultant, coach, therapist, organizer, or friend could play a role.  Inviting such a person to join the system temporarily, as a participant-observer, may help you find unexamined, stuck, problematic patterns of power and communication and decisionmaking and transmission of gossip and incorrect perceptions, and contagious self-serving behavior.
       With help, you can find these stuck places, in which small changes that could make a difference.   Partnering with a clinician can help you unstuck.
     The kind of partner you make a long term commitment to, may join you in the stuck pattern, get invested in things not changing too much,  and lose the ability to see the pattern from the outside.  Usually, then, after the process of building understanding and then facilitating change in the patterns of relating and coping, this consulting or therapy partnership can end.

To make a change, understand the bigger picture

branching pattern at a tree next to the Alamo

Let's say we felt a need to change the branching pattern in the this tree; say I wanted more light to shine on the patio by the Alamo.  With a tree, we take for granted that it's obvious that you can't bend the branches out of the way, that we have to cut them, and we can't always just change exactly the part of the pattern we want.  If we wanted an opening in the center of this picture, we'd get openings elsewhere too.  We must consider the whole structure of the tree on a large scale, and the composition of the tree on a small scale to know what kind of cutting instrument to use (not a blowtorch, not a melon spoon...).  With a tree, this is obvious, but when the pattern we are trying to change is our own mind, or a family, an organization, or a community, it is not so obvious.
   In order for to resolve or change a an emotional problem, a relationship issue, or an organizational challenge, there may need to be change in other seemingly unrelated parts part of the mind, habits, family, or organization.   To find these other points of intervention in your habits of communication,  thought, or other behavior, you may have to branch out from the problem you're focused on, as you seek to understand the larger patterns that may be holding the problem in place, as the trunk and cellulose and internal structure of the tree hold the branches and leaves in place.