Do you ever feel as if life just keeps throwing one challenge after another at you?  The great physicist Isaac Newton summed this life experience in his first law of motion when he declared, “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.” While Newton was talking about physics, he also unwittingly described life.

People tend to move in the same direction as they always have unless some external force is applied. In other words things will not change unless something happens to change them. I do not know about you but to me it feels as if our society has been going through a very rough time for a very long time now. Honestly whatever is happening now has not just started now and unless an external force happens it is likely to get worse.

The external force in this case is the collective desire for change. The first thing you can do to improve the world around you is becoming the change you want to see. It is such a cliché I know but the truth is people will feel more comfortable taking a journey to an unknown place if they know that the first steps have been taken by someone else.

We have seen that cultures can evolve. For example, we have gone from regarding torture as an entirely acceptable public spectacle and war as noble and glorious, to tolerating violence less and less, and increasingly regarding war as immoral and barbaric. But can the individual change? And if he can, does this change have an influence on society and on succeeding generations?

One of the tragedies of our time seems to be considerably underestimating the ability for transformation of the human mind, given that our character traits are perceived as relatively stable. It is not so common for angry people to become patient, tormented people to find inner peace, or pretentious people to become humble. It is undeniable, however, that some individuals do change, and the change that takes place in them shows that it is not at all an impossible thing. Our character traits last as long as we do nothing to improve them and we leave our attitudes and automatisms alone, or else let them be reinforced with time.  Scientific research in the field of neuroplasticity shows that any form of training leads to a reconfiguring in the brain, on both the functional and structural levels.

I invite you to join with me and many others as we consciously work to improve ourselves and our world. But for now, the first step is to decide to do it. Reduce the negativity in your life by reducing the irrelevant noise you expose yourself to.  So stop watching, reading, listening to, sharing, commenting on, and talking about all the things that raise your blood pressure. Increase gratitude in your life by making lists of all the things you are truly grateful for and spend the first 30 minutes of every day and the last 30 minutes of every day really feeling gratitude for all you have now.

Lastly let us fall in love; fall in love with yourself, your loved ones and the entire humanity because with enough love in our hearts nothing is impossible.