Change is all about you. “Be the change you want to see in the world” is Mahatma Ghandi’s overused quote. Overused maybe but definitely not to be sneezed at.

Many years ago a relationship I had had all of my life became rocky. I began to suspect her of ulterior motives, of not supporting me, and of having a different attitude to me. My relationship with her deteriorated to such an extent that I did nothing but fight with her. One day I even pulled her aside accusing her of not supporting me in my intimate relationships. She could say nothing right. Times were so rough for me that I was seeing a psychologist at the time and so I sought his counsel on this imploding relationship. He took me on a journey that altered my perception of the person and the situation. As I began to see things differently I noticed that the only aspect of my relationship with her that had changed was how I was seeing her, nothing else. She was the same person I had always known. By changing my perception I changed the relationship back to what it was. “She” is my mom.

So a new campaign that has launched in South Africa has caught my attention. It stands above other initiatives because it is a call for every South African to stand up and lead by example. We’re an interesting bunch in this country where we are quick to drive away from a dinner party over the alcohol limit, yet complain when we are then asked for a bribe by the police officer who pulls us over. Both actions are against the law but we play victim and choose which is acceptable depending on who committed it. Lead SA is encouraging each person to be the leader of their own life and to recognise that changing your attitudes and actions, even as small as smiling and greeting people, changes your world and will then have an impact on the country. Good on you, Primedia, for a campaign that starts with individuals, because each person is the centre of their own world and change starts with them.

Be the change. See its effects. Lead SA.

P.S. I love you mom

Every year I make a big thing of my birthday. I use the opportunity to see all my friends and to throw them all together at a function that is all about me. And I love it! I always have.

Birthdays are also about change. Each birthday heralds the start of my own new year. Numerologists will tell you how the number of the year you are in, which influences your challenges and experiences, clicks over one notch on your birthday. I feel that notch click over and sometimes that feeling is a little uncomfortable. This year is no different. I feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff and only have to throw myself off to realise my dreams. So I see my dreams and that makes me excited but there is also a cliff that I have to throw myself off of first. Shit.

So I have decided to take my birthday week off (yes, I always celebrate a birthday week). Well, pretty much. I think the experts would say I’m frozen in fear. Or they would tell me I’m procrastinating but, you see, I am always way to hard on myself so I’ve decided that this is a perfectly good thing to do when there is chaos: sit in the midst of the chaos and be still. Oh, and then throw a party. It has been a very emotional space so, to be honest, working would be difficult given the frequent breakdowns. Okay, I maybe exaggerate a little…but only a little.

I know I will jump. I just want to turn 35 first! Happy birthday to me.

If one day you should find yourself standing on the edge of a cliff asking yourself how you got to this point and why it is that you’re thinking of jumping, what would be your response? “My dreams never entered my reality and so there was nothing to live for”? We all go through stages of frustration and pointlessness. I can see you nodding. But do you understand why, when all around you everything appears the same? That’s exactly it: everything is the same and that is what is frustrating. In order for the reality to be the dream, we need to allow the change. And sometimes all that is required is that we let go of the old reality so that the change can happen.

Look at the world from your own paradigm…change is what happens when no one is looking. Because at that point, no one is holding on to the past out of fear. No one is sufficiently focussed to fear. Fear resides in the head – it is our own mental creation. Distract it and the change will happen such that we arrive at the other side quite bewildered as to how we got there.

And so the generations renew the planet through change. The young don’t like the way of the elderly and the elderly don’t like what the youth get up to. The reason is to effect change. Fears are still transferred from one generation to the next; pointless, irrational fears. Pointless and irrational because they were created and owned by the generation before and so do not belong. Yet we, because of our own fear, choose to hang on to these fears and this is what is called the “collective unconscious”, the great energy grid that connects us all (see the hundredth monkey syndrome). Yet, that collective unconscious serves a positive purpose too as everything in this world is neutral: it mirrors your fears in order for you to see them. We wouldn’t be able to see what we looked like if there was nothing to reflect us and so we would find it very difficult to drop all our illusions if we had nothing to show us what they are. And life can be an illusion, lived in the head with very little truth but then lies are what we will attract.

Be strong and look in the mirror that is your world and you will see what you are holding on to. Drop all that and you will live your dream. If we all do that then the planet will live its dream too.

Jo and I had just completed our usual Saturday morning breakfast together and she was telling me how frustrated she gets when she is asked how she made certain changes in her life and she is unable to answer. The changes happen and yet they only become apparent once they are done. And then to retrace the steps is almost impossible.

Could you relay to me exactly how you changed to become the person you are today from 10 years ago? I didn’t think so.

That’s because it isn’t important. How you achieve something is never important; the achievement is in completing it. Sharing how you achieved it is equally unimportant as it was done in your own unique way that would not apply to anyone else. It is then irrelevant.

After all, what does it matter when there is nothing but the here and now and you are the centre of your universe? Enjoy your journey because it is uniquely yours.

The company where I work is restructuring and is being faced with an enormous amount of change and the proportionate amount of fear – the two are very comfortable bedfellows. One of the fears that management is grappling with is the fear of failure. We were writing our “Golden Rules” for our executive committee when the issue of failure was raised. It was clear the matter was raised from a place of fear in the context of “please don’t chastise and condemn me should one of my ideas fail”. This prompted our management consultant to send this extract from the Harvard Business Review:

Executives know that failure is an integral part of innovation. But how do they encourage the right kinds of mistakes? by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes

“The fastest way to succeed,” IBM’s Thomas Watson, Sr., once said, “is to double your failure rate.” In recent years, more and more executives have embraced this point of view, coming to understand what innovators have always known: that failure is a prerequisite to invention. A business can’t develop a breakthrough product or process if it’s not willing to encourage risk taking and learn from subsequent mistakes.

The growing acceptance of failure is changing the way companies approach innovation. Some build exit strategies into their projects to ensure that doomed efforts don’t drag on indefinitely. Others, like the credit card company Capital One, continually conduct large numbers of market experiments knowing that while most of their tests won’t pay off, even the failures will provide valuable insights into customer preferences. Still others launch two or more projects with the same goal, sending teams in different directions simultaneously.

This approach – called “simultaneous management” by civil engineering professor Alexander Lauer – creates the potential for a healthy cross-fertilization of new ideas and techniques.

While companies are beginning to accept the value of failure in the abstract – at the level of corporate policies, processes, and practices – it’s an entirely different matter at the personal level. Everyone hates to fail. We assume, rationally or not, that we’ll suffer embarrassment and a loss of esteem and stature. And nowhere is the fear of failure more intense and debilitating than in the competitive world of business, where a mistake can mean losing a bonus, a promotion, or even a job.

During his years leading Monsanto, Robert Shapiro was struck by how terrified his employees were of failing. They had been trained to see an unsuccessful product or project as a personal rebuke. Shapiro tried hard to change that perception, knowing that it hindered the kind of creative thinking that fueled his business. He explained to his employees that every product and project was an experiment and that its backers failed only if their experiment was a halfhearted, careless effort with poor results. But a deliberate, well-thought-out effort that didn’t succeed was not only excusable but also desirable.

Such an approach to mistake making is characteristic of people we call “failure-tolerant leaders” – executives who, through their words and actions, help people overcome their fear of failure and, in the process, create a culture of intelligent risk taking that leads to sustained innovation. These leaders don’t just accept failure; they encourage it. We’ve studied a number of failure-tolerant leaders – in business, politics, sports, and science – and found some common threads in what they do. They try to break down the social and bureaucratic barriers that separate them from their followers. They engage at a personal level with the people they lead. They avoid giving either praise or criticism, preferring to take a nonjudgmental, analytical posture as they interact with staff. They openly admit their own mistakes rather than covering them up or shifting the blame. And they try to root out the destructive competitiveness built into most organizations.

First and foremost, though, failure-tolerant leaders push people to see beyond simplistic, traditional definitions of failure. They know that as long as someone views failure as the opposite of success rather than its complement, that person will never be able to take the risks necessary for innovation.

Remember that you are living one life with many interrelated aspects. So don’t be tempted to divide it into personal, emotional, spiritual, work, etc. and claim that certain areas are okay and others aren’t. Whatever part of you is in shadow affects your entire life but in different ways. Fear of failure in the office is amplified further in other aspects and could be holding you back personally. This would limit the innovation in your life – leaving you staid and frustrated. Life is a myriad of interrelated aspects that affect each other and cannot be fully divided. One aspect affects another. The person is as much a part of the job as the job is part of the person. If you are doing what you love (not only what you are good at) then your job becomes a real testing ground for life - a great place to try things out and see if they take you further along the route to your goal. But this then has to be rolled out into the rest of your life where it is more “risky” and “scary” sometimes. Be brave and push your boundaries; what’s the worst that can happen?