Change Yourself, Change Wall Street

All around the world right now, people are protesting as the Occupy Wall Street movement expands into more and more cities. The passion and excitement of this collective power has an amazing ability to create change. If just 1% of the 99% starts actively working to create change in the world, the world can start shifting quickly.  When I was at the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) Conference in Damanhur in 2010, I learned about Let’s Do It Estonia where 4% of the population (50,000 people) showed up on May 3, 2008 to pick up 10,000 tons of garbage from the forests in about five hours for less than 500,000 euros. 4% of the U.S. population would be about 15.3 million people. It would have taken the government three years and 22.5 million euros to clean up this trash under normal circumstances. This has now become a 2012 global event entitled Let’s Do It World.

The current protests could be a forum for great ideas to arise and be implemented. Will that happen or will the protesters get bogged down in beliefs about a right/wrong way to do things? Will they be able to work together? Will they actively take action to create change or will they just sit around and complain? How many will go back to their everyday lives and do nothing further because they don’t have the time or energy? Just as easily as ideas arise, they can get lost. It’s too soon to know what will come out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, working to shift our internal thinking helps us to shift things externally. When we can heal ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, we have more to give to the world to make the external shifts. When we stop believing there is a right and a wrong way to do things, we can take action harmoniously with others out of a passion to change things instead of being driven by fear-based needs. When we let go of the fears and beliefs that keep us from acting on our own without a catalyst like this, then true change can happen.