How to make a difference when you can’t.

People ask if I miss public health. The scale and impact of it.

I used to want to save the world through grand transformation. Then I realised that without collective leadership, including self-leadership, it wouldn't work. No one was coming to save the day.

So how do we know where to make a difference?

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Heroes don't scale (something I discuss in The Success Trap).

The easy but bottomless and paralysing question: how do I do more, faster, without failing?

A better question: how do I do more, do better, or do something? As Prof Michael Marmot's community puts it.

The liberating question: what's mine to do, right now?

Your mission can be for a moment, a season, or a lifetime.

The work is to consistently update your intentions based on your experience - and act.

Why? Because your understanding, capacity, and resources are always changing. And so is the world.

To bring yesterday's grand ambitions to today's emergency is fruitless.

A useful distinction is Stephen Covey's "sphere of influence vs sphere of concern" and the sweet spot between:

• Knowledge without leverage leads to anxiety.

• Power without purpose leads to a sense of void.

• The middle way is a mission in the moment - which can repeat itself over a day, season, or lifetime.\

Your mission may be for a moment, a season or a lifetime.

It's not the mission you've been handed down (e.g. job, marriage, kids, success, retirement) or the rebellion against it (give it all up and join a cult or reactionary political movement). It might be to guide your family towards a kind, more liberate way of living. Or become a local, public voice for community building or redistributive economics. Or maybe write a book documenting the journey of a forgotten people while working as a clerk. It s possible because I've seen clients do it.

Legends of Liberation: Claiming what's yours to do often involves letting go of trying to save someone else's world to create a new one . H let go or trying to save his father's business empire and created his own innovative company that built on his father's social legacy. N stopped trying to save her high functioning autistic son through a high paying, draining corporate role and founded her dream consultancy where her son contributed a meaningful role. G stopped trying to save her demanding and elusive boss and started asking hard questions on behalf of her team and organisation - and started to be seen as his successor, including by her boss.

The sage Hillel said: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?"

Our deep human mission seems to be about evolving beyond the sense of alienation we've been caught in for 10,000 years or more - disconnected from ourselves, each other, and nature. We're under selection pressure to reconnect across differences without sacrificing our particularity. This is what religion, revolutions, and sustainable economics have tried to liberate us towards.

We're still evolving.

And we all have our part in the great symphony of this world.

Amina

P.S. Are you in a season of outgrowing an old identity and know it's time for a different path? Book a 30 minute conversation to explore how I can help and leave with a clearer sense of what's yours to do. Book here.