Stephan A. Schwartz
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How to Become an Effective Agent of Change
Promoting Wellbeing in Your Life and in the World
April 20 - May 5, 2024With personal support and guidance from Stephan A. Schwartz
Workshop registration: $249.00
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The Power of Individual Choice
Throughout human history there have been basically three ways to create social transformation. One, the advancement of technology and science that, in turn, serves the other two. Second is change compelled by physical power. It is almost always coercive and often violent. And it is a zero sum game. One side is forced to submit.
The third avenue of change is one brought about by something so subtle it is often not taken seriously: Small individual choices, and the power they have to create change in oneself is a fundamental alteration in what I call “beingness.”
As I have lived my own social transition experiences I have closely watched what worked and what failed, trying to see the patterns, to learn the laws and dynamics that made the often seemingly impossible goals — first articulated by only a handful of people — a reality. A sense of the process began to emerge. I could see the same patterns playing out again and again. Successful nonviolent life-affirming social transformations share certain characteristics, and they are learnable.
I have tried to do three things in this workshop. First, to bring into focus how successful enduring change begins with individuals and goes through a process of reaching a critical consensus. Second, to present you with real-world examples, illustrating how these techniques are used to achieve social transition that is compassionate and life affirming. And third, to highlight the social and neuroscience research that underpins why the process works.
This, then, is a practical guide showing how people who did not hold official positions, have great power as the world calculates such things, nor notable wealth changed the world in compassionate and life-affirming ways, and how you can too.
– Stephan A. Schwartz
Beingness
Positive, life-affirming "beingness" is the core of a social transformation strategy based on nonviolence. Beingness is both a personal and a social quality. An individual makes quotidian choices that create the character of one’s beingness
The transformational power of beingness begins with an individual’s choices. But when that individual beingness is a peculiarly sensitive resonator, social change occurs, whether for good or ill.
As anthropologist Margaret Mead so famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Ultimately it gets down to individual choice. Everything starts with one person holding an intention and making decisions expressing that intention. As that person’s beingness changes, as a consequence even the most unlikely person can become enormously powerful. This process constitutes one of the least understood social forces in our world.
The Workshop
Learn and Study with Stephan Schwartz:
Workshop Features:
- Two-week online workshop
- Practical Instruction presented with streaming video - no set class times
- Easy-to-use course website
- Personal support and guidance from Stephan Schwartz
- Downloadable guided audio exercises for your practice
- Learn and practice from the comfort of your own home