Changing the world in half-a-minute
September 23rd, 2006As I continue to delve into Lorelle’s phenomenal heap of blogging treasures, I found a challenge that I could not resist taking:
I challenge all bloggers to blog about 30 things that can be done to change the world in 30 seconds.[…]There is a lot you can do to change the world in 30 seconds. In thirty seconds or less, what are the things you can do to make the world a better place[…]
Update: Lorelle has now included this one in her official blogging challenge. An excellent opportunity for me to re-read my list, and deeply agree with myself that I should read it more often (how about daily?).
Without further ado, the list I came up with:
Changing the world in half a minute
- Make a wish
- Call your Daddy
- Dump the TV
- Lend stuff you seldom use
- Give away stuff you never use
- Ask for help when you need help
- Feel happy for happy people
- Do not keep good news to yourself
- Look at people as a blind person would
- When your boss does it right, let him/her know
- Congratulate effort, not achievement
- Count to ten before saying anything harsh
- Whistle “don’t worry, be happy” on the streets
- Apologize first — find excuses later (or preferably never)
- Better one ‘thanks’ too many than one too few
- Ask an easy favor from a lonely neighbor
- Stop everything at once to kiss your kids good night
- Say ‘please’, thank you’ and ’sorry’ to everyone (including your kids and your dog)
- Listen for thirty seconds before talking back
- Leave the book you have just finished on your train seat
- Do not deny your kids a coke when you have just opened a beer
- While in a rush, sit down on a bench for thirty seconds and watch
- Write a ‘forgive me’ message to someone you have fallen out with (you do not have to send it today)
- Lay an extra plate on the dinner table for a last-minute guest
- Send a ‘hello there’ email to a friend you have not seen in a while
- Take 30 seconds to imagine the other side of the story
- Do not just mean what you say; mean what it will do to whom you say it to
- Put down your sudoku and engage conversation with fellow commuters
- In an argument, take thirty seconds to agree on what it is you disagree over
- Imagine 6 billion people simultaneously remembering their happiest moments
Read on
The happiest person in the world
19.99 non-commecial things
Mellow moments
Boasting some: what I know best
Oh, I love the last one!
I’ve seen a lot of people think this list is useless, since you can’t “really” change the world in 30 seconds. But your last statement sums up why I chose this challenge. If everyone took 30 seconds at a time to make the world a better place, and if 30 million of those 6 billion people took the same 30 seconds to do an act to make the world a better place, wouldn’t that be a mathematical step in the right direction to improve the world? What if all 6 billion people picked up a single piece of trash or put down their suduko to talk to their neighbors? Or even just to listen to their neighbors?
Love it!
Wonderful! I’m printing this out and showing it to my children. And then I think we’ll have a family conversation about what we can come up with.
Mandarine, you’ve just made my world a better place tonight.
xxoo, BL
It seems Lorelle was right, then.
There’s brilliance here, in the idea, in the challenge, in many of the suggestions. Mean what you say; mean what it will do. I’ll keep that in mind as I write my own list.
It is still and always a wonderful list. Reading this again after a year, it’s amazing how it feels like new. So much has happened to me and my life this year that my perspective on life and life values is drastically changing. So your list has even more value to me and I see it differently.
I thought those who had done this before might skip it, but I was glad you and a couple others decided to re-examine their past lists to see how they might change it, but I didn’t think that my re-reading of the list would detect a change in me! I’m getting challenged right back on my challenge!
But you always do that to me! Thank you.