To change a situation, you must first change yourself.

Notice that it says “situation,” not “person.” You cannot change people.

You can influence people if they let you, but then they are changing themselves.

Influence comes from trust and understanding: to be influenced, they must trust you. To trust you, they must feel understood.

Only when there is understanding can there be trust, and only when there is trust can there be influence.

So you must first change yourself: you must become a person who seeks to understand another, a person who chooses to see the world from the other’s point of view. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant; it is the understanding that matters.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

–Aristotle

If you want to create change, change the one thing over which you already have influence: yourself.