‘Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.’ Wayne Dyer.
OK of course you cannot change the world but if you practise spiritual behaviour you really can change your world. A very bold claim I hear you say. But the way it is done is by transforming our minds such that the world that we see and experience is reality.
What you notice governs what you see and pay attention to and thereby is what you get. We see things and people not as they are but as we are. Much of what we experience is created in our minds. We shape the reality around us by what we choose to notice and see. Here are some examples. Whatever you pay attention to in families will start to grow and increase. Every partner is potentially both beautiful and ugly depending on how you look at them. Notice and attend to what you would like to see more of, and watch it manifest. The world that you see and experience is very largely a reflection of yourself.
We change our world by changing the person that we present to the world moment by moment. There are so many ways that each of us does this but usually unconsciously. For example if you give out and radiate love and positive energy you will receive it back faster than you would ever think. Conversely if you are miserable, negative and self pitying then you will instead find that reflected back to you pretty quickly in your daily experiences. Positive and negative energy is highly contagious to the people you come into contact with.
Another everyday example is that without realising it you change the people you meet. If you are the type of person who tries to dominate every conversation, never really listening to anyone else, always desperate for the other person to finish so you can expound your opinion, then you will miss out on so much of the richness of other people. Try to understand that people who do this are changing the people that they meet in the way that they interact with them. People they meet will be different with them than they would otherwise be, and will close down such that they appear passive, quiet and uninspiring. In fact the opposite may be true- given a chance they may have lots of wisdom, and information that would have been pleasurable and helpful. Their domineering, overbearing approach suppresses the people they meet so that they miss out on their potential interest.
It is always surprising to me that when you start to talk to anybody, whatever their initial impression and appearance, they have an interesting story and there will be something surprising and insightful about them. But many people dismiss the people they meet as irrelevant and shut them out and never get to enjoy them. And away from them the people they meet will regard them as an overbearing know-all so they damage the potential relationship / friendship that they might have had with them. What is their point? Have they become so arrogant that they believe that they already know everything and their job is to prove that to everyone they meet? Are they being controlled by their ego? If any of this behaviour sounds at all like you try and relax, stop being overbearing, and instead of stifling it start to watch the richness of people being revealed in front of your very eyes. You can change the people you meet simply by wearing a smile and listening to them, asking open questions and genuinely being interested in them. Go and try it-you will be amazed!
Let me remind you again that the world that you see and experience is very largely a mirror of yourself.