Inner Work for Social Change

Why does inner work matter for social change?

For the social entrepreneur or socially-minded professional curious about why inner work matters for social change, we share our understanding of how inner work and personal transformation are integral to our understanding of and capacity to initiate systems change.

Why Does Inner Work Matter for Social Change?

We at Global Grassroots have always believed inner work and personal transformation are integral to our understanding of and capacity to initiate systems change. Read more about how Conscious Social Change uses mindfulness as a design tool. At the heart of our work is our core Academy for Conscious Social Change, a mindfulness-based leadership program and social venture incubator for teams of women launching social change ventures (micro-NGOs).

Through our Academy for Conscious Social Change, these powerful change agents practice deeper self-knowledge and personal transformation while advancing positive change for the common good. Upon completion, they bring clean water, health education, gender equity training, and other holistic solutions to thousands of people each year.

And yet, even in light of their notable successes, it was hard to articulate to our funders why investing in mindfulness practices and breathwork was an essential part of supporting sustainable social change work. It was equally challenging to measure the remarkable changes we saw in individuals’ confidence and agency and to provide evidence of how much inner work mattered to their community work. So, we took some time to explore what the clinical and scholarly research had to say about the role of personal transformation in influencing social change to try to clarify the links.

How does this all work? Go deeper and learn more about mindfulness as inner-work in action.

Take a look at the five fields of personal transformation we studied and our key findings.

Five Fields of Personal Transformation

  • Mindfulness comes from the Pali word sati, which means having awareness, attention, and remembering. These practices involve paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally, which bring our internal experiences, like emotional reactivity, under greater conscious control over time. To explore more, please download our Spotlight on Mindfulness.

  • Wellbeing is a state of being where human needs are met, where one can act meaningfully to pursue one's goals, and where one enjoys a satisfactory quality of life. Resilience is a positive adaptation despite adversity that leads to growth and greater wellbeing. To learn more please download our Spotlight on Wellbeing & Resilience.

  • Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of our own and others’ feelings in the moment and use that information to inform one’s action in relationship. Social intelligence is the ability to more deeply understand people by perceiving or experiencing their life situations and, as a result, gain insight into structural inequalities and disparities. To learn more, please download our Spotlight on Social & Emotional Intelligence.

  • Empowerment is the ability to choose, including the existence of options and a capacity to make purposeful choices in a changing context where little power once existed. To learn more, please download our Spotlight on Empowerment & Agency.

  • A sense of community includes a feeling of belonging, a sense of mattering to the group, a feeling that needs will be met by shared resources, and having a shared emotional connection. To learn more, please download our Spotlight on Community & Belonging.

Key Findings

Practicing inner work involves a fundamental change in the structure and functioning of the brain and physiology, resulting in a more positive orientation towards self and the surrounding world. 

Inner work and personal transformation help foster prosocial behavior, including helping, charitable altruism, concern, intrinsic motivation to act for the common good, and social communications. This is influenced by developing the capacities of self-awareness and self-regulation, compassionate understanding, and connection with others. 

Personal transformation is influenced by and has a direct impact on the nature of the environment in which a person’s transformation occurs. As such, one’s connection to community, sense of belonging or relationship with another is critical to the process of individual growth.

“Global Grassroots developed in me the patience. When someone makes a mistake, I feel like I could also make that kind of mistake. I put myself in the place of the person, and I help him or her to solve that problem…to awaken my mind and ask other people to think together of something better they can do in their lives. If someone is dedicated to doing something - with determination and loving – no matter what, she or he will achieve it.” 

-Jeanine Kaigirwa, Team Construct the Family, a domestic violence venture

Inner work and social change…

How does this all work ? Mindfulness as inner work in action.

Important Definitions

  • Inner work is the intentional engagement in practice (or as a response to challenge), with self-reflection and the integration of insight for personal transformation.

  • Personal transformation is the process and experience of undergoing positive inner change towards personal growth and self-realization.

  • Systems change can be defined as shifting component parts of a system — and the pattern of interactions between these parts — to ultimately form a new system that behaves in a qualitatively different way

  • Conscious Social Change (CSC), is a design philosophy and methodology of creative, compassionate problem-solving and solutions-building grounded in mindfulness and self-awareness.