Sometimes you need to be reminded of what you are capable of. Especially when you’re determined to create change.

Buckminster Fuller introduced a powerful metaphor in response to a question about how we can live with “a sense of the individual’s impotence to affect events, to improve or even influence our own welfare, let alone that of society”.

Fuller says:

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.””

Explore Bucky’s full answer here

Are you a Trim Tab too?

What ship are you determined to change the course of?

Join the conversation around this post: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook