The Changemakers' Syndrome

I am part of these individuals who naturally feel indebted for the life they have inherited from the lottery game that we call life: I was born lucky to loving parents with a comfortable lifestyle, who have always manifested their strong willingness to provide as many resources as possible for their children to reach their dreams and full potential. The thought of investing in personal and professional endeavours that would not encompass positive impact on others simply never occurred to me.

I naturally feel indebted for the life I have inherited from the lottery game that we call life: I was born lucky.

Do not get me wrong: I do have an ego, I do think and care about myself, and I am fully aware that the aforementioned elements also bring happiness and meaningfulness back to me. There is this mainstream idea that altruistic people, in the end, act for themselves in their pretence of acting for others. I will not deny such a stance, but I am also a strong believer in that human realities are so complex and diverse that they cannot possibly allow any black-and-white situational reading nor generalisation, and that such realities need to be explained through the spectrum of nuance and balance. Regarding motivations of altruistic deeds, I believe it is about an individual mix of personal gains and authentic, non-utilitarian empathy.

The topic of the present article is about a phenomenon that I have personally experienced and observed on a lot more individuals than just myself, while socialising within professional and personal circles related to sustainable development and impact entrepreneurship for the past few years. My family and my schooling had a Catholic setting which I think reinforced the unconscious understanding that my scope of action had to go beyond my own ego towards helping others and care about the environment around me. However, I think my other-centred journey concretely started in high school 10 years ago, when I was given the opportunity to go around my hometown to distribute breakfast to the homeless. In university, at HEC Paris, I would go for any opportunity I possibly could that was related to socially or environmentally impactful student club activities, courses and careers. In 2014, I went to the Philippines for a social impact assessment study which led me to later on take on a full year off my university track to conduct a series of such studies in remote areas of Africa, Asia and South America. When I came back to France from this adventure, I did not hesitate a second to embrace my university’s master’s specialisation in Sustainable Development and Social Innovation, which precisely got me to spend one entire year with 55 other young individuals from 30 different countries, who I believe had all developed what I would call the Changemakers’ Syndrome, which I diagnosed myself to have developed as well. After I moved to Kolkata, India in 2018, joined educational conglomerate Techno India Group as Sustainability Director and co-founded sustainability-focused aggregating platform Y-East, I also mechanically entered such impact-focused local networks and observed the very same set of symptoms on some of my fellows there. I would describe this syndrome as an overwhelming, irrational sense of individual responsibility towards solving the world’s most pressing social or environmental issues, even if a relatively easy, rational thought process would lead to the conclusion that they most probably cannot solve them, and that they do not have any legal nor professional hierarchical obligations to honour this responsibility.

The reason why I decided to name it the Changemakers’ Syndrome is for I believe it tends to specifically apply to individuals that feel the strong need, or rather the calling, to ‘save the world’ and be a game changer in alleviating current social or environmental challenges. This characteristic matches with the definition of ‘changemaker’ attributed to the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs Ashoka, which has defined a changemaker as ‘anyone who is taking creative action to solve a social problem’, adding that every changemaker is: ‘intentional about solving a social problem for a greater good; motivated to act; creative’. Of course, the organisation has gone deeper into the ins and outs of it, which you can read more about in their publication ‘More than Simply “Doing Good”: Defining Changemaker’ published in February 2016.

The Changemakers's Syndrome relates to an overwhelming, irrational sense of individual responsibility towards solving the world’s most pressing social or environmental issues, even though one does not have any legal nor professional hierarchical obligations to honour this responsibility.

The term ‘Changemaker’ has been so overused in a plethora of contexts that we never really go back to its definition nor question it, and tend to forget everything that it implies. In fact, I believe that the definition proposed by Ashoka, although adequate in its ability to provide an optimistic, hopeful framework, hides – or rather overlooks – other realities of being a ‘changemaker’. This leads me to justify the other term of the expression, ‘Syndrome’. Contrary to a disease, which has a clear, identifiable set of causes and symptoms that can usually be cured through treatment, a syndrome is described as a ‘group of symptoms that occur together, and characterise a particular abnormality or condition’. Another definition of syndrome defines it as a ‘set of concurrent features such as emotions or actions that form an identifiable pattern’. Therefore, a syndrome is a lot more difficult to scientifically and rationally explain or treat. It relates to a basket of symptoms that just happen to be observed together that can have different causes, or no explainable cause at all, and no specific test or treatment for the same. My inner motivation towards positive social and environmental impact has always been unconscious, comparable to drunken acts and subconscious truths you will never manage to fully explain the day after. In the same way, I would really struggle to analyse my own inner motivations. While other people have very concrete reasons to act through the spectrum of altruism or environmentalism, like the illness of a loved one or a past personal trauma, I do not have any such my marking events in my life that would have triggered me into pursuing this personal and professional direction. This is what makes it a syndrome: we cannot fully know nor understand where it comes from.

A lot more research (and more scientists!) about the Changemakers’ Syndrome would be needed to identify, analyse, demonstrate common realities, set of personality and psychological (maybe also physical?) symptoms shared by these ‘changemakers’. However, I would dare to guess that they would tend to show common characteristics on:

• A core inner motivation, even a certain sense of unconsciously self-imposed duty, to be part of the solution and of the movement of ‘world savers’;
• An above-average sense of responsibility, duty to overachieve beyond rational possibilities, to go beyond one’s capacities for the sake of a greater purpose, which goes hand in hand with an accentuated sense of guilt when the bar that has been self-set too high is not met;
• Exceptionally strong empathy and / or outstanding sense of heroism (interestingly, ‘heroism’ comes from Ancient Greek hērōs, or demigod, which could imply heroism to be tightly related to egocentricity);
• No balance nor dichotomy in work-life balance: both work and personal life are utilised non-stop to get closer to self-set world-saving goals;
• Mental overload or imbalance, occasional acute stress, punctual or chronic fatigue related to the aforementioned characteristics.

The reason why I take the liberty to speak up, propose a framework and vocabulary to the issue is that I personally relate to the above and would recognise myself as one of these ‘changemakers’. It has been fantastically fulfilling to follow this inner voice towards being such a ‘hero’, and I wouldn’t and couldn’t have it any other way. However, I have never been presented with the occasion to speak out about the mental heaviness coming from imposing myself such a huge amount of responsibilities on the shoulders. It is very delicate to also understand that such responsibilities and related stress are not inflicted by external forces or peers, but only by oneself, and therefore no one can really be held accountable for creating such pressure. It also makes this burden a lot more difficult to control, especially when one cannot really explain where this immensely powerful inner drive comes from. How to control the cause when the cause is unknown, or so intrinsic to yourself that you cannot possibly take a step back from it?

I have closely observed such ‘changemakers’ in my personal networks, as well as my own self, and would like to take an example to illustrate the above statements. Dr Goutam Roy Chowdhury, founder and chairman of Techno India Group – who also happens to be my father-in-law – one day expressed his life goal to me in these terms: ‘I want to eradicate poverty in India through education’. As noble as the endeavour sounds, and as undeniably grand as his achievements towards this unique goal have already been, it is a reality that Dr Roy Chowdhury has – probably unconsciously? – prioritised it to the detriment of his personal family life and mental wellbeing, by taking so much responsibility on his shoulders while some other individuals would rather accuse inactive governments for the same instead of taking the blame and turning it into a personal life duty. His son, Meghdut Roy Chowdhury, whom I closely relate to for reasons you now can guess, also shows some of the changemaker’s characteristics: he gets to sleep at unreasonable hours, occasionally expresses fatigue and tension, sometimes gets mentally overloaded with so many self-imposed and external obligations for the sake of the Kolkatans’ wellbeing. I have to add that Meghdut shows an outstanding strength in dealing and juggling with all these, in a way very few people could: maybe mental resilience is also a characteristic to be mentioned under the Changemaker’s Syndrome.

However, it could also crush thinner skins, which occasionally happens to me after a chain of meetings and projects trying to get closer to my inner goals combined with my intrinsic willingness to always make everyone happy. Such situations would lead me to be irrationally emotional, moody, exhausted to the point of not being able to talk to anyone or to feel grateful anymore, thereby playing with the risk of being the sole reason for the deterioration of professional or personal relationships myself. I am relatively certain that other famous or less famous ‘changemakers’ would share similar patterns if ever asked to state about their overall mental wellbeing, even though it wouldn’t stand a chance to equally weigh against their happiness, sense of meaningfulness and fulfilment. I would personally be willing to research further on the same in the years to come.

Becoming aware of such challenges and being able to finally put some words on it have recently led me to try to control this self-generated pressure. I used to be very bad at controlling my stress. I often still am, as it is part of my nature to a great extent. As a ‘changemaker’, I take on and accept a lot of responsibilities on my shoulders even when I am my own boss with no higher authority to report to. Or rather, the higher authority I report to is my own goals. The Changemakers’ Syndrome would not let me afford to waste a day, not even a second being unproductive towards my mission. However, I have realised that stress, by nature, can only be self-generated, i.e. that stressing was a choice in a lot of ways, and that it was up to each of us to learn how to control it.

One can decide to go out through the very same life events with, or without stress; in the former case, we let it play with our mental health, we let it exhaust us, we let it deteriorate our relationships with others. In the latter case, choosing to go through life without giving in to stress improve our self-love, better our relationships, and in a lot of ways increase our self-control and professional productivity. This is the choice I have increasingly tried to make, day by day, and would recommend the attempt to whoever feels overwhelmed with stress. If controlled and turn into an engine for productivity, it can serve your impactful life mission even better!