Unless you’re stuck on the tube or high up in the hills of Northern Thailand, we live in a world in which you can rarely do anything without being technologically connected to others. Whether that’s posting about your holiday on Facebook, updating your Instagram story, or even just texting a friend when you’re out late at night. We are all so easily connected to one another across our globe, with just the touch of a button.

At the outset, this connection can bring huge positives, like being able to see family members virtually when we are stuck overseas, or keep up to date with what your best friend from high school is doing with her life. If you pause for a second and consider this, we’ve gone from grey-screened Nokia’s to Facetiming with someone twelve hours ahead through 5G—in less than two decades.

Now, with this level of connectedness, you would expect our global mindset to have advanced at the same rate. That we would have evolved past wars or bigotry. That being able to connect with each other would mean that we’d understand each more. Our lives, our struggles, our beliefs. You’d think we’d have evolved past the idea that one group of people is superior to the other. You think we’d be less afraid of what is different, whether that’s race, culture or identity.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Our civilisations are operating at egocentric levels, meaning people are still stuck in the “what about me?” phase. They’re still conditioned by outdated educational models to try to prove that they’re somehow better than the others around us through our status, achievement, or a bigger car. What that means is technological expansion happened so fast (too fast) that the human race hasn’t had the chance to evolve to match that level of connectedness yet! Cultural gaps have therefore emerged, whether people are aware of them or not. Cultural conflicts therefore occur, whether people like it or not. In a sense, we are not as globalised as the world we inhabit.

So, how can we increase our level of connection past the technical into a form of real understanding and love for one another? How can we unite?

The answer is simple (or simple to understand, at least): Mindfulness. Now you may be thinking, look we know about mindfulness, it’s all about calming down and breathing right? Well, that’s only one side of it. In a deeper and integral sense, it’s about realising both what is within ourselves and what is outside of ourselves. Making deep change, whether that’s within ourselves or for the whole world, starts with us.

Through practising mindfulness, we take on the realisation that other people are merely extensions of ourselves. Usually this kind of belief starts with people who are around us or look like us. Whether that’s a family member, a neighbour, a church group, or even people who support the same football team. The idea of ‘union’ kicks in and we care for them. If we further extend this mindfulness, we come to the realisation that this union extends to the whole of the human race (we can go even deeper than that but let’s stay here for now).

Taking on this idea of union and mindfulness, we realise that when bad (or good) things happen on the other side of the world, they’re also happening to us because they are, in a sense, who we are. This is what I like to call being a Global Citizen. Someone who realises their place amongst a planet full of living people. Someone who realises their full potential in being able to change the world in this way. And not just like they say in those egalitarian movies, but in a real, concrete way.

Being mindful of our place in the world and our place amongst others give us the knowledge and power to act with compassion and understanding. We remove the illusion of separation and the idea that we are completely alone in the world. We become aware that we are an integral part of something huge.

Creating change begins with us looking inwards. It’s an inside-out process. Humanity has made enormous strides in evolving as a species. We have seen massive amounts of exponential change over even the past few decades. And now that we are all connected physically through technology (thanks to the internet you’re able to read this article!) We can use this to our advantage to learn and bring us all closer together, unified as one.

We are currently facing what feels like some unsolvable problems. The climate change emergency, powerful political parties waging wars, a rise in online bigotry, stereotyping and abuse… It doesn’t stop there. Using mindfulness to realise our connectedness and full potential as a species has never been more crucial.

When you adopt this level of understanding, you shield yourself against being swept away by ideologies that drive us apart. You give yourself a path to continue adding to all the good and unification amongst people, as a citizen of the world. You give humanity that extra chance at change and unity, because one of the key parts of being a Global Citizen is realising that you too can make enormous change.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and adopting a Global Citizen mindset? Check out Freeman’s book Travel to Transform.