Published August 2020
Impact Starts With Me
Liberation is happening. It didn’t start with the COVID-19 pandemic but it is being accelerated by it. What is this liberation? People are asking questions about the changes that they are experiencing. They recognize that they are in transition. They are not sure why there is a change happening to them, but what they do know is that they are seeing things differently.
This sense of transition is personal. This is unusual and, oddly for them, freeing. It isn’t primarily about how the world is changing. It is something inside of them. It is about how they are changing. Here are some examples.
There is a welder in Utah who asked his company to do more. They kept saying no. I said to him that sometimes we have to look beyond our work. We need to broaden our skills. I said, “Why don’t you take some metal fabrication classes? Along with your welding skills, you could create metal sculptures.” He liked that idea. He parted with a new perception of what is possible for him.
There is a corporate manager in North Carolina who realized that his team was not being given the respect due to them from the company. With clarity of insight, he had some ideas for strengthening his team.
There is a West coast executive assistant who realized that her sadness was a reflection of her love for the company that she served for three decades. The sadness came from a string of failures that jeopardized the company’s standing in its industry. Through our brief conversation she realized that her love and sadness were shared by many in the company.
There is an East coast consultant who knew something was wrong with his company. After talking through the Circle of Impact model, he realized that the company is in a chaotic state of decline. It became clear to him that he was being set up as the scapegoat for the company’s problems. With a clarity of awareness of his relationship with the company, he knew that it was time to leave the company.
There is a young professional from Nairobi, Kenya who asked if during a global crisis was it a good time to start a new business. I said, “Absolutely! When people are passively waiting for good times to return, it is also a good time to get ahead of everyone in planning for a new venture.
Each of these people's awareness of their lives changed in a matter of moments. Yet, the most significant change in self-understanding still waits.
Part One
Understanding Who We Are
There is a missing part of our lives. You can hear it in the way people talk about themselves. Many people talk about creating change. Others talk about living a meaningful life. Many people describe their lives by what they do.
Can you see the pattern here? The attitude is that our lives are like a bucket to be filled. What do we fill it with? Activities, labels, and connections to people for the purpose of feeling something positive about ourselves. Each of the persons above felt that they were in transition. The transition though was unclear. We’ve all been there. Some of us are there right now.
Change in Self-Perception
A sudden awareness came upon me two decades ago. While horseback riding with my family one July afternoon in 1999 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, we rounded a bend on the trail and the magnificent vista of the Grand Tetons appeared in front of us. I heard a voice say to me, “It is time to stop talking about leadership, and lead.”
At that moment, my self-perception changed. I knew that my life had to be different going forward. At that moment I knew that every time I was asked to take on a leadership role, I would do it.
We live in a consumer culture that promotes the idea that life’s best should come to us. We are to receive good things because we are deserving. It is a “hand-out” mindset. The problem with this self-perception is that it does not take into account the billions of people who never receive life’s best. It implies that they are undeserving.
There is something unanswered in this assumption. Precisely why we are deserving? What makes any of us more deserving than someone else? The problem is, at the very same moment that we are being made to feel deserving, we also feel guilty for it.
There are also many people who down deep inside themselves do not believe this to be true. They do not believe that they are deserving. They are not good enough, attractive enough, smart enough, rich enough, or powerful enough. This mindset creates anxiety and doubt. For some people, they plunge into activities of self-development intended to prove that they are worthy. Others turn the other way and hide from this inner conflict believing that they are not.
Can you see how we are manipulated into believing things about ourselves that cause not only inner turmoil, but also places us at odds with people around the world?
This is the transition point that most of us are facing today. It is about our self-awareness. How we perceive ourselves in the situations that we find ourselves in every day. Are we deserving of the good things that we receive? Do we understand why our lives are like this? It is like the cat chasing her tail. What do you do when you catch it and you discover who you are?
The stories I told above are just a few of the hundreds I could tell of people who had a change in perception about themselves and the places where they live and work. The stories fall into patterns of experience that many people share. While the transition that every person experiences is unique to them, there is ultimately one universal solution.
Like me, who heard a voice telling me to change, you too can learn to see yourself in a new way. The purpose of this book is about helping you see how to be a person of impact. When you see it and have a plan for creating impact, then you can say with confidence that “Impact Starts With Me.”