A Return to Writing
Four months ago, I decided to take a sabbatical from writing for publication and to back away from almost all of my social media interaction. And to remove myself from most of the theoretical conversations that I had been having over the previous years.
The exception was writing for my podcast twice weekly, and responses to requests to comment by friends and colleagues.
I return to writing for publication with this post.
In many respects, this sabbatical time was an intentional time of transition. I felt that I had lapsed into a kind of eternal recurrence of thinking and writing the same things I had over the past twenty-five, maybe even 40 years.
My thoughts on leadership had not changed. Yet, I was thinking and writing as if they had. I decided to abandon what I had been working on as the follow-up to my first book, Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative to Ignite Change.
What began as a three month break, became four, and in some aspects will continue perpetually.
I came to this realization.
Circle of Impact Lives On
I realized my Circle of Impact model of leadership remains a valuable tool for leaders to build teams, understand change, and move from simply running a business to leading it.
In the introduction of the book, I state that my purpose is “to encourage and equip people to take personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.” This is the antidote to becoming overwhelmed by the pace and superficiality of our current world. Meaning in life doesn’t come from identification with a person, a product or an ideology. It comes from doing something. It requires action.
Personal initiative is the activation and validation of your personal agency as a human being.
When you can see, touch, feel, and experience some action you take, and it makes a difference that matters, you have become a person of impact.
No one can take it away from you.
When I published my Circle of Impact book, I stated,
My purpose to encourage and equip people to create impact that makes a difference that matters.
I also stated that,
My goal was to move 1% of the world’s population to take personal initiative to create impact in their local communities.
How many people is that?
80,000,000 people globally.
Six years ago when the book was published, I was asked,
“How are you going to do that?”
Then, I said,
“I’m not. It will organically happen as I encourage and equip the people who show up in front of me.”
It isn’t complicated from a communication perspective. It is very complex from a human relationship, organizational, and societal perspective.
I have discovered that people want what I cannot give them.
I have also discovered that people and organizations are largely unwilling to pay the price of change to create impact that makes a difference that matters.
I conclude that people and organizations are increasingly inward-focused, more interested in their own comfort and welfare than with their customers or industry.
As a result, people attach themselves to people and groups who they feel represent some place of comfort or resolution to the pain and alienation of modern life.
The reality we face is that there is no positive growth without investment and sacrifice. Without commitment to change, there can be no satisfactory benefit from associating with someone who believes that you can be a person of impact.
Merely knowing you are in pain and why you are suffering is not sufficient reason to change.
Influence and association particular people are not sufficient to turn you into a person of impact.
The only reason people change is because there is something at stake. They risk losing something they value. When suffering and pain begin to define a person, then it is very difficult for them to change to see their lives any other way.
For this reason, we must change the patterns of behavior that define our lives.
I walked away from much of my social media intake. I realized how it affected me. I didn’t like it. Still don’t because I like being informed. But I wasn’t being informed, I was being anesthetized, pacified, and inoculated against seeing beyond the screen.
My principal obstacle to change was self-awareness.
I am not talking about my awareness of need. Instead, it is the awareness that no one, not me, or any person of influence can tell you or me. We have to decide to change because not to change becomes a fate worse than death.
If you are not willing to do the hard work of change, your life will continue to languish. You may not think it is languishing now. If you are not presently doing things to make a difference that matters, then what are you doing with your life.
If I showed up at your door tomorrow,
could you take me to some place or some person, where you, not them, but YOU see yourself creating impact that makes a difference that matters?
If you can, then you are a member of the 1% of the world’s persons of impact.
And, then you are not languishing.
The first step of achieving awareness is the realization that most of the messaging that you receive is not for your benefit, but for the messenger. They want you to become transfixed on the screen.
The deeper problem is the context of time, or what I call The Eternal Present. Almost nothing you are asked to do or believe is designed to affect the future. It is rather to validate the present moment with your attention.
This leads to my realization.
To know where you want to go,
you must know where you have been,
and where you are in the present moment.
This statement describes the journey these months have been, and the context of focusing on the question of the relationship of Time to Reality. More about this in my next post.
This question arises from the many conversations that I have with people who are challenged by the culture of modern life. Most of us take it for granted that what greets us every day is the way things are and will always be.
However, I have never catered to such an idea. My time away convinced me that I am a man out of time, especially this time we are in.
I don’t want to be influenced.
I want to be impacted.
I am not oriented toward algorithms or being a public person of influence. The perspective undergirding those strategies is not personable or relational.
When I see a person claiming to be a person of influence, I know it means they have a lot of people watching them, possibly even copying them.
I ask,
“What is their influence?
And, more importantly, what is the impact of their influence?”
Influence without impact is like sweetness without nourishment.
Pleasant in the moment, but over time unsatisfying.
The draw is to find relief from trauma, hardship, self-doubt, and the world not making sense. Unless the influence creates the conditions where trauma can be healed, hardship turned to hard work, self-doubt becomes self-belief, and the world makes sense because aligns with your values and purpose, then influence doesn’t mean much.
Remember this: feelings are ephemeral; action produces impact.
Let me encourage you to ask the influencer, directly and personally,
“What is the impact of your influence?
What change that makes a difference that matters in our world are you creating?
What is the cost to you of being an influencer?
What do you sacrifice to make a difference that matters?”
It is clear to me that people desire connection, identification with successful people, and the feeling that their lives matter.
When I ask them about their lives, I get a different story.
I hear about not being clear about their purpose in life.
I hear stories of broken relationships, marriages, families, and communities.
I hear about being exhausted, empty, and uncertain about their future.
When I ask,
Why are you not clear about your purpose in life?
How did these relationships fail?
Why are you so tired and uncertain about the future?
They tell me that they feel poorly prepared to live in this world, in this time, and as the person that they thought themselves to be.
And so I ask them,
What are you doing to change what is not working for you?
When these conversations move through these steps of interaction, two things are happening.
One is that the person is articulating a picture of their life that is more comprehensive than is normally found.
Conversations like these don’t happen through text messaging or in hitting the like button on YouTube.
Some of these conversations last five minutes, others happen over time. They are not clinical inquiries, but rather two people talking about their lives. And at depth that rarely happens because of the pace and superficiality of life.
Secondly, the person begins to realize a broader reality, present for them, waiting for them to access.
Here is where we end up.
Knowing something has become the measure of a person’s life.
The reality is that no one knows everything. Even what they do know may not be complete or comprehensive.
Doing something is the path to knowing oneself.
We are not who or what we identify with. We are what we do and what we create.
What are you doing?
What are you doing that makes a difference that matters?
There is not a competition to see who can do more or be better at the impact game.
YOU are the measure of your own life.
YOU decide that “I am a person of impact.”
No one else can tell you that with full authority, because they have no responsibility or accountability for your life.
I Want More Impact In My Life
I am not satisfied with the impact that I am having.
I see too many people who are suffering in their lives.
I also know that only people who are willing to invest and sacrifice to better their lives will do so.
I am preparing a program to take people through the Circle of Impact. You can access it by becoming a paid subscriber.
Understand, I’m not interested in influencing you, unless you decide that you are going to take action in your life that creates impact.
You are the only one who can declare “I am a person of impact.”
When you reach that point, you’ll discover you are not satisfied with your level of impact. You’ll want more. So, join me in helping me find 80 million people who are ready to make a difference in their local communities.
Welcome back and great article to start my day.