Start Small. Grow Big.
The Epilogue to Circle of Impact: Taking Personal Initiative To Ignite Change
First published September 2018.
It is my aim to live past a hundred years old. Both my grandfathers lived to be ninety-four years old, so I think I have a chance.
I was talking about personal leadership and living to a hundred with a group of high school students in Vienna, Austria. (This presentation took place on November 20, 2017.)
“How many of you are bored?”
Several raised their hands.
“You know that with the advances in modern medicine and healthy living most of you could easily live past a hundred years old.”
I then asked, how many were born in the year 2000? Probably a third of the hundred students in the room raised their hands.
“I want you to think about waking up on January 1, 2100, and reflecting back on your life. If you are bored now, will you be bored then? I hope not.”
Most of us don’t think in these terms. We are increasingly told to live in the present. The future is just too big for us to grasp. Enjoy the day.
Except I think we end up never really seeing the potential that we had as young people. I have several men and women in mind who were mentors to me when they were past retirement age, and I was still young and clueless. None of those people made it to a hundred. But if I make it there, their legacy of influence will.
I said to the students that one of the reasons we find life boring is that we measure it by our activities. I did this and that today. And tomorrow I’ll go there. After a few weeks or years, all we have to show for our lives is a full calendar and some interesting stories to tell.
I suggested to the students that they should order their life around the impact they could have. I asked, “How many of you are making a difference in someone’s life right now?”
A young man sitting in the front row raised his hand. I had him stand up and tell us what he is doing. He told us that he is mentoring a middle-school student. He said it with such joy and energy, you could tell he would live a long life of making a difference in people’s lives.
I then turned the discussion back to the length of their lives.
“Did you know that if you are seventeen right now, you would live another eighty-three years if you make it to 100? Do you know how many days are in eighty-three years? Over 30,000 days.
Now, I want you to consider making a decision today, that you will try every day for the rest of your life to do something that makes a difference that matters. As you reach 100 in 2100, you can look back on your life and all those 30,000 moments of impact will come flying back through your mind.
If you do this, how many of you think your life will be boring?”
Being a person of impact doesn’t take a massively big change in your life. It just starts with something small. Maybe you take someone to lunch, and you talk about their challenges in life. Or maybe you stay after work and help someone finish putting the conference packets together. All you do is start. Start small and do something every day.
As I stood there in the high school library, looking at the bright future of the world, I wondered if I had made a difference to them. I decided to push my idea about living a life of impact to a ridiculous level.
“I am assuming that since all of you are business students, that you understand how to organize things. I want you to think about organizing your life around the impact that you can create.
Now if you have 30,000 days ahead of you, and the potential for 30,000 moments of impact, why don’t you organize your life and work so that you can create a moment of impact every hour of every day for the rest of your life? After all, you will be doing something every hour for the rest of your life. Why not make each hour an hour for impact? We are now talking about you having 720,000 moments of impact in your life. Imagine the difference your life will have made by simply deciding today that you will live a life of impact.”
To live this way begins with a change in our self-perception. Most of us have not been raised to think this way. Rather, we have been taught the opposite. Don’t extend yourself. Be conservative. Don’t risk. Avoid disappointment. Play by the rules. Don’t stand out. Just fit in.
This well-meaning advice comes from our elders who don’t want us to experience the hardship and disappointment that many of them faced.
I’ve learned to do the opposite. To constantly try new things.
Failing is not trying. Even when I decided to start my life over, I never thought about failing. I just thought about getting up every day and trying.
This is why I believe that we should start small and work our way up to big.
I knew that I had the attention of the students and the faculty that were in the room. So, I took it up a notch.
“Since this is a business high school, I am assuming that you are learning about how to scale a business. Correct?”
No response.
I looked over at one of the professors and smiled.
“Okay. Let me suggest that you learn how to scale a business. I want you to learn this so you can learn how to scale your impact.
What I mean is that I want you intentionally to organize every facet of your life so that you create a moment of impact…
every minute of every hour of every day, for the rest of your life.
Someone do the math. How many moments of impact are we talking about?”
Silence.
“We’re talking about forty-five million moments of impact.”
Now I know this is a ridiculous proposition to place before these students. But it is only ridiculous because we have been told that it is.
“How many students are here at your school?”
Several students speak up. “One thousand.”
“Okay. Now I want you to imagine that each of you during your lifetime in some way touch the lives of forty-five million people. What if all one thousand of you had this kind of life? It would mean this one school in Vienna, Austria, would have changed course of human history.”
In the absurdity of these large numbers is a truth that I want you to reflect upon. No one knows what is possible in the future. No one. You don’t. I don’t. All we have is the opportunity today to make a difference that matters. Then we’ll have the same opportunity tomorrow. And the day after.
Leading a life of impact doesn’t start big, but small.
When I started my life over, my only goal was to write a book. I started one. Not this one. My editor told me that it wasn’t very good. She said, “Do something with your leadership model, the Circle of Impact.” So, I began. Day one. Day two. Until today.
At some point in this process, I began to think big. I started small, but then I went big.
My aim was to inspire and equip people to take personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters in their local communities.
My first big thought was to move one percent of the population of the United States to take leadership initiative. I had that vision three years ago. One percent was about three million people. Then a friend said, “Why do you limit yourself?” That’s funny. Three million people, a limited number.
She challenged me to look at the whole world. Everyone everywhere needs to be encouraged to become a Circle of Impact Leader.
Okay. One percent of the world’s population.
That is around seventy-three million people. Wow! Now we are talking about some big numbers.
Then I heard another friend speak about how he had 10Xed his company. He spoke about growing our business by ten times.
As he spoke, I thought, “Okay. What’s ten percent of the world’s population…? Wow! 730 million people.”
Now that is a truly ridiculous number. Until it is not.
My challenge to you is to do something today that you did not plan to do that makes a difference in somebody’s life. Start to become a Circle of Impact Leader today.
Start small.
Act locally.
Be patient.
Find the joy in doing things that create impact.
Keep a record of what you are doing.
Create a story.
Your story. It is the story that you tell yourself about why the personal initiative you take matters. Once you start, and you begin to pick up momentum, then begin to dream big about what is possible if you organize and scale your impact.
One last thing to remember: Circle of Impact Leadership is both personal and social. You take initiative, and if you need help, you can find me at my website, edbrenegar.com.
Scaling Impact
I am posting this on July 12, 2023. If you were to follow the logic of impact that I describe above this is what it would be like.
27,932 days of Impact
670,368 hours of Impact
40,222,080 minutes of Impact
2,413,324,800 seconds of Impact
Can you see how your life changes through the opportunities that come from optimizing your time?
Now, look at those numbers through the billions of people who live here now. If we had 1% of eight billion people to live the kind of life of impact captured in those numbers, then our world will be very different.
So, let’s start.
Two things must occur for a vision of impact suggested by those numbers to be realized.
Your perception of your value and potential must change. You must see yourself first and foremost as “a person of impact.”
You must change the way everything in our world is organized. We are not a society that is organized for this kind of impact. Quite the opposite.
We are organized for efficiency and risk aversion. Persons of impact and their organizations are organized for effectiveness and change that makes a difference that matters.
If you want to live a life of impact, just start. Figure it out step by step. Slowly. Patiently. Intelligently. Collectively.
What an outstanding perspective.
Thanks Dave.