In my coaching practice I sometimes get this question from clients: Have I made a difference in the world? When you’re feeling really good, you’re probably pretty sure you have made a difference for at least a few people. When you’re feeling low, it’s easy to doubt the positive impact you have made in the world.
So here’s a little process for you. Get out a piece of paper and write out a list of each person in your lifetime that you know you have touched in some positive way, even in what you consider to be a small way. When you think you have run out of names, start searching your mind by categories (go job by job, city by city, school, church, etc.). I bet you end up with a much bigger list than you imagined. Now count the names on the list and write that number at the bottom.
Next, close your eyes and picture a stone being tossed into a clear pond—see the ripples go out and out and out. It’s the same with the number of people you have touched. Open your eyes and add 10 zeros to the number you wrote down. When you make a difference to one, you make a difference to thousands you will never directly know about.
And when you add to that the groups you send up a prayer for (all the starving children in Africa) or all the situations where you send compassionate thoughts (people you see on the news experiencing some natural disaster), then the number you have made a difference for grows even larger.
You are special, valuable and precious, and you have a light that shines like no one else on the planet. Who can you make a difference to today?


