Making a Difference, or Making a Point?

This is a post I've been mulling over for a few days. It's been really difficult to articulate because on the one hand it feels very self righteous, but on the other, I really feel it needs to be said! I guess the judge of how it comes across is the person reading it – i.e. YOU!

We've all got unique gifts and skills. Whether that's cutting through a complicated process to find a simple solution; being a great listener; an inspiring role model in business; identifying opportunities which others don't see; being an amazing administrator, the ability to lead a group of very different people and personalities to success……

What you can do, someone else may struggle to achieve and vice versa. And that's how the world goes round and that's how we contribute to the world and how we gain in return.

At the last count, I'm completely useless at 4,376,897,982,678 things and have a gift in about 3! (And that's fine – really).

The stuff I am good at I use to help others and yes, that's what my business is essentially based on. But it's also a personal drive, too. I love the feeling of helping people move from being stuck to moving forwards. Do I benefit financially? Yes, a lot of the time. But I also benefit from seeing people revitalised, re-energised, fired up and ready to tackle life with a whole new perspective. For me, that's priceless. I love, love, LOVE it. And of course, often I get thanks and praise from people publicly who I've helped, because they're grateful. Which is lovely!

In a nutshell, I thrive on adding value, educating, inspiring and making a difference in the lives of others. It's my soul food :) And yes – let's tell it how it is – it's also great to be paid for that, too!

However, recently I've seen others in similar privileged positions to me who seem to have the priority of ensuring their own personal glory and status is recognised. They have a need to be seen as THE one who made a difference, or provided a breakthrough, or increased the success of someone else. They want to make the point that without their help or intervention, Person A would never be where they are now. All hail the guru for providing the breakthrough experience!

It's fab receiving feedback publicly for the work I've done. And of course I use it to demonstrate to others what I can do. I guess I'd just like to see a little more humility and little less self interest from some of the hotshots out there. If we all focus on making a difference, rather than making a point about our talents, that in itself is a great point we're all making, right? 

Choice and Circumstance

Spring is the time for new life, for sowing seeds and for spring cleaning. Whereas we tend to turn our attention to things such as our homes, our files, our diaries, our gardens, it is just as important to sow fresh seeds in our life and minds. Get the dust out, the cobwebs, the negative self talk – a spring clean of our minds! In doing so, we approach this spring – and indeed the rest of the year – with a real sense of hope and a real sense of desire and a real sense of ‘this is going to be a positive, productive and fruitful time.’ I really hope that you’re up for that. I certainly am :)

What triggered this post was a quote I recently came across from George Bernard Shaw: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them."

Wow. Now that could have been said by any motivational speaker/coach today, but this came from a book written by George Bernard Shaw in the nineteenth century. I love that the wisdom of it still rings true today. 

In order to get the best out of ourselves – and inspire others to do the same – we need to look at where we're at and how we're responding to where that is, irrespective of the circumstances around us. Are we applying ourselves in the best possible way? Or resigning ourselves to the "fact" we cannot change the circumstances we're in?  In order to maximise our potential in any situation, good or bad, we must look at how to apply ourselves in the best possible way so we became the success story in the situation.

Although we can all find ourselves in situations we wouldn't necessarily choose, the choice we do have is in how we respond to those situations.

How are you responding?