A Powerful and Easy Way to Make an Impact
Even when You’re Unsure of What Unique Gift You Have to Offer to the World
How do you make an impact on the world?
How do you leave your legacy?
We often have these grandiose ideas about what it means to have an impact. And we have these big personalities that we think of when we think of people making an impact: Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mahatma Gandhi, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama…
At this time, I invite you to close your eyes and notice what comes up for you when you think of yourself as a person making an impact in this world.
Did your heart fill with joy?
Or did you scrunch up your eyes and felt your shoulders slump because you couldn’t see yourself having an impact on the world?
Whether your heart filled with joy or shoulders slumped with doubts, I’m here you tell you that you can make an impact. Big impact. You just have to start small. Here’s a powerful and easy way to start making an impact.
Share the stories and messages of people that touch you — with courage.
I added the word courage at the end of the sentence above because hitting the share button is not personal enough, not vulnerable enough, and therefore is not impactful enough!
Here are a few suggestions to get your juices flowing!
Explain why you felt the need to share that story
Your audience, people who know and follow you on social media will be inclined to read your perspective and will be more likely to read the other person’s story because they resonated with your reason for sharing it. Remember, you have an influence on your audience before the story you share can have an influence on them.
Share your own personal story
Ready to be even more vulnerable? Share your own story and relate it to the story of the person you are sharing. Your story is personal and personal is powerful and therefore impactful.
Ask a question
Encourage your audience to watch the story you shared and ask them to answer a question. Asking a question is an invitation for your audience to interact with the story you shared in more ways than one. This encourages engagement and therefore increases the impact.
At this point, you may be thinking, how am I making an impact?
Well, by sharing the work that inspired you, you are helping to further the impact of that person’s work. You may very well have impacted the lives of many who would have otherwise never learned of this had it not been for your courage to share.
And, sharing the work of others who have impacted you is contagious in more ways than one. By sharing with courage, you are laying a foundation for yourself. You are creating a fertile space for your own creativity to be showcased. As you share more, you will start seeing connections and also new possibilities and opportunities. When you decide to act on one or more of those possibilities and opportunities, you will have started a path of impact of your own.
Whose work are your sharing with courage today? Let me know in the comments below!
Author Bio:
Sudiksha Joshi, Ph.D., learning advocate, and founder of WeArealwaysLearning.com, is on a mission to help youth and the young at heart empower themselves so that they can forge their way forward, break with traditional paradigms of success, and change the world. She has been featured in Forbes, Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and LinkedIn. Download her Get Unstuck Worksheet for free here: http://bit.ly/Get_Unstuck_Worksheet
