Don't underestimate your impact
2023-10-13
In today's hyper competitive world with countless politicians, CEOs and famous billionaires everywhere, it is easy to think that you and your work doesn't matter, just because your decisions don't influence a whole nation, company or huge following. But nothing could be farther from the truth, so let's investigate some often overlooked aspects and fix your self-perception along the way...
I would like to start this one with a small metaphor. Imagine an ordinary butterfly living its everyday life, pursuing on his way to a beautiful meadow and happily flapping his wings. Now one of the countless beats of its wings causes an ever so slight perturbation of the air around it, this turns into a small wind gust over next couple of hours, becomes bigger and bigger within the following days and ultimately leads to a storm or tornado in a distant area of the world. This is known as the butterfly effect and was actually first used in meteorology to help people understand the impact of tiny changes in complex systems, but applies to human interactions and ultimately societies just as well, since these are just a different kind of really complex and hard to understand systems.
What I want to say with this is that you should never underestimate the impact of even tiny events and especially their indirect influences by starting a chain of reactions, which would have never occured otherwise. Everytime you share knowledge with a friend, you potentially change the world. Everytime you inform a co-worker about a mistake, you potentially help the next Albert Einstein to make his breakthrough. And everytime you help a stranger, you might save thousands of lifes. Sure, this isn't super likely and you certainly shouldn't think of yourself as a super hero, because you went shopping today, but you should also keep in mind that you don't need a huge following or important position to change something meaningful. Take a single influential statement of one of your teachers for example (I know you will have to choose between countless of them just like everyone of us) and try to reflect on the immense impact it had throughout your life.
Even if you don't care about religion and don't believe in a godlike entity like me, karma is for all intents and purposes real . Continue to help others and you won't just make the world a better place, but also strengthen your social network and form a bond with people, who will remember your help and come back to you with offers from their side. We tend to think of us humans as these very self-centred, calculating and sometimes evil creatures, while nearly all of us are fundamentally good in reality and want all the best for their surrounding. So keep your faith up and try to get through the hard times, even when they seem ever so dark and hopeless, because your effort will pay back at some time.
This is especially important, since we also tend to be affected by the broken windows effect , when it comes to fulfilling our goals and dreams. We start of strong, but at some point we inevitably fail to go to the gym, eat healthy or work on our million-dollar app idea once and then start to become lazy. If I already skipped today, it won't matter to skip another day, right? Repeat this situation for a week or so and rather earlier than later you'll find youself in a state of listlessness, which most often leads to giving up your goals entirely. However, this doesn't have to be the case, just acknowledge that nobody is perfect and try to get back on track as soon as possible. Goal tracking and/or a responsibility partner can really help with keeping your focus, as they show you your already achieved progress and can remind you of the things that motivated you in the first place - so give them a try.
All in all, I want you to understand that even though you might not succeed at everything you try or get into a position that is regarded as super important you still have an impact and it's worth trying over and over again. Mastering a skill or creating a successful product is always the result of countless, mostly unsuccessful attempts, the mental strength to continue and a fair bit of luck to be in the right place at the right time...