If you wanted to grow some vegetables, you’d plant a garden. Let’s assume it’s a traditional garden with real soil–not a fancy hydroponic thingy. You’d prep the soil and plan the seeds. Maybe you even set up a drip system so you didn’t need to water it manually. Could you stop there and assume you’d get vegetables?
What if you never checked back? You’d never really know if the vegetables grew or not. Who knows? Maybe a dog dug up the garden or weeds choked out the plants. Or maybe the garden produced some amazing squash and carrots. But if you didn’t check back, you’d never really know what became of that garden. It’d be a great, big mystery.
It’s the same way with making a difference in people’s lives. We can do a good deed, but if we don’t check back, we’ll never know if we created long-lasting change. Assuming that the things we do is creating the desired impact is, well, presumptuous.
When we really care about the people we serve, we will want to know that we changed their lives for the better, in a clear and distinct way.
At the root of this concern for creating deliberate results in people’s lives is a genuine concern for how we are impacting other people. So we should be mindful of how we are impacting people all the time, whether it’s in our home, on the road or when we are seeking to contribute to the betterment of other people. It’s all based in an awareness of how we affect other people.
If you are already doing something to make a difference, are you checking in with those individuals to make sure you’re creating the desired effect? Are you getting the results you want? Maybe if you assess it, you’ll be like me and John and need to continue to make adjustments to get more of the desired results. It’s an ongoing process. But without feedback from the people you’re seeking to impact, you won’t know what you’re doing right and what you need to tweak.
So today I encourage you to take stock of your garden of impact. Let your love for those people be demonstrated in a desire to check in with them to make sure you really are making a difference.
If you are ready to evaluate the impact you are having and to explore how amazing it can be, join us for Life Impact Academy 101: Shift. Next dates are June 20 online and July 9 in Roseville. Click here for more information and to register. May your garden of impact truly flourish!
