What happens when a positive impact is missing? Consider the following scenarios in your own life and I think the answer will become clear.
Who in your own life has had a deep and lasting positive impact on you? Think of one person. It may have been a teacher or a coach or a mentor of some kind. Maybe it was someone who believed in you or imparted a really valuable skill to you. Maybe it was someone who supported you through a really difficult time.
Now consider what your experience would have been like if you hadn’t had the benefit of that person’s positive impact on your life. Maybe the person was too busy with work or family or maybe the person just couldn’t see themselves as having something that important to share. How would it have been different for you? That’s what it looks like when someone doesn’t step up into their positive impact. The void is like a negative impact because there was a need that was left unmet.
As an example in my own life, Dave Ramsey has had a really positive impact on me and John. Because of Dave’s teachings, John and I had recently gotten out of debt and saved up some money for emergencies when John lost his job. Our experience of that time was a lot different because we weren’t in debt and had money to weather the storm. It would have been really different if we were in debt and broke. That would have been really bad. Thanks, Dave Ramsey, for having that positive impact on my life and sparing me that negative experience!
Now consider who has had a profoundly negative impact on your life. Identify one person who really impacted you. Maybe you grew up in a violent household or maybe there was some other form of abuse or abandonment. For many of us, the damage was done when we were just a child and we’ve had to deal with the pain for a long time.
What would it have been like if you didn’t experience that negative impact? How much pain and suffering would have been avoided? How much time and effort in healing could have been used for something else?
Maybe that negative impact could have been prevented if someone else had stepped up into their positive impact. Consider for example, what if in my uncle’s life there had been a man who was passionate about sexual integrity. Imagine that such a man stepped up and mentored my uncle, teaching him to keep all his sexual stuff in his marriage. Period. Using a teenage girl living in the same house (i.e. me) as an escape or a little fun would be completely unacceptable. Wow. It would have saved me so much pain and therapy and psychiatry and antidepressants etc. etc. But there was no such man who stepped up into his positive impact.
Can you see how a positive impact that is missing creates a negative impact?
So, what is the positive impact you could be having but haven’t stepped into yet? I’m sure there are people who only you would really impact in a deep, lasting and meaningfully positive way. Please don’t let your positive impact go missing because those people who need you will otherwise have a negative experience that you–only you– could change into a positive one.
