Making an awesome, powerful, deep, long lasting positive impact on people does not happen by accident. We have to be trying on purpose to make that kind of impact. Not only does it require effort, it requires another necessary ingredient: focus.
When I tell people about what we do in Simply Great Lives, I often get a certain response. They tell me about the various charitable activities they are involved in. There’s often a good amount of variety. But there is very seldom a clear focus.
Ironically, it’s actually more difficult on a person to lack focus then it is to have clarity. Without a clear focus, the person is drawn to many different opportunities. It becomes difficult to say “no” because everything is an option. It can be quite overwhelming. Having focus, on the other hand, rules out a lot of things and makes it more obvious which opportunities are the right ones.
Even getting focus requires effort, though. Getting clear on what we want our life’s impact to be is seldom just revealed. As John “Author, Speaker, Awesome” Acuff described in an interview with Simply Great Lives, it’s not likely to be revealed to us in a unicorn moment with rainbows. Instead, we need to make a concerted effort to discern what’s the right impact for us.
We describe this kind of focus as the intersection between:
- Our passions
- Our strengths, and
- What makes a meaningful impact in the lives of other people
We provide some useful exercises in step five of our book, “Splash! Increase Your Life’s Impact.” We are also introducing a weekend seminar that gives participants clarity on what they want their life’s impact to be. (Tentative dates for this seminar our September 18-19–stay tuned for more information.) We are very excited because we know people are going to be stoked when they have a clear focus on what they want their life’s impact to be.
Whatever route you choose for getting focus on your desired impact, we encourage you to go for it. A flash light shines an unfocused light over a large area. A laser, on the other hand, focuses it’s light to such a degree that it can cut through steel. How focused is your light?
