There was a time that I was coached to start writing a “success journal” for 30 days. The suggestion was that if I were to miss a day, I would start over at day one again.
My first attempt was really successful. I wrote for 27 straight days and I could tell writing the entries in my success journal were making an impact on me. It was helping me to feel more successful and more competent. Great suggestion from my life coach (yes…I have a life coach too because life coaches are frickin’ awesome).
All was going well until I read something somewhere that said something about seeking significance over success. Oh my goodness – that truly spoke to my spiritual activist heart.
So … on the 28th day, I started to write about being significant. Success is great. It’s great to reach your goals. But – what if real success meant that we can make a difference – that we can be significant. Think of how that can change you – how that can change our world.
Every day I now chose to do something that will be significant, even if it is just saying hello and smiling at the scary guy at the city council meeting. Did this change his life? Ha … probably not. But at least I felt good knowing that I was able to say to someone, who might feel alone in his troubles, that he is worth my time to say hello and share a smile with. That even though people may not agree with his view points in the meeting … there was someone there who took the time to say hi.
You know, maybe it wasn’t significant to him … but it was to me. It feels good to be and do good. Is being significant selfish? Damn right it is. And … you never know just when what you are giving is the going to be important to the person you are giving it to.
At one point in my professional career I was a bit down in the dumps and wondered if my work was good enough to step further up my career path in my field. Then, one day, a young woman who I worked with was proofing pages ready to be sent to our printer. She said, “I was looking at your photos and how they were placed on the page and I thought they were so amazing! When I looked at each person’s facial expression I felt like I knew what they were thinking or how they were feeling … it was just an overall beautiful layout and I thought, “I gotta tell Lori! Her photography is awesome and this particular collage was breathtaking!”
Her comment to me brought tears to my eyes. So many days I felt my work wasn’t good enough to move to the next level … especially with my photography. I’m so grateful to her. Thank you dear sweet girl…you gave me the motivation to keep moving forward.
How will you be significant today?
Love to all…xo
Lori Jayne Carlson 