Good Life Project - You Don’t Have to Go Big to Make a Big Difference.

Episode Date: September 29, 2016

There’s this idea out in the world that if you want to make a real difference, to make meaning, you have to go big. Be massively public. Take the giant risk. Build something vast and complex. You’ve got to be the wave that crashes on the shore. That is, indeed, one approach to leaving your […]The post You Don’t Have to Go Big to Make a Big Difference. appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, it's Jonathan. Now, you may have noticed that we actually don't really do much advertising or sponsorship, at least for the time being on the show. And you may be wondering, how are these guys producing at this level and haven't been for years without doing that. And it's by doing other things that help us actually fund these conversations, this podcast. One of those things, I also happen to be an author. And I've got a new book out now called How to Live a Good Life. So full stories, surprising science and practical wisdom. I've been working on it for years now. And I'm so excited to be able to distill so much of the wisdom that's come from this project into a simple, beautiful, guided book. And I would so appreciate your help in helping to share the word. If you feel interested in pre-ordering a copy, you can go and do that right now. If you want to learn more about it and even download the first chapter, you can go and read it for absolutely nothing right now. You don't even need to enter an email address. And we have really cool ambassador program you may want to learn about. It's a great way to be able to take a look at a book that I think will really make a difference in your life, I really hope,

and also show your support for the work that we're doing here at Good Life Project. You can learn more now at goodlifeproject.com slash book, or just go ahead and click the link in the show notes now. Hey there, it's Jonathan from Good Life Project, here with A Good Life Project Riff, as I generally do every week. But this week is going to be a little bit different. I'm actually not sharing my story. I want to share a story that was actually shared with me. And the reason will, I hopefully, become apparent pretty quickly. It's about an idea. It's about a concept that I call being the ripple and not the wave. We've got this idea that we all need to go big and we need to make this huge impact in the world. And we have to really think about

creating a giant legacy. And the only way to do that is to take big risks, is to be super front and center. And increasingly, I don't know whether it's age, I don't know whether it's my sort of more introverted orientation, what I've started to realize and see great examples of is that we can sometimes actually be the drop in the pond, the thing that creates a ripple, that then starts to move out in concentric circles and have equally large, if not larger, impact as it amplifies and moves out into the world. In our job, we weren't the person who created the big entity, the big wave, the big crashing idea, took the big risk and was the big public person. We just spent a lot of time thinking about how to create something beautiful, something powerful, put the first drop in the pond.

And when we do that, sometimes we never know how it's going to land or who it's going to ripple out to. And I share a story about that in the book, which is really beautiful. And again, that's not my story either. But there was another, something that just happened more recently that really is such a beautiful example of this and how somebody can do something that makes a difference in ways you never saw coming. So we're just coming off of Camp GLP, our annual summer camp for adults. And I guess we're about a month past it at this point. If you're listening to this later, well, it'll be a little beyond that, but the story is just as relevant. About a week after camp ended, I saw in the private group,

the online group where the campers had this beautiful community, that one of our campers, Rick Charlie, shared a story about his travel home. And what he shared was that he was leaving the airport and he got on his plane and they were flying and they're in midair when something comes over to loudspeaker and the captain's like, or the flight attendant said, you know, we have a medical emergency. Are there any medical personnel? Is there any doctors on the plane? The woman who was sitting next to him got up, went to the rear of the plane, spent some time there, about a half an hour or so, came back and sat down. And, you know, Rick said to her, so how are you doing? And she said, I'm fine, I'm fine. And she said that the passenger, it seemed, was probably having a panic attack and would be fine.

And shortly after, the captain got on as well and said, you know, we need to divert and land and let the passenger off so that they can be taken care of. So they did that. They landed and they let the passenger off. And as they were getting back on the plane and Rick sat down and this woman sat down next to him, he noticed that she seemed really stressed, really agitated, and she was anxious. And his first thought was, let me give her something to read. And he realized he had actually packed his book in his bag that was stowed away. And he saw her kind of rifling through anything that she could find in the back just to read something. He said she was actually like literally sitting there reading the safety cards. And he realized that the only thing that he had that he could give

her was something that he got at camp. And what we did at camp this year was we had actually the first chapter of my book printed out and bound in these pretty little things. And we gave them to everybody there so they could get kind of a sneak preview of what was going to be in it. So he's like, you know what, this is the only thing that I have to read, but I think it's going to be more interesting than the safety card. So he pulled it out and he said, do you want to read this? And she grabbed it from him. And she said, sure. And she started to read it. And as he tells the story, you know, he saw her start to relax. He saw a small tear start to appear on her face, and she leaned into it more,

and she started reading more. And he kind of looked over and saw he knew the exact pages she was looking at, and so he kind of knew what she was processing. She looked over to him and she said, what is this? And he told her what it was. It was actually the introduction to this book. And she said, can I keep it? Can I take it with me? And he said, sure. And they then proceeded to have this really beautiful conversation. He learned that she was actually a student, 27 years old, being trained in the medical profession. And she was having a lot of questions about it and feeling massively stressed and anxious and didn't see a way out. And this little free chapter was the thing that as she sat there, really ramped up and amped up and anxious and stressed, was something that she then was able

to lean on to just kind of crack her open a little bit and let her breathe a little bit more freely and let some of the anxiety dissipate and start to see just the smallest window possibility. And that also opened her up to him where they then had this beautiful conversation. And he helped her just sort of talk through a lot of things. And Rick shared that story with me and actually with everybody in the camp group afterwards. And I thought it was a great example because I didn't write the book and we with everybody in the camp group afterwards. And I thought it was a great example because I didn't write the book and we didn't give the chapters out because I knew that all the people that would have them would then turn around and find somebody who they would just

happen to find at the exact right moment where they needed to hear the message and give it to them and it would make a big difference. I wrote it because it was the stuff that I was working on. It was a thing I could not do. And I thought there were some really good ideas and I wanted something that would be actionable. And this was something I did privately. I did it in solitude. And then the hope and prayer when you do something like that is that you turn around and you put it out into the world and it matters. And that it's the drop in the pond that then becomes the ripple. We didn't launch a giant company around it. We didn't create massive product around it. I just created this one

thing, the drop in the pond. And then we created the first ripple, the first wave by just printing out the first chapter and giving it to people we cared about who knew, really shared a certain value set and beliefs and came from a place of compassion and generosity. And let them sort of start to take that ripple out to the next wave and the next wave. And it landed in this one person's lap. And it's a beautiful example. And I think it also gives you permission to know that you can do your work in the world. You can create beauty. You can make a difference and at the same time, share your voice and do it in a way that doesn't mean that you have to be the big, public, loud, risky person out there. You don't have to build this big, complex thing.

You can stay in a place of simplicity. You can stay in an artisanal mode. You can be the craft person. You can be the deep thinker and just create something that matters. Create the idea. Tell it in a way that's really compelling, that makes a difference, and let that be the drop in the water that creates that first ripple. And then let that ripple expand out. Let it amplify. let people interact with it, and let them become the ones who then turn around and expand the ripple beyond it. And there's an amazing opportunity to make meaning in that way, without having to add complexity, without having to go huge, without having to take the big risks and be a big public forward-facing, you can still do work that matters. You can still make a big, meaningful difference. And you can do it in a way that honors who you are and how you need to be in

the world. So I wanted to share that story with you. It's really Rick's story. It's the intersection of my maker side, my desire to make something that mattered, and then what happened when we just put that drop in the pond and the first ripple came in the form of Rick, who then shared it with someone else who had made a difference too. We can all do that. So think about that. Think about how you might be able to actually create the ripple that other people pick up and run with and create expanding waves of impact. I hope that's interesting. I hope it matters. I hope it plants a seed of possibility for you. And as always,

thank you, thank you, thank you for spending a little bit of time with me. So appreciated. Love having you in my community. And until next week, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.