Fingerprints

Oprah Winfrey said, “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.”

I completely agree. However, it’s not always easy. We think life is going one direction, and it suddenly changes course. If the world would just let us be the nice people we really are and let us make our mark!

If we do 99 things right and one wrong, we tend to focus on the one we screwed up!

The truth is, you bring things to the world no one else does. When you walk into a room, the room is different because you are there.

I just finished the book, The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. It’s a book written for people like me who want to influence others in positive ways by writing and speaking. But I found their conclusion to have universal appeal.

Brogan and Smith wrote the following that I thought was worth sharing as you begin yet another week of your brief but significant life.

“The curtain opens, you have your moment in the limelight, and you say your lines. The audience applauds during your solo, there’s a love interest side story, and everything ends up happily ever after.

Unfortunately, almost nothing happens this way. This is life, not a movie. So there are no credits that roll after a crisp, simple ending.

In fact…your life is messy. Not everything fits in quite right. There are mistakes, missteps and mispronunciations.

Thankfully, as long as you’re doing at least something right, almost no one will remember them. Instead they will remember your home runs and big hits. They’ll remember the work that helped them achieve a breakthrough, reach many other people, or make a million dollars. Along the way your work will spread too…

But there is never a curtain call and rarely a standing ovation. Rather, when your work is done, the satisfaction lays in the act itself and the fact that you really made a difference.

You had an impact on the world. Those who know and look closely will see your fingerprints in the places you labored, and in the people you influenced.

They’ll remember you.”

Royalty-free image by Davide Guglielmo. Retrieved from http://www.freeimages.com/photo/227873