Successful Blog

How To Change the World: Revisiting The Question 10 Years Later

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This post is an update of:  Change the World: Help Others Pursue the Passion

 

By Brett Farmiloe

 

You ever wonder what you were thinking ten years ago?

Well, the Internet is a wonderful place that documents all types of things, including random blog posts like the one I contributed to this blog 11 years ago.

 

Hey, Brett, How Can We Change the World?

That was the question that inspired this blog post from my 22 year old self. I think it’s a great question to revisit every so often.

So, let’s revisit it. How can we change the world?

Ten years ago, I purchased an RV to travel around the country and interview people about their career paths. Today, I own and operate a digital marketing company that is experiencing Inc. 5000 types of growth. Along the way, my perspective on how to make an impact has evolved.

Let’s take a section of the blog from my 22-year old self.

My idea of changing the world is tapping into a powerful, yet largely ignored natural resource — passion — the passion of people who do what they love.

Yet the model we’re living is not designed to produce passion. It leads us down well-traveled career paths of 8 to 6 jobs that promise bonuses, promotions, and job stability. The model does not place importance on an individual’s love has for the work, but on the quantifiable measurements an individual brings.

I’m not buying that model.

Yikes! Strong words, young Brett.

But, older, more realistic 33-year old Brett has this to add: Money matters. When you have kids, a stay at home pregnant wife, and ba-ba-bills – you need something more stable to stand on…income.

Which brings us back to the question: what’s the way to change the world?  

Let me weigh in. To truly change the world, I believe you need to create something that produces a net positive. For me personally, it’s a profitable business with a work environment conducive to bringing out the best in people. For others, creating something can range from writing a book to raising a beautiful family to generating positive results within a job function.

Yes, I said it – you can change the world within a job. As long as you are a “net positive” for your employer, and your employer effectively applies your contributions to maximize the collective efforts of it’s workforce.

The key is getting clear on the definition of a “net positive.” In other words, the “change” in “change the world.”

 

Net Positive Formula:

Change \ Consumption = (Greater than 1 = You’re changing the world; Less than 1 = you’re temporarily draining the world)

That definition for me has shifted to two parts: “how many people do we employ who are actively engaged with their work” and “what is the impact our efforts have for our clients.” Starting a business multiplies the net positives because of the internal (number of people employed) and external measurements (impact of our work) of the change we’re looking to make. That to me, is changing the world.

For others in a job, a definition can be “do I produce a benefit for my employer that exceeds my salary & associated expenses (benefits)?” For speech givers, ditch diggers, or any position – is the change greater than your consumption?

What does changing the world mean to you? What are you creating? What is the “net positive” you’re measuring to see if what you’re working on – and are passionate about – is making the intended impact?

I’d love to hear it in the comments. And hopefully, let’s revisit this question again before 2028.

 

Brett Farmiloe is the CEO of Markitors an an advisor to an organizational leadership degree program. He has owned 3 RV’s in his lifetime. The last one he traded on Craigslist in exchange for wood floors in his house in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Featured image: Photo by Eugene Quek on Unsplash

Why Work? Don’t Just Labor, Labor for Love

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Focusing on the Work Won’t Work

Change the World!

The biggest mistake I made in my working life was that I thought work was about working and life was about life. My view artificial in much the same way that school was about getting homework done so that I could get on with with life.

I would focus on the work and making it outstanding, a cut above. I suspect I thought I’d leave a legacy — that the work would be changed, different, and dare I say better, because I had been a part. I lost sight of, maybe I never truly saw, the people I relied upon. At best, I left a shallow, crumbling legacy — easy surpassed, and best forgotten, fueled by transactions more than relationships.

No one changes the world focusing on the work.

Why Work?

We can’t separate the work we do from our lives. It’s not a case of balance — we can’t separate out the time that we work from the time we’re alive. I won’t give up my right to breathe and be on the planet for my right to work. Work fills my need to be fully safe and human, but I is not my life.

Why work? Maslow described how our human needs are met by work. Despite limitations of the hierarchy it makes a nice framework for building a world-changing team..

  1. Work for life. We work because we have needs. We expend energy to sustain life with food, clothing, shelter, and sex, which will ensure the existence of the species.
  2. Work for security and safety. We do things to alleviate our fear of loss from real and imagined dangers.
  3. Work for social interaction. We find our place in society by building things with others. by feeling we fit as part of our group.
  4. Work for a sense of personal value – respect for ourselves and respect from others. We build out our confidence, competence, self esteem, and sense of status from the recognition, reputation, and appreciation of others as well.
  5. Work to reach our potential. In other words, we expend energy to accomplish things so that we can use what we’ve got, become what we could be, change the world for the better.

Why work? If we look at it right, work — not just earnings — but the act of work can offer us a better life.

Don’t Just Labor, Labor for Love

We all know that we work for life, security and safety, social interaction and respect. Leaders realize the potential we could reach if we channel that energy in the same positive direction, if we put labor into a labor of love to raise up the people who help us thrive.

By supporting those same human needs in all of the people who build our businesses — employees, vendors, managers, partners, customers, families, friends — we can make our work better our lives. The very act of our work can satisfy our human needs, our soulful yearning, and our deep and immediate need to offer a legacy to those who come behind.

All we have to do is be and allow it.
Be a person who lives life and who lets others live life too.
Be a person who knows security and who lets others be secure too.
Be a person who decides to belong and who lets others know they belong too.
Be a person who respects yourself and others and who lets others know that same round respect too.
Be a person who lives up to your potential and lets others see and live up their own.

In other words, don’t just labor, labor for love.
We can change the world, just like that.

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

What Remarkable Footprints Have You Already Left?

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A Minute Reflecting Can Change the World

Some mornings when I’m ready to be still and reflect, I’ll sit back, click over to my writing blog, and find something I’ve written before to see where I’ve been while I think about where I might be going next. This morning in seconds I landed on something called, “Remarkable Footprints.”

Whenever I’m in the midst of travel or meetings, it seems a nice way to explain how the world has supported me and how I rely on it to keep me going. Here it is.

Remarkable Footprints

I’d been watching the water since just about sun up. I’d been writing in my journal, thinking about life and stuff. A reoccurring theme kept playing in my head and on the page I was writing on. Like the waves on the ocean that theme kept repeating, repeating without regard to the sky, the sand, or my staring and wondering.

My life keeps circling round to lessons I’ve met before. The same mishaps keep happening. The same rugs keep getting pulled. Two years now had been as if all of the losing and learning had been wrapped and served up to me at once. This time it had come close to changing me. The concrete way down there was all that had kept the wolves from coming in.

I put my pencil down to watch the water. Watching was all I had been good at doing for quite a while there. I mentally let the waves wash away worries, clean off the weight of fears that I’d fought my through. I saw myself lean back on the surface to let my cares float to the sky to dissolve. The bubbles in the wavy foam would have done the same if they could have done what they wanted to. All things in nature know what they must do. People could learn something from that natural way of thinking.

People had told me I was too much or too little, too tall or too filled with feeling. They had made it clear that I couldn’t do what I do so well. I came close to actually believing them. What made me want to listen? What stopped me in the end from giving in, from giving up?

Who knows how long before I packed up my journal to walk back to life again. With a new resolve I set off. It was time to say, You’re wrong. I can. I will. Stand back, and watch me.

When I turned for a last look, I saw people caught in a conversation. They were gathered together at the path I had taken. Who could explain what they saw before them?

They were staring at remarkable footprints in the sand.


credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/500089

What Remarkable Footprints Have You Already Left?

Every step we take leaves a footprint.
We move the molecules of life, earth, air. People see where we got and are moved by our travels.
Others follow because we’ve made the way safer, easier, more meaningful because we’ve been there.

Have you thought about the remarkable footprints you’ve already left for others to follow?
Think about them again.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there back to your blog.

How to Fix a Bad First Impression in Business and in Life

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CHANGE THE WORLD

A Bad First Impression Isn’t Good

Change the World!

They say we don’t get a second chance at a first impression. I don’t know if I agree with that. I’ve sure had some wonderful relationships that started on the edge. Some even started completely wrong. .

I know the sinking anxious feeling, that realization that I behaved badly on first meeting someone. It could even be that I know that feeling better than most. Over the years, I’ve devised many forms of the bad first impression.

  • I’ve been overwhelmingly imposing by talking too much.
  • I’ve been under-whelmingly boring because I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
  • I’ve been distracted, bored, aggressive, disinterested, and even argumentative, like a debater.
  • I’ve assumed things about the person I just met.
  • I’ve tried to keep someone engaged when they clearly had to leave.

    • How to Fix a Bad First Impression

    In business, first impressions gone wrong can be costly. They represent jobs not won. Relationships that don’t make into our networks. People who tell their friends that we may not be a good fit with the projects their friends have going on.

    But likewise, in business, some the strongest relationships I’ve enjoyed have started with a problem incident – a bad conversation at a high-level meet and greet, an important first project not finished on time, a speaking gig where the presenter totally misread the audience but kept going on.

    I’ve been on both sides of a bad impression and neither side feels great. What I’ve found is if I focus on the person and the relationship it’s much easier to get to comfortable and common ground where we can start again. If I value that new relationship I need to take my mind off myself and see the other person — no matter which of us made the bad first impression.

    People experience how we make them feel. They might remember what we say, but they’ll never forget how we made them feel. So the best way to a wonderful new experience is to make the person feel how much you value who they are, what they say, how they think.

    Forget the event and focus on the person. Communicate that you care about fixing the situation because you value the relationship.

    It’s not hard to fix a bad first impression. Just care more about what you think about them than what they thought about you.

    We can change the world — just like that.
    –ME “Liz” Strauss

    If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

    Change the World!.

Are You Determined?

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A Determined Mouse

changetheworld8

Nan’s Grandparents lived just south of Atlanta in a town of 200 where everything and everyone was an antique. They had no television. When folks might crawl into the TV for entertainment, Gram and Gramps would sit on the back porch pitting cherries, snapping beans, or peeling potatoes for a meal. When the chores were done, they would talk to each other or read.

When Nan and i went to visit Gram and Gramps she told us about when the refrigerator broke. Nan’s Gram said she put some things out on the back porch to “keep.” She figured they might as well be in reach of where she need them, while they waited for the the “Fix-it” man to come the next day. The back porch was enclosed and shaded from the heat.

Gram said the next morning she made coffee and went out to the porch to enjoy her garden and some time to think. That’s when she noticed that “a visitor” had come in the night to find something to eat.

“Must have been a field mouse,” she said as she described a flattened bag of chocolate chips meant for some cookies shed planned to make. “That mouse had a goal and worried that bag to death until he got the very last chocolate chip. He was a determined critter. He didn’t let some bag win.” That’s what Gram said.

Are You Determined?

Whenever I feel anxious or notice my motivation slip, I think of that mouse. I put my goal where I can see it. I become determined — like that critter. I let my goal determine where I’m going, what it takes to be satisfied, where I’ll be ending up. Then, I get determined about my success — I “worry,” plow, and navigate over, under, and through whatever irritations life throws between me that vision I value.

Are you determined?
Determined, resolute, decided, resolved — the end is undisputed.
Being determined is the difference between sticking out and leaving things unfinished.
Being determined changes roadblocks and obstacles in to problems to solved.
With determination, we change habits, attitudes, and even what we think.
Imagine where you might get if you’re determined.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

How Does It Get Better than This?

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CHANGE THE WORLD

What’s in a Question?

Change the World!

You wake up and you find everything you had is gone.
Your computer is crashed. Your house has collapsed. Your beautiful puppy has run away with the local hound.

Everywhere you turn something else seems to be falling apart.
You try to make sense of it.

Your choice between two questions will affect whether you move forward or get stuck more than you might realize.

Will you think …

How do things get any worse?
or
How does it get any better than this?

Whether your world is falling apart or the universe falling into into sync with the life you want to live, things can always get better.

Moving toward the better is raises our positive brain chemistry. That fuels our minds and hearts, keeps us smiling, and keeps us investing in the world as a better place. With that outlook fueling us, we keep building dreams and we keep attracting positive people who want to help us. Without it, we start pushing the positive off.

Just the right question — How does it get any better than this? —
in times of stress or happiness is that powerful.

Try asking yourself that question every day for a month.
See what happens.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there back to your blog and write your own.