Leave the World a Better Place…stop thinking so big!
It is a grand sentiment to say that we should leave the world a better place than the one we came into. Personally, I believe thinking like that is a waste of time and makes no difference in the world, in fact it leads to apathy…
Grand visions are like big goals. There is nothing wrong with them but the issue is that they are too big for us to get motivated about.
I’ve read so many times that you must have a big goal to make big change. I disagree. Whilst there is nothing wrong with a big goal, unless you break it down into small achievable steps, you will never have any sense of achievement, because your grand goal or vision is always out of reach.
When you have a big goal and don’t break it down into small achievable steps you lose motivation and you get apathetic towards the goal. Without small steps you get side-tracked by all the things that are outside your control until you eventually say the goal was just a pipe-dream, so why bother even trying anymore.
But you can achieve big if you change your focus on two key elements –
1. What you focus on –
Stop focusing on the goal of making the world a better place. Start focusing on you, and just being a better person than the one you were yesterday.
2. The size of the change -
Don’t focus on being a better person this year, or longer. Focus on being a better person this hour than you were last hour.
Every day has ups and downs, sometimes we are better and sometimes we aren’t, but at the end of each day can you balance up everything you did and thought, and can you say on balance that you are just slightly better than the day before?
…and by simply trying to be a better person today than you were yesterday, you will one day ultimately leave the world a better place than the one you entered.
