Just how big is your world?

You know what? You get to decide. I’m serious. I don’t know when I discovered this, but when I did, it changed how I felt about my life and my life’s work.

Here’s a quote from my first book, Whoops, I Forgot to Achieve My Potential. I could find another way to say it, but that would be more work and I wouldn’t get to put in a shameless mention of my book, right?

How big is your world? Most of us want to make a difference. Maybe we’ve been told that we were given great gifts and talents and we have an obligation to do something really big with them. Maybe we want to “save the world,” but when we find out how hard that is or how much we have to sacrifice to do it, we suddenly feel very small and question our worth. We might even we feel guilty for not living up to our intellectual potential – or our athletic or artistic or other specific gifts. The reality is that you are one person with one life. One of the most liberating choices we can make is to decide how big our world is. We can set the boundaries on our world, and unleash the full force of all of our gifts and talents on that world. And we can rest assured, knowing that there are other worlds in our universe – and other talented people going about the business of saving them.

I do have something I want to add to it, though. There’s a bit of a dual-edged sword thing going on here (apologies for the weapon imagery, but two-sided butter knife doesn’t quite convey the meaning).  Maybe two-sided coin… anyway. The point is that you get to decide how big your world is, yes, so you don’t have to be paralyzed by the enormity of the earth and just how much work it takes to make an impact. But once you’ve decided on your right-sized world, you then have an obligation to get to work making an impact. The difference is that you are just right for your Goldilocks-sized world, and vice versa. A perfect match.

It feels really, really good to know that you are making a difference. For real. For good.

And remember, in all things – progress, not perfection!