How many times have you heard the phrase, “I was just trying to help.” Ironically, I think that might be the least helpful thing we can say.
But why do we feel like trying is so important?
Why does it feel like our efforts are validated by the effort itself?
If I spent a week digging a hole and shoveling the dirt into a pile with no intention to do anything of value with the dirt or the hole, would my efforts for that week have been successful?
I mean, I tried. I exerted a bunch of energy. I put forth a lot of effort.
But was any of it impactful?
Here’s a fundamental truth about human nature:
We’re okay with getting an A for effort and an F for impact.
“Trying” is an excuse for being afraid of doing what’s truly important.
I will try to quit drinking if I know I’m unwilling to stop alcoholism in its tracks.
I will try to help someone by giving them money if I’m unwilling to deal with their dysfunctional spending habits.
I will try to get along with everyone if I’m unwilling to be honest with them about their misbeliefs and behavior.
Striving for effort usually creates memories you can hold onto that make you feel good.
But striving for impact creates opportunities that bring freedom to people around you.
When your son catches the game-winning touchdown pass, it makes for a great memory because he tried hard.
But when he drops the game-winning touchdown pass, your compassion towards him makes for a great impact.
When the dysfunctional family gathers once a year for Thanksgiving dinner, it makes a memory because they were just trying to be normal.
But when you ruin Thanksgiving because you acknowledged pain and brokenness in an attempt to heal old wounds, it makes a great impact.
When you buy Christmas for a family living in poverty, it makes for a great memory.
But when you serve the homeless and impoverished and teach them employable skills, it makes for a great impact.
Great memories can be made along the way to making a great impact. But let’s not get confused about which is worth living for.
The generations that come after you are depending on your impact, not your effort.
Let’s say in any given decade of your life, you have a close relationship with approximately 25 people.
This includes friends, classmates, coworkers, or anyone else you spend a substantial amount of time around.
Now, for the sake of this exercise, let’s say that the majority of those 25 people are exchanged for another 25 people every 10 years.
Now, let’s say you live for 80 years, and 60 of those years are productive, impactful years.
With just some simple back of napkin math, we can see that the average person will have a significant influence on 150 people.
It’s no stretch to say that for every person you have influence with, you also have at least some influence on the people they interact with. In that way, your influence on them then has an exponential effect.
Let’s assume, then, that those 150 people will also have a significant impact on 150 people throughout their lifetime as well.
Conservatively speaking, of the 150 people you will influence throughout your life, you will also likely influence about half of their network indirectly.
So, throughout your life, let’s say you’ll have direct influence on 150 people and indirect influence on 11,250 people (150 people in your network times 75, which is half of each person’s 150-person network).
This is where it gets interesting.
If every one of your 150 people that you influence turn around and then have an influence on 75 people, and those 75 people turn around and have an influence on 75 more people, then the number of lives you have had a substantial influence on would be 843,750.
That’s in just three generations beyond yours.
Carry that out to the fourth generation and you’ve impacted 63,281,250 people. Carry that out to the fifth generation, and you’ve impacted 4.7 billion people.
Apple is easily one of the most influential brands in history. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is listed as one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world. And even at the apex of influence in the world, there are still only around 2 billion Apple customers in the world.
Within just a few generations, you can have a much more substantial and long-lasting impact on the world than even the most influential people and brands, and you can do it without slaving away at work.
If you are intentional about the relationships you build and the seeds you sow into other people, and you’re willing to wait for a return over time, then the impact you can have on the world is truly limitless.
What’s even more amazing is that influencing billions of people over the course of a few generations doesn’t take a substantial amount of effort. It’s actually a conservative goal.
To have a substantial influence on 150 people over the course of 60 years of your adult life, you would only need to impact 2 to 3 people each year.
Said another way, if you spent every few years cultivating meaningful relationships with 5 to 10 people, you would be well on your way to having an exponential impact on countless lives.
I get that the numbers aren’t sexy. It doesn’t scratch the itch of significance that we all have.
For some reason, telling you that you could impact millions of lives in a positive way if you diligently cultivated 20 to 30 relationships every decade doesn’t make you feel as important or as valuable as the idea of building something big and flashy that captures the attention of 1 million people in a single generation.
What’s truly sad is if you spend your time trying to impact 1 million people in one generation, the longevity of that impact is inevitably low.
Having a short term impact on 1 million people in one generation pales in comparison to the long-term positive influence you can have on the world by having a deep impact on only a handful of people in your lifetime.
We’ve gotten this twisted in the age of social media, and it’s evident by the rise of the term “influencer”.
By definition, an influencer in the digital world is someone who has the ability to influence the purchase behavior of consumers online, primarily through social media.
We’ve effectively turned influence into a commercialized product.
As such, influence is seen as something to be maximized to produce the most return in the shortest amount of time.
What we fail to realize, though, is that by reducing influence to an asset to be profited from, we end up gaining influence that is cheap, shallow, and valueless.
You probably won’t change the lives of a million people in your lifetime. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s preferable that you don’t.
It’s much more beneficial to everyone if you spend your life focusing on having a positive influence on a handful of people in a long-term, profound way.
Those people will not only be the ones telling stories at your funeral about the moments you created that mattered deeply to them, but the actions, values, and stories you left imprinted on their hearts will also tell countless generations to come about the legacy you left behind.
And that is the only kind of influence worth living for.
One without the other is like separating sodium from chlorine in sodium chloride, which is also known as salt.
These two become salt only when they’re together.
When separated, both sodium and chlorine are dangerous and volatile.
If the formula for salt is sodium (Na) + chlorine (Cl), then the formula for building driven people of character – the “salt” of the earth, is this:
Urgency (to solve an important problem) + Patience (the willingness to work and wait for progress) = Driven People of Character (Salt of the Earth).
I call it “patient urgency”.
You must have both urgency and patience.
Jesus told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” (Matthew 5:13)
Just like sodium and chlorine are harmful on their own, so too are urgency and patience.
Urgency without patience kills character.
Patience without urgency kills drive.
When they come together, though, you get a rare mixture that both preserves and improves everything it touches.