How to be a mobile point of positive impact

Even if we have never met, I know there is one thing about you that inspires me to no end, and that is your potential to be a mobile point of positive impact.

As I have talked about before, we are each leaving a Ripple Legacy. You can’t NOT have an impact. Just by living your life every day, you’re creating ripples (some positive, some negative).

Being a mobile point of positive impact is about living a life that tilts the balance towards better. It’s about noticing the countless positive ripple opportunities we come across every day and acting on them.

It’s not about carving out more time in an already overloaded schedule to be a do-gooder. It’s about acting on the small opportunities that come your way each and every day.

That might be, for example, from our interactions (like habitually noting what’s positive about people and telling them what you see, sharing sage advice, or even just smiling at someone in passing). Or it might be through the choices we make with our money (like supporting the local economy by buying produce from local farmers, or buying from companies whose values we support).

Everywhere we turn, there are small-scale opportunities to create positive ripples.

A microgeneration approach

One of the ways I think about the big potential of that small-scale approach is “microgeneration.”

Microgeneration is a term used to describe small, decentralized energy generation, like a home getting its power from solar panels or small wind turbines.

In the face of the sum total of energy that is needed out there, each microgeneration source is just a tiny drop in a very, very big bucket. But for the home generating the energy, the impact is positive.

And while the individual impact on the whole energy system is negligible, as more and more homes start generating their own power, the cumulative impact has the potential to be great.

It’s the same thing with the difference we each have the potential to make.

Most of us are never going to change the course of history in a way that will get a write-up in the history books. But we still have the ability for our lives to tilt the scales towards positive on a more granular level. We can each be a microgenerator of positive impact.

And when we do that, we affect others, sometimes directly (like someone we have helped) and sometimes indirectly (like the person who decides to look for more positive ripple opportunities in their own lives after seeing how you show up).

The more people start to live that positive-impact-microgenerator life, the more that direct and indirect impact will affect people’s lives.

The importance of “just one”

But if each of us just say, “I’m one person – what can I  do?”, those small scale ripples don’t happen. And when those small ripples don’t happen, then there’s nothing to merge into something larger.

Your positive comment to someone doesn’t shift their mood. Seeing the positive way you show up doesn’t influence how your colleague decides to start showing up. You don’t decide to share the act of kindness you witnessed on the way work that morning (because it didn’t happen) and nobody feels inspired to maybe be just a little kinder that day.

The conversation – in the media, around the water cooler, at the dinner table – stays mired in what’s not working. There’s no fresh positive content to insert a loop of positive potential.

What we do, what we choose, how we show up – it all matters. And the more we see ourselves as mobile microgenerators of positive ripples, the more we’ll notice opportunities to tip the scale in a positive direction, the more we’ll take action on those opportunities, and the more that will influence how we experience life for the better.

And the more of us who show up that way, the more potential there is for it to affect those around us. All of which adds up to a greater potential to create a kind of “new norm.”

Try this: For the next week, look for opportunities to create positive ripples. Don’t worry about acting on them at this point. Your goal at first is just to start noticing. The more you notice, the more possibilities there are for you to create positive ripples.

Try doing an end-of-day review.

At the end of each day, look back and see what positive ripple-generating opportunities you see. Ask yourself questions to get the noticing juices flowing.

Where were the opportunities to:

• Help someone?
• Make someone feel good?
• Tell someone something positive about them that I notice?
• Make someone’s life easier (even in tiny ways)?
• Share my knowledge?
• “Be the change”?

As you start noticing more ripple-generating opportunities, you can start choosing to act on them. Bit by bit, you can develop a ripple-generating habit.