What is the dent you wish to make in the universe?
How can you make that dent into a crater?
My answer today?
Surround yourselves with people, thoughts, ideas that stimulate you to live your own purpose and you’ll make your dent a crater.
Let me give you my own example, one that is very much current.
Many readers may only come to this site to read my daily writing, so today feel to share that the whole site has been totally refreshed with all new copy, aimed to make clear who I love to work with and what I do to help them.
I’ll then leap into inspiration from four writers that have inspired and continue to inspire me.
One the site’s new #BeMoreYou page, one passage that resonates in particular for me is:
“You are doing more than just making a difference in your company, culture, innovating in your business ventures, being recognized as “successful.”
Your ambitions are greater. You wish, as Steve Jobs liked to say, to “make a dent in the universe.” You want to have a broader impact, and at the same time to grow into your full potential.
Knowing who you are is your superpower — the power to turn that dent into a crater. You want to discover your unique genius, nurture it, and bring it forward in ways even you might not expect.”
The total refresh of the site has come from me making the commitment to invest time, energy and resources over recent months into a “deep dive” with Alison Macondray and Matt Clark, a genius team who, for the first time, have me feeling really clear when someone asks me the question “so what do you do?”. The site now shows the output of all of that focussed work, distilled into a few hundred words.
For me, a keyword within this is IMPACT.
I work with businesses large and small for whom things are largely measured with words like growth, profit, assets. I also work with governments, public sector agencies, charities and individuals, and so a word that joins everything up is IMPACT.
To reflect, what we wish for others is what we wish for ourselves, and I’m happy my site now reflects more clearly not only what I do, but why I do it, what impact I wish to have for others. It feels big, it feels very cool!
Now, to inspiration from others.
This is my current four book reading “pile”, and I just realised the note on the cover of Nilofer‘s book reads:
“Make your wild ideas mighty enough to dent the world”
Cool, huh ? In fact this type of #goosebumps serendipity has happened before quite recenlty with Nilofer, inspiring the post: “Create Serendipity“.
I love Nilofer’s work and she has inspired me for years. We also spoke recently for the first time and she inspired me to own my own “Onlyness”. Thank you again ??
The other books here are by three more people each making a major impact in their own way on me and others:
Matt Haig, a writer who brings such humanity and beauty through his writing. He writes books of different styles and forms, bringing love and humanity in each of them, always fed by his own life experience and bringing the raw truth of his life experience of anxiety and mental health to bring the highs and lows of life as he describes it in his novels to life. I LOVE his novels, and his latest book on living life in our modern wold is one I really look forward to diving into. Matt is real, true, and a romantic idealist. He is already a #1 bestselling author, and I sense that big dent is only going to become deeper and more impactful over time.
Chip Conley. What can I add about Chip, who I’ve written of many times on this site. The book in the pile is a publisher’s copy of Wisdom at Work – the making of a modern elder. Chip has made a huge impact on me for years through his thought leadership and writing. I sense that impact is going to be greater by an order of magnitude for the way society thinks about age and work at all ages. I am truly excited about being a part of that in some way!
Mark Beaumont, who constantly inspires me and many, many others. Mark has smashed ultra-endurance records that blow my mind, and yet I sense his impact on the world will magnify many-fold in years to come in ways as yet unanticipated.
Impact, dent, crater.
I love the “virtuous circle” element of this. Surround yourselves with people, thoughts, ideas that stimulate you to live your own purpose and you’ll make your dent a crater.