The Ultimate Key to Increasing Your Impact
(Hi everyone, It is my birthday week and I’m away celebrating. Today, I’m sharing a letter that I wrote a while ago, but the insights here have been coming up A LOT in my advising practice lately. So I thought we could all use a refresher. I hope this is a timely reminder for you. Enjoy!)
Dear Friends,
We all aspire toward “being the change” we wish to see in the world, yet, many individuals have major blindspots in this area, which gets in their way of making the impact they want to make.
I once had a client who was a passionate founder and entrepreneur working hard to support and nourish mothers through technology, but she was feeling depleted and lost.
The main issue was that she completely forgot about nourishing the most important mother of all: herself!
Once she committed to making herself a priority, she was able to find herself again and it led to redesigning her life and how she ran her organization. She began to thrive and so did her business of nourishing others.
To maximize your impact, you need to fully embody the change you want to create in the world from the inside out - both for yourself and your organization.
It is about deeply examining how you treat yourself and everyone in your life, and how you run your organization.
This may seem daunting at first, but if you turn toward this internal exploration with curiosity, self-compassion, and optimism, it can lead to an exciting, fulfilling, and incredibly rewarding transformational process.
It can also propel the success and impact of your organization.
Generally, the internal conditions of the founders, leaders, teams, and the systems that are in place will be reflected in the level of external success or failure of any organization or business.
Unfortunately, many organizations focus on “making it happen” out in the world, while neglecting how they are “making it happen” internally. This can lead to a lot of turmoil.
If your mission is not deeply aligned with your actions in all areas of your life and leadership, then life will likely keep sending you challenges to alert you.
Hopefully, you will be paying attention and these challenges can guide you and your organization to redirect and realign.
For example, another client of mine was a driven leader of a women’s empowerment organization, but she was feeling incredibly overwhelmed and her days were filled with putting out one fire after another just to keep herself and her organization afloat.
She was trying to empower others, but she wasn’t empowering herself to ask for the support that she needed and her employees were not feeling empowered to talk about what was going wrong inside the organization.
Thankfully, she was able to realize this just in time. Once she created a safe space for her employees to share and be vulnerable and allowed herself to lean on them for support, together, they were able to fix the structural issues that were hindering their growth and impact.
So when you are trying to create a positive change in the world, but are met with lots of struggle and turmoil, I hope you get curious about looking inward.
Evaluate how you can better bring that change into your own life and organization and make sure you embody it from the inside out.
When you and your organization are truly aligned with your mission, then your work of fulfilling that mission will flow with greater ease and joy.
That’s the #1 key to increasing your impact and making the change you wish to see in the world: wholeheartedly embodying and modeling that change in ALL areas of your life and organization.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” from the inside out and the change may come even sooner than you imagine!
Best wishes to you on this powerful journey,
Maliheh