What Difference Do You Want to Make?

When executive coach and author Richard Leider interviewed scores of people over 65, he asked them to share the most important lessons they had learned and the advice they’d give younger people to have more fulfilling, successful lives. Without hesitation, they said: you’ve got to live a life that matters to others, and you’ve got to make a contribution to others.
 
And when physician Raymond Moody interviewed scores of people who lived through near-death experiences, he discovered the overwhelming necessity of making a difference.
 
Even though his subjects had supposedly died, they said their minds or spirits were very much alive at that time and that they’d kept thinking about the difference they’d made in this world and with other people and whether they had made any difference at all. When they were brought back to life by some medical miracle, they all had the same, but new, bottom line — making a contribution serving others to some extent, instead of being totally self-serving.
 
You don’t have to wait until you die before you learn how to live.  You can get a purpose right now and start living your life on purpose from today forward. What difference do you want to make? Think about it. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
 
The difference you want to make may not be as big as rescuing the poor of Calcutta like Mother Teresa or gather worldwide headlines like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That’s okay. The difference you want to make may be in your immediate family, your extended family, your religious organization or charity, your community, your company or even some part of the world at large.
 
But you must focus some part of your life on making a difference. Otherwise, you may have a good life, but you will never have a great life.