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144. You Can't See It · Impact Ready

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  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
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  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
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  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
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  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
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  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
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  Hello, everyone. Thanks for being here, for
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  listening to the show today. In this episode, I'm going to
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  talk about impact, but kind of in a different way.
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  I want to talk about something that gets in the way of us
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  having great impact. This kind of goes along with the
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  theme of what people have been struggling with recently.
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  And recently my coaching clients have been coming to me slightly
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  frustrated that they're not, quote UN quote, having the
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  impact they want. They're not making the
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  difference. They feel like their actions are
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  lacking Punch. One of my clients, said she
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  feels like she's screaming into the void.
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  And so I wanted to discuss this whole topic in this episode
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  today. And I'm going to start by
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  telling you a story. I was flying home the other day
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  and flipping through the movies on the plane.
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  And I settled on this movie called Moneyball.
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  And Moneyball is a little bit older.
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  I think it's about 10 years old and has Brad Pitt in it.
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  And the premise of the movie is Brad Pitt is playing Billy
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  Beane, who is the general manager for the Oakland
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  Athletics in 2002 I believe. And this is based on a true
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  story. Side note, the Oakland A's were
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  my favorite baseball team when I was a kid.
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  I had hundreds of baseball cards of the Oakland Athletics.
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  And so to be watching a movie about the Oakland A's, I don't
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  know, felt like a full circle moment.
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  Anyway, the Oakland A's in this movie are considered to be one
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  of the poorest teams in the league.
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  Like shoestring budget. And when their team got gutted
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  by other richer teams basically stealing their players.
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  It was Billy Bean's job as AGM to figure out how to rebuild
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  this team. His challenge was he didn't have
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  a lot of money to buy awesome players, and so he had to think
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  creatively. He had to come up with
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  innovative strategy to rebuild the team.
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  And he ended up hiring this economics whiz kid from Yale who
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  talked him into using a system by somebody who'd written a book
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  called Moneyball that was all about picking players, scouting
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  players based on their stats, and putting together a winning
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  team strictly by looking at statistics.
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  And this, at the time, caused a huge uproar because baseball
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  teams have always been put together by scouts who choose
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  players based on their own criteria and usually some
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  romanticism around baseball. So all through the movie, Billy
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  Beane, Brad Pitt is getting a lot of shit for putting it
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  together. A-Team this way in a very
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  unorthodox way. And in the beginning of the
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  season, the team is getting crushed just loss after loss.
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  And so it's looking like he made a huge mistake.
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  He's going to lose his job. Everyone's give him a bunch of
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  crap. But as the season goes on, the
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  Oakland A's start winning and they win 20 games in a row,
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  which was the American League record for the longest winning
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  streak at the time. And I hope you're not going to
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  watch this movie because I'm about to ruin it.
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  In the end, they lose a key game and they're not able to win the
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  World Series. And Billy Beane is crushed
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  because that was his sole mission was for his team to win
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  the championship game in the World Series.
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  And he's convinced that if you don't win that game, if you
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  don't win the last game of the season, nobody cares about you.
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  It doesn't matter what you do before that.
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  If you don't win that last game, people are going to toss you
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  aside. And everything else that you did
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  was for not for nothing. He felt like he hadn't had the
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  impact that he had wanted to because he wanted to change the
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  way that things were done. He wanted to change the game of
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  baseball and he thought he had failed because of this loss.
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  Subsequently, the Boston Red Sox reached out to him shortly after
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  that big loss and asked him to come be their GM.
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  They saw what he was doing differently.
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  They saw that he was using a new system and the impact that that
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  had on the Oakland A's season and they wanted that.
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  They wanted him to come in and revolutionize their team and the
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  way that scouting was done. They recognized that he was
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  doing something so new and so powerful that they made him an
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  offer to make him the highest paid GM in the history of
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  baseball. Ultimately, he turned it down.
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  But here's the catch, It didn't end right then.
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  His impact didn't stop there. Two years later, the Boston Red
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  Sox won the World Series, and if you know anything about
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  baseball, it was a huge deal because they broke what they
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  called the Curse of the Bambino, which was this tremendous losing
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  streak for the Boston Red Sox. It was a huge deal to break this
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  losing streak. And guess how they did it?
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  They used Billy Bean's system of scouting and using statistics to
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  assemble a team. A sharp left turn from how
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  things had been done in the past with tremendous results.
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  And the point of all of this is that so often in our lives, we
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  can't see the impact that we're having.
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  Billy Bean thought that his entire season was lost because
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  they didn't win the World Series in the end.
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  But what he didn't realize is that his actions, the way that
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  he thought about assembling A-Team, the way that he stood
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  his ground, the season that the A's had that year changed the
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  course of baseball in a lot of ways and had ripple effects that
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  went way beyond himself and his original 2002 team.
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  Now, the point of all this is that so often in our lives, we
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  can't see the impact that we're having.
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  And because we're human and we like to get the external
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  validation and feedback that we're doing something well or
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  we're making a difference, in the absence of that feedback, we
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  often want to quit. We want to throw in the towel
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  and assume that the things that we were doing didn't make a
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  difference or an impact at all. And this is where so many people
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  shortchange themselves because there are a lot of humans out
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  there who are doing great work that feels inspiring to them,
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  something that they're passionate about.
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  They're very much in alignment in their lives.
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  They're on the right path, but they quit too quickly.
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  They can't see beyond their current reality, and they can't
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  see the ripple effects of their actions.
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  And so they falsely assume that what they're doing doesn't
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  matter. And that's a really tricky part
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  about the ripple effect. I often think about impact as a
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  process, a multi step process. You have the action and then you
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  have the ripples as a result of that action and then you have
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  the effects of those ripples and we call that whole situation
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  impact. So if you're listening to the
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  show, I would count you as one of the people who likes to have
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  impact in their life and wants to have more of it.
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  I would bet that you are a person who wants to be of
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  service and make the world a little bit better and leave a
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  legacy behind in a really positive way.
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  But I would also bet that you, at some point in your life, have
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  quit too early in this whole impact process.
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  I would venture to guess that at some point you've been doing
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  purposeful work that was in service to others with the
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  potential to be really powerful. But you stopped.
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  You threw in the towel during the action phase.
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  And I'm not judging you, because I've done the same exact thing.
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  We act in some way, and it's the catalyst for all the ripples
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  that spread out into the world. Our big problem is that we often
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  can't see them. We can't see the ripples.
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  And then there's the effects of those ripples.
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  And while at times they can be pretty quick and immediate and
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  obvious, and we can see the effect of what we've done, so
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  often the effects of the ripples aren't clear until years down
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  the road. And to make the situation even
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  stickier is that people often don't share with you the impact
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  that you've had on them. We don't always get to know the
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  ways in which we change something or someone.
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  And our default thinking can be something like, oh, well, nobody
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  said anything to me about that action that I took, so it must
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  not have made a difference. I should quit.
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  It doesn't matter. And I'm calling this out because
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  I think it's important to recognize that we have to zoom
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  out and see the whole damn process sometimes.
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  We have to have faith and trust in the fact that our actions
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  will always have ripples, and those ripples create effects.
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  Now, I can very much acknowledge this is hard to do for yourself
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  because you're so in your life. Of course, it's hard to see the
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  label when you're inside the jar.
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  But there are so many examples of the ripple effect and impact
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  out in the world, and if you start to look at those, it
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  becomes a little easier to see how this process of impact could
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  be happening in your own life. We can extend that faith to what
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  we're doing as well. I often think about this
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  example. There's someone named Ed
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  Milette. He's a speaker who I've seen
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  speak many times. He's a phenomenal speaker,
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  actually, and he often talks about the power that we all have
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  to create change and influence things in a good way.
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  But he always tells the story of his dad, his late father, who
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  was an alcoholic all of his childhood.
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  He describes what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic
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  father, and things were pretty messy.
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  His dad would get angry when he was drunk, and Ed would try to
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  protect his sisters and his mom. It's a pretty rough scene to be
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  listening to when you're sitting there in the audience and he's
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  telling the story well. Then Ed goes on to describe how
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  when he was a young adult, his dad decided to get sober.
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  He went into a a, he got a sponsor, and he was able to stay
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  sober for the rest of his life. And for the remainder of his
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  years, his dad was a sponsor to dozens of people who are also
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  going through recovery. And Ed ended up having a really
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  strong relationship with his dad.
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  He describes that he was a huge support to him.
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  He helped guide him through all these different business
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  endeavors and encouraged him. And now Ed Mylette is a
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  tremendously influential person. He's one of the most famous
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  speakers in the world. He owns multiple businesses.
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  He has a tremendous amount of wealth.
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  He writes books. He coaches people.
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  He's considered in the thought leadership world, in the
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  business world, to be an incredibly impactful man.
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  And the reason I think about this story all the time is
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  because of this idea that our actions, even a single decision,
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  can have a ripple effect so widespread that it could impact
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  thousands of people, millions of people.
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  In his case, the one decision to get sober led his dad to having
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  a massive impact on his son, who has gone on to have impact on
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  thousands of people. And because his dad also went on
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  to be a sponsor for dozens of people going through recovery
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  themselves, those people got sober and they had impact on
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  their friends and their family. The ripple effect is so
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  widespread you you couldn't even see it if you tried.
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  It's so exponential it boggles the mind to try to quantify it.
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  So you can't always see it. And we have to be OK with that
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  team. We have to have a degree of
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  trust or faith or discipline or commitment to the things that we
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  do. Assuming that the work that
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  you're doing is purposeful and it's something you're passionate
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  about feels meaningful. It's not just busy work, it's
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  the real work, but commitment and faith and discipline to
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  those things that we do, to the energy that we're bringing into
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  every space we step into. We can't always see the impact.
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  And even when we can see a little bit of it, we're not
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  accounting for this huge exponential nature of it and the
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  fact that we will never grasp the whole picture because it's
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  just so much bigger than us. And this is one of the main
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  reasons I'm so passionate about impact, because it is so much
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  bigger than us. There is so much
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  interconnectedness that we can't see or don't acknowledge in our
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  daily lives. And because of that, there's so
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  many things that we do in a day that we think don't matter.
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  We think it's inconsequential how we walk into a room after a
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  long day of work and greet our kids and our spouse.
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  We think it doesn't really matter how much we exercise or
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  what we eat or what kind of routine we start our mornings
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  off with or how we talk to the serving staff at a restaurant.
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  We think it's not going to matter how we show up in an
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  argument with somebody we love. We think that idea, that great
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  idea that we had a month ago that's seeming to stick in our
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  brains that it wouldn't amount to anything anyway.
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  We think I'm not where I am now, So what does it matter what I do
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  tomorrow? And what I say to clients is
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  just because you can't see the outcomes or the ripples or the
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  effects and the impact, it doesn't mean that it doesn't
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  matter. You're always having an
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  influence with your energy and your actions and your thoughts.
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  Whether you like it or not, every time you walk into a room,
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  you are creating ripples. So all of these things that we
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  think are inconsequential, the ideas, our energy, our routines,
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  the way we talk to our family, our resilience, thinking outside
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  the box, making powerful decisions.
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  What we're really doing is laying down the bricks for the
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  path, that future path forward. And that path can be shaped a
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  lot of different ways with a lot of different outcomes.
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  The way you walk into the house and greet your wife and kids
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  after a long day of work, it's creating a path forward.
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  And it could be a great relationship with your kids, a
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  path to a happy, loving, supportive marriage.
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  Or it could be a path to no relationship with your kids and
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  divorce from your spouse. And it it might seem
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  overdramatic to say it that way, but those actions every single
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  day create ripples and effects and impact over time.
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  Just because you can't see it in the moment doesn't mean it
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  doesn't matter. So my challenge to you this week
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  is to think about your impact process, your actions, the
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  ripples of those actions, and what the effects could be.
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  Have you been shortchanging yourself because you can't see
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  your impact? Are you quitting on something
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  too early? Are you giving up on a
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  relationship or a project, maybe a dream that you've had?
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  Are you failing to see the exponential nature of who you
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  are and what you do? I asked my clients this.
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  I asked them to write about it and journal about it because so
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  many people shortchange themselves and every time I have
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  this conversation with someone, I feel even more reverence for
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  life. Just true reverence for this
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  life that we're in. I think it's such a wonder that
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  even a small action or a single decision like getting sober can
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  change the course of our life and the lives of so many other
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  people around us. It will never cease to boggle my
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  mind. As I'm recording this, it has me
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  thinking about my own life, my own impact, and the places where
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  I might be shortchanging myself or not paying attention and
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  being too casual about something.
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  It makes me think about all the places in my life where I might
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  not be seeing the effects of my actions yet, but I should be
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  more mindful of them. And I hope this conversation has
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  you thinking the same because you are a powerful person with a
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  tremendous amount of influence and impact.
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  I hope that you remember that and I and that it gives you a
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  little more courage to keep going, especially with the
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  things that are feeling hard right now.
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  So remember, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it
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  doesn't matter. I hope this episode has helped.
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  Coming up here soon, I'm going to start incorporating a new
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  kind of series into the podcast. We're going to do like an impact
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  series where we share a story of somebody who's had great impact
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  in their life and break it down a little bit so that we can
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  start to see examples of the ripples, the effects of this
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  whole process we call impact. I can't wait to share it with
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  you. Thanks again for being here.
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  And as always, thank you for being ready to Impact.
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  Thanks for listening to Impact Ready.
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  I hope today's episode inspired you to own your impact and
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  recognize that you are powerful. By elevating our energy and
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  awareness, we can create exponential change in this life.
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  If you enjoyed today's insights, share them with a friend and
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  subscribe to the show for more. I truly appreciate you.
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  Thanks again for being here.