Defining Impact as Building a Legacy

I had planned to write about something different this week, but I saw this video a few days ago, and it will not let me go.  I'm in my car, on the way to church, and a line from this pops into my head.  I'm reading a book or watching tv, and the kind way this man is addressing the issue with millennials comes to mind.  It's 15 minutes long, but watch it, even if it means not reading the rest of this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU

I could write a ten-part series based on this video, from the neurological consequences of telling a child they are perfect and special to the fallout of giving kids what they want as soon as they want it.  I could write about the influence of technology and the trap of instant gratification or how your mom can't get you a promotion.  I could write about the trauma of being unfriended or the fact that we have age restrictions on other addictive and potentially damaging things.  I may write about those someday, but there is a small part of this video that just keeps rolling around in my mind enough that I wanted to process my thoughts about it here.

The part that keeps coming back to me is about nine minutes in, where he talks about people who want to quit their job after only a few months because they aren't "making an impact."  I teach students who use this word a lot (and in a school that has the word in our mission statement).  I truly believe they are sincere when they say they want to make an impact.  However, much like the people who want to be famous or parents who just want their kids to be happy, lack of definition makes this difficult to achieve.

In the video, Simon Sinek describes it this way, "It's as if they're standing at the foot of a mountain, and they have this abstract concept called impact that they want to have in the world, which is the summit.  What they don't see is the mountain.  I don't care if you go up the mountain quickly or slowly, but there's still a mountain."  This is such a perfect description of the issue.  Those who climb Everest certainly do it for the view at the top, but they certainly wouldn't find it as meaningful if a helicopter dropped them onto the summit.  The messy and difficult journey matters. 

In addition, what if there were no way to tell when you had reached the summit of a mountain.  You could succeed and not know or be frustrated by constantly climbing without knowing what you are climbing toward.   A word like "impact" is not a goal because there's no way to know when you have achieved it.  I was listening to a great TED talk about how unhappy kids are whose parents' goal is their happiness.  When the goal of parents was that their kids become good citizens, there was a way to know if you had been successful.  Did your child have a job, contribute to the economy, serve a neighbor, vote, and pay their taxes?  You had raised a good citizen.  The happiness goal is just too elusive to know if you have achieved it.  What is happy?  Are they happy enough?  Are they happy about the right things? (I mean, there are probably identity thieves who are happy with their work.) . This idea that a person's job should be one in which they have an impact is similar.  What kind of impact? (Because again, an identity thief is making an impact.)  In what way do you want the impact to happen?  How far do you want your impact to reach?  It's all just too mushy to be a goal.

One more problem.  "Impact" is a word that sounds like it's something that happens fast.  Earthquakes have impact.  Wars have impact.  A punch to the face has impact.  It's a sudden result.  What Simon Sinek is trying to communicate is that you cannot reach the summit without climbing the mountain.  That process may difficult, non-linear, and long.  Most people who are out there, sincerely hoping to make "an impact" are frustrated that it doesn't happen after each action.  They don't see making an impact as a lifelong activity; they see it as something they can accomplish after a week of trying.

Let me humbly suggest that we change our language a bit.  What we really mean when we say we want to have an impact is that we want to do something that matters.  We want to make a change in the world.  We want to build a legacy.  Perhaps we should change the way we speak to high school and college students to this language, the language of building.  Doesn't the image of building something communicate so much more about the process than the word impact?  A person who enters their career with building something in mind will find fare more fulfillment in the process of learning and doing their job than the person who goes in expecting to make a quick and sudden difference. 

Let's focus on building something and enjoy the messy, difficult, interesting, and growing process that is.