One of the things I feel so often as someone on a personal development and entrepreneur’s path is that I haven’t found My Big Thing I’m supposed to contribute to the world.
I’ve had my own business for more than 20 years and I’ve helped a lot of people in some ways over the years, but so often as I look forward, I have this sense that I haven’t found the right thing yet because I haven’t made the gigantic splash I want to make.
As I do the next workbook, take the next course, Kindle, coaching program and whatever else it is that I do to try to figure it out, I am still left hanging as to what that big world-saving contribution is that I am supposed to make that I am clearly not yet making.
Somewhere inside I tell myself — and when I’ve spoken about it with friends caught in the same dilemma we agree — that maybe it just doesn’t exist. You do what you do where you are and blah, blah, blah and that’s enough.
Intellectually that seems right. And even though I agree at the time, in the end, I still secretly feel like I just haven’t found “my thing” yet — that thing that I uniquely have to contribute. Then it seems like the answer my friend and I came up with is just a way to justify not having found it yet.
That’s how it has been.
But this morning, something a little different happened… a little different.
At one point, I really focused on trying to wake myself up. I don’t mean from being asleep from last night.
I had already been up for 3 hours and working on things.
I mean I looked in the mirror for a loooonnnnng time. I stared right into my own eyes and commanded myself to “Wake up, Melody! Wake up!” I literally was trying to get myself out of this state of stupor… this state of some place I’ve felt stuck…. so I could wake up and get on with my mission.
I kept trying to wake myself up…. from whatever it is that I was asleep to… so I could get to work on delivering my contribution to the world at large.
“Wake up, Melody. Wake up! Wake up up up!”
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zilcho. Nothing.
For a bit.
Then a slightly new take on the old idea hit me.
I finally got a nice little hit.
Contribution to the community at large. Piece by piece.
I say little hit because, as of today, there has been no Burning Bush moment for me where some supernatural event has occurred before mine eyes with divine wisdom poured into my head, heart or gut… that I have been aware of.
There has been no single transformational moment where I have suddenly been called to give myself a new name because I’m now such a new and different person.
No. That hasn’t happened. And the truth is, I’m perfectly fine with that. I’m a more moderate kind of gal, who likes things to be peaceful and methodical…. not dramatic with big shakeups. I’m the tortoise not the hare. I’m your Uncle Jerry’s Cadillac not your nephew’s Ferrari.
My transformation has happened piece by piece. Although I haven’t had a Burning Bush moment, there have been big moments where nice-sized new insights and changes in being have happened — just not near-death-experiences and the type of thing where one’s world is turned upside down and your things are dumped out of your life.
What finally hit me about this as it relates to my Mission and my Big Contribution is that my “big contribution” may look very much like that which has caused my own personal development and transformation over the years — course by course, one chapter at a time, one seminar, one session, one phone call, one page, one quote…. a little at a time. A way that adds up like compounding interest.
My contribution may very well not look like me contributing Burning Bush moments to someone else.
My Contribution, my legacy, I believe at this point, will likely be much like the contribution others have made to me.
My big contribution may very well be to the community at large. A little to this person, a little more to that one, and some to him or her, and so on…. so that it adds up.
My big contribution may very well look like writing an article like this that gives one person one more idea about how to relate to their own mission.
My contribution may be an ebook I publish that only a few people read, but it helps one of them in an interview to get the job they need to do before they get their dream job.
My Big Contribution is likely to be to the Community at Large…. the world at large…. in a general way. I’m not curing Alzheimer’s or unmasking the Unified Field Theory.
My contribution is probably gonna be made bit by bit by bit…. lots of material that I publish or things I say that add a little more insight to this one and that one…. Ideas that make someone’s day better.
With that thought in mind, the pressure is off. As long as I contribute a lot of little bits, I will be carrying forward that which has been given to me.
Hence… this article.
May something I’ve written here put another bean on the beanstalk of someone else’s life… another anchor for someone else’s climb up the mountain… or another roller on your skate.
Bit by bit…. it happens.