The Myth of ‘Impacting As Many People as Possible’

There’s an idea shared amongst business owners that we ‘have a duty to impact as many people as we can with our work.’ If you have created something that is helpful, supports others to get what they need and want and makes the world a better place, surely the more people you serve the better.

It’s an intellectual justification for the ‘grow at all costs’ model.

This idea often taught by mentors with a slightly angry tone, often to an entrepreneur who is doubting themselves because they feel that something is holding them back from growing (which obviously they ‘should’ be). - “There are people out there waiting just for YOU. How DARE you shrink and play small when you have a solution they need?” Reach more people! Have a bigger impact! They say. I know because I used to say it too.

But then one day a mentor I had said some words that stopped me in my tracks.

I was talking to him about a program I was running to help children understand what they had going for them - a wisdom that they have been born with and can rely to guide them no matter what. I had a grand goal - to take this to 10,000 children. This wasn’t a money-making project particularly - I had a genuine passion to touch more lives with this work.

I was excitedly gabbling away to my mentor at the time about how many people I was starting to reach and the strategies I was developing to reach more and he stopped me and said:

“If that’s the energy you’re going out into the world with and sharing in your work, quite frankly, I’d rather you didn’t”.

I gulped. I shut up. And I listened.

As my mentor spoke I started to understand a deeper truth. If it’s true that there is one energy behind life and all things are connected by this unity, then a shift in any one part affects the whole.

And me with my speedy mind and my drive and ambition and fierce determination to do more and faster was doing nothing but depositing that feeling of lack and drive to acquire more into that universal energy. THAT was impacting people more than any program I was offering.

I saw it. And so I stopped.

I saw that the greatest gift I could ever give if I truly wanted to leave the world a better place than I had found it was to sink into the peacefulness and calm that exists BEFORE all the striving and fixing and actively trying to change the other.

That by me sinking into that - the world starts to shift into that place too.

What I thought could only be brought about by my doing, in fact was far more greatly influenced by my being. It doesn’t mean doing doesn’t happen - if you know me at all, you know I’m definitely a do-er :)

It’s a paradox - the more we’re striving, the less we’re of service.

Let’s look to the feeling we’re bringing to our lives and work instead.