Small Person Big Impact

My last post was about Tipping Points and Positive Psychology. That theme continues with a message of hope that the high school students of today will be able to transform their ‘contagious power’ into the power that fuels contagious compassion.

Leaving a legacy has never been high on my list of things to be concerned about. For many years I was rather antagonistic toward the entire concept. Being concerned about leaving a legacy felt like the ultimate head-trip. Wanting to control how people thought about me and my life’s contributions after I was dead just seemed like taking ‘controlling from the grave’ to all new heights.

Then I was introduced to the concept in positive psychology of ‘using your strengths to impact organizations greater than yourself.’ Honestly, I like and was striving for creating a continual flow state, the second phase in the evolution of development within the positive psychology framework. Having a larger impact seemed – well – too large! Here comes the ‘however’…

On Friday, August 20, I will feature two books on this installment of AM Arizona's Books That Matter,      Journey Through Heartsongs by Mattie J. T. Stepanek and Messenger by Jeni Stepanek. One book starts the journey of creating a legacy of compassion and the other attempts to grow the legacy by creating an army of compassion powered by the hearts of today’s high school students. Not exactly the picture one usually gets when thinking about high school students!

Author and peacemaker, Mattie Stepanek lived only 14 years. Focusing the legacy of his work on the eternal age group of his peers seems to be pure inspiration. In 14 years, Mattie succeed in living with a terminal disease and found a way to touch the world with a message of meaning and hope. He succeed in setting and achieving goals even as his body fought to take him out of the game. He succeed in creating so much love that his message is being kept alive not just in a book but as a program of compassion in action.

In the next week I will focus individual posts about each of these books.

For now I want you to imagine what your life could contribute if you:

Overcame your l challenges by devoting your life to a message of meaning. You don’t need to know your life purpose. You only need to know you have the strength to live a life on purpose.

Set goals and achieve them. Once again, you can make excuses or you can achieve your goals, but you can’t do both.

Lastly, firstly, and only – take action moment-by-moment to connect through love, create love, and be love.

Maybe now I understand why I created a personal guiding motto of Love * Learn * Prosper

Thank you for reading.  And remember the force is with you.
Andrea T. Goeglein, PhD
Dr. Success
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