Spiritual relationship help &
Building self esteem

Making a Difference

You have the opportunity to make a difference in the world every day.

The difference between a meaningful and meaningless job is often perception, or attitude. Living with a sense of significance can be as simple as changing your perspective. A determination to make an impact and to help others as you perform your daily duties may be all you need to enrich your life and the lives of those around you.

Ideally, your primary work coincides with your purpose in life since it is the place where you spend the majority of your day. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have their vocation match their passion. If this is the case and you are unable to leave your current work, long-range planning will help you reach your goal and you can supplement your primary work with volunteer service in the interim.

Meaningless Consequences

As we scramble from task to task, many of us long for more leisure time. The reality is most of us need more rest, but not more leisure. The human brain wants to be stimulated. The heart wants to serve.

Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl watched fellow prisoners die shortly after losing their sense of purpose. Most people do not die a physical death, but many die spiritually. They lose their zeal, their passion for life. Days are long and unfulfilling. Apathy, frustration, boredom, fear, feeling incapable, envy, and depression are some of the consequences of living without a sense of meaning.

Graceful Strategies

Let’s consider the following strategies for making a difference:

·        Understand the mission.

·        Be creative.

·        Minister.

Understand the mission

Understand how the work being performed contributes to humanity. This involves seeing past the immediate task. A mother sees above the pile of dirty laundry to her angel in diapers. A teacher sees past Tuesday’s math assignment and remembers she is helping to shape the next generation. A bus driver caught among honking horns in traffic understands mass transit is important for a healthier environment and knows he is helping those unable to afford a car. The garbage collector remembers when the city of New York was paralyzed without his services.

Be creative

We have all done business with clerks who go out of their way to serve. Others seem irritable and reluctant to help. Many white-collar workers are professional meeting-goers who prefer to leave the creativity and productivity to someone else.

You have likely heard the expression twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. The “twenty-percenters” also tend to feel a greater sense of satisfaction—adding value, being creative, and producing reaps fulfillment.

Minister

Preachers are not the only people who are called to minister. We all are.

Mother Teresa did not stride onto the world stage as the saint she later became. She stepped into one small corner of a broken world and held the hand of an ailing person. After caring for that person, she moved on to the next.

“It is not what we do but how much love we put into it,” Mother Teresa said. She told some people who went to help in Calcutta to find their own Calcutta. You don’t need to move to the slums of India to make a difference. Find your own small corner of the world and minister.

You are surrounded daily by broken spirits. Those who are not shattered are so fragile they need daily doses of love.

You can make a difference. The opportunity is present for everyone, whether you are a carpool driver, a CEO, a member of the PTA, or working in a nine-to-five job. The type of work does not matter. How you pursue it makes the difference.

Our egos want us to believe if we let our guard down, especially in the workplace, and become more caring we might lose in the competitive world. But the effort will not go unnoticed.

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Copyright © 2003 by Christine N. Karcher. Chris Karcher is the author of Relationships of Grace, Amazing Things I Know About You, and Relationships of Grace Workbook. To order books and tapes, schedule Chris for speaking engagements, or subscribe to Chris’ newsletter, visit www.relationshipsofgrace.com, email order@relationshipsofgrace.com, or call 1-877-GET-GRACE (1-877-438-4722).