Episode 934: The Measure of Your Impact

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 934 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] Ruth Gotain: I'm Dr. Ruth Gotain. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your call. Having the ability to improve consistently over time is key.

[00:00:23] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott.

[00:00:30] Scott Maderer: and then thinking about how do you put that out into the world? Are you living in a way that's authentic and in alignment each and every day, or are you out of alignment? Are you expecting others to have a positive attitude and yet. Are you expecting others to live out into the world in a way that is authentic and let you, and yet you aren't.

[00:00:54] Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you [00:01:00] truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling and the inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself.

[00:01:13] Invest in others. And develop your influence so that you can impact the world

[00:01:20] in today's episode about impacting the world through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about why we often fail to see our own impact. I share how measuring your impact starts before anything you do. And I also talk about why we often undercut and undersell our own impact. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books.

[00:01:47] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign [00:02:00] up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing your talents via.

[00:02:13] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. What impact do we have similarly to asking what strengths do we have? The truth is we very seldom can accurately see the impact that we have on others. We may do things.

[00:02:37] We may talk to people. We may develop a relationships. We may have business relationships, friendships, personal relationships with other people. We may interact with people at church just throughout the day. Today, we may be at the grocery store with random strangers or in the elevator, and yet we sell see the impact we have on the people around [00:03:00] us.

[00:03:00] The truth is that oftentimes. We're blind to that. And the reason is because we simply don't pay attention to it instead in our internal voice and our entire internal dialogue, and what's going on inside of our own head and our own focus, we tend to look at where we're struggling. We tend to look at where we have difficulties.

[00:03:20] We tend to look at things that perhaps aren't going as well as we wish they would. We tend to focus a lot of time and energy on the negative. That's going on around us instead of the positive. And because of that, we often don't find a way to reach out to others and recognize the impact we've had.

[00:03:43] What's more, it's not one of those things that people generally share. People don't generally look at another person and say, Hey, I. Wanted to share with you that you had a positive impact on me that you've done something that affected my life. In fact, we don't [00:04:00] share that with others ourselves, and then we're surprised that others don't share it with us.

[00:04:06] The truth is that impact is something that we all have on the people around us, either impact for good or impact for bad. The truth is we impact others every day, that smile that we give to the stranger, the time that we run over and hold open the elevator door, helping someone make it onto the elevator at the last second, all of these things have impact.

[00:04:31] And by the same token, if we choose not to hold the door open for somebody, or we choose to not smile at somebody and frown instead, that also has an impact on the people around us. And yet we don't often pay attention to that. The truth is measuring your impact starts before you've actually started doing anything else.

[00:04:57] Have you actually thought about the impact [00:05:00] that you're going to have, the what choices you have and how those are going to affect the world around you. Have you thought about how the work you do when you serve others, affects the world around you? Have you thought about how you're going to observe or measure that impact?

[00:05:17] Because the truth is it's way back at the beginning when we're designing our goals. When we're thinking about what we want out of life, when we're looking at how we want to develop our business or in our relationships and our friendships and all of these other things. If we think about the impact that they'll have, long-term not just on ourselves, but on others.

[00:05:37] Then we can begin to design that impact in from the very beginning, measuring your impact starts before you've even started doing anything, because if you don't think about it, that it won't be embedded in there and you'll never pay attention to it because you've never thought about paying attention to it.

[00:05:58] And the truth is that we [00:06:00] often act in ways. That counter and cancel our own impact. That undercut our own impact. We expect others to have a positive attitude, but then we don't express a positive attitude. We expect others to be on time and yet we're late, everywhere. We go. Often we measure others based on their actions, but we measure ourselves based on our intent.

[00:06:24] And what you have to recognize is that other people around you can't see your intent. They can only see your actions and they can only see the results of those actions. So if you're not thinking about the impact that you have on the people around you, if you're not paying attention to what it is that you do and that you say and how it affects those people around you, that it's no doubt that you wouldn't be measuring your impact.

[00:06:52] You wouldn't be paying attention to your impact because at the end of the day, you're undercutting. By not acting in [00:07:00] alignment with what you say you want to see world, see, people are not attracted whenever things are out of alignment and when people are not attracted to what's going on, they don't actually get the full impact from what's going on either.

[00:07:16] Or the impact they do get is negative instead of positive. How do you begin to measure your impact? You first begin by actually stepping back and thinking about the impact that you want to have, and then thinking about how do you put that out into the world? Are you living in a way that's authentic and in alignment each and every day?

[00:07:37] Or are you out of it? Are you expecting others to have a positive attitude? And yet you don't, are you expecting others to live out into the world in a way that is authentic and let you and get you? Aren't are you expecting others to exhibit something and you're judging them based on their actions, but you're judging yourself based on your [00:08:00] intent and your actions.

[00:08:01] Aren't in alignment. Then you're undercutting your own impact from the very beginning. But you can change that today. By stepping back and looking at what's going on, honestly, assessing it. And then Revi reviewing, reflecting, revising your behavior to change it and bring it more into alignment. Thanks for list.

[00:08:24] thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your call. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent.

[00:08:55] Or if you're in the U S you can text 4, 4, 2, [00:09:00] 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.