Your Impact Part 1
April 15, 2025
You are invited to join us for this week’s Daily Reflections on “Your Impact.”
Do you wonder what impact you make? Do you ever think that you make no impact or difference at all? Or do you think you make a significant impact on others? When I ask this question of my patients and friends, most usually say, “My greatest impact is on my children and family members.” This response is understandable, yet I wonder if we really give the question enough thought.
Sure, we impact our families tremendously because we are very important to each other. Our family wouldn’t be the same family without us or any one of its members. And in a way, it’s a family member’s job to impact their members; after all, don’t we count on each other to affirm and support us? Don’t we count on our family to laugh with us, love us, and tell us the truth? And when our family comes through, that’s a great impact. And if they don’t come through, we impact them with our disappointment, passive aggression, or anger. Whether positive or negative, active or passive, family members impact one another.
Yet there are many other impacts from outside our families. From the minute we left the family environment, and for some of us, that is nursery school age, many things strongly impact us. Some are game changers, some are heartbreakers, some are wonderful support, and some are mind blowers. Some are indelible, and that’s why their effects remain with us. Impactful and indelible are words that seem to go together.
It’s possible we made an impact on someone else, but don’t even know our words or actions affected them. For example, if I told someone that something they said a long time ago changed the trajectory of my life, they probably wouldn’t recall it unless the interaction strongly impacted them, too. So, our impact on others may be strong but forgotten by us, but definitely remembered by the person who we impacted. One time, a dean of my school was very helpful to me in changing my curriculum. He had to bend his own policy to make the changes and I knew that was a stretch for him. Yet what he did for me, put me in a course of study that changed my choice of career. Years later, I wrote Dr. Laney, who had by then become the US Ambassador to South Korea. In my letter I thanked him for what he’d done for me many years ago when I was a student and he was the dean of my school at Emory. He wrote back and thanked me for my letter, and said that he did not remember the incident at first, but he was very glad that things worked our for me. His letter was touching because in it, he spoke like a friend to another friend. He addressed my soul.
Our conscious memory may not recall the impact we make on others, but I believe that our soul knows the people upon whom we make the most profound impact. That knowledge might not be readily available; it may take some digging, but if we think about it, there are particular people whose destinies and life courses are intrinsically interwoven with ours. It’s as if we have sacred contracts with these dear souls. For some reason, they were sent into our lives for us to teach or for them to teach us. Or we could be each other’s teachers. In any case, if we were to write our autobiography, they would be in it. They made an impact on us.
Impact — that’s a strong word for an important concept. So, this week, let’s explore and reflect on those who impacted us and those whose lives we impacted.
Spiritual practice: Whose life do you think you made or make the most substantial impact on and why? List other people you have made the most impact on. What is the nature of your impact? What is your soul type? Does your soul type have anything to do with the most substantial impact you make on others?
Self-inquiry: Why would you be reluctant to admit you firmly impacted someone’s life?
Dear God,
Those souls who hit me hard changed me forever. Be with me as I recount those people and those days. Help me bring resolution to some of the frayed edges of my soul. Amen
