One Simple Way You Can Help Change Someone’s Life … For The Better
Last Friday I put a post up on LinkedIn. It was a post asking people to consider the question of ‘Who is in your corner?’ You can read it here.
It got a great reaction in terms of the number of people who saw it and liked it. According to LinkedIn stats it was seen by over two thousand different people or pages on the platform and liked by over forty-five people.
At the bottom of the post I asked a question and gave readers an opportunity to mention someone who has been in their corner and made a difference in their life.
‘So… who’s in your corner? Tag someone who’s helped you go further than you thought possible. And if you don’t have that person right now—maybe today’s the day to go find them.’
While I am grateful to the people who acknowledged me, it was NOT my aim to have people tag me.
I thought it was a lovely opportunity for people to acknowledge someone who had been in their corner, someone who had supported or mentored them. Someone who had been there at a time when they really needed someone to be in their corner. Someone who believed in them and their dream, when nobody else did.
What really interested me about the reaction to the post was that out of the two thousand people or pages that the post was seen by, four people chose to acknowledge someone.
That got me wondering.
Perhaps people went and acknowledged someone separately. Perhaps they didn’t have someone in their world who had helped them go further. Perhaps the idea of tagging or acknowledging someone online was too public. Perhaps acknowledging that they had received help felt like admitting to a weakness.
I’m not sure what the reasons were, but I suspect a lot more than four people could have tagged someone who has helped them go further.
Sometimes it looks to me like we live in a world that is more about judgement than acknowledgment. A world that is more led by fear and insecurity that leads taking people down, than by love that builds people up.
Sometimes that judgement is aimed at others, particularly in the online world we live in. I recently read an article about some of the online abuse that female tennis players contend with. It’s brutal and cowardly. Click here if you want to read that article.
Our judgements can also be aimed at ourselves. I spent decades judging myself harshly in an ongoing but ultimately failed attempt to ‘be better’. That approach just ended up in me burning myself as all my efforts to be good enough were always trumped by my rock-solid belief that I wasn’t good enough.
Forty plus years of judgement and criticism didn’t work. Which is why I now love having a ‘document’ that is transforming how I see myself, how I think about myself and how I speak about myself. If you want to know more about my document, click here.
Life feels so different from that place of kindness, compassion, curiosity and love when I am aiming that and so much more at myself. What looks possible as I have increasingly removed the limitations of my past judgements, keeps growing and growing.
We live in a world full of amazing people who are full of potential and, as a possibility, we can do pretty much anything. Because we all have people in our lives, we all have people like that in our lives. People who have made a difference. People who have been there when we needed it. People who have seen something in us and taken a stand for us when we haven’t been able to see if ourselves. People who are just great at random acts of kindness.
In a world where the balance looks so strongly on the side of judgment, I suspect many of those people who have made such a big difference for us, don’t know it.
Perhaps an old teacher, a relative, one of your parents, a sibling, a friend, a work colleague, a sports coach, a boss, a youth club leader …
I have read that some African cultures use a unique restorative justice practice involves placing individuals who have acted irresponsibly or unjustly in the centre of a circle formed by the tribe. Instead of punishment, the tribe members then spend two days sharing positive stories and recalling the good deeds and qualities of the person in the centre. This practice aims to remind the individual of their worth and encourage them to return to positive behaviour.
I don’t know how that works but it sounds incredibly powerful.
What would happen if our way of being was more about acknowledgment than judgment?
I wonder if it’s just possible that the amazing people we are surrounded by and who have impacted us might begin to see the greatness that is in them and go on to be even more inspiring in the future?
My challenge to you this week is to take a few minutes to acknowledge someone who has really impacted your world for the positive impact they have made, their acts of kindness, their amazing qualities or how they have inspired you in some way.
The impact might be recent, or it might be in the past. You may have acknowledged them before. They may not have a clue how much what they did meant to you.
It might be a phonecall. It might be a text. It might be an email. You might even write them a good old-fashioned letter.
And if you felt really bold, you might even share something about them and why you acknowledged them in the comments below this newsletter … with or without naming them.
There is real power in sharing about this because you will create a stronger possibility for someone else to acknowledge someone in their world.
You might just be the catalyst for someone to receive an acknowledgment that changes everything at a time when they really needed it.
I am going to start the ball rolling by acknowledging the six men in the pic at the top of this newsletter, who I train with every week in the gym. I didn’t know any of them three years ago and now these guys are all men I count as being in my corner. They encourage me, they cheer me on, they call me on my bullshit, they share their wisdom, and they inspire me. They are all men I know I could ask for help if I needed it. They are, Benny O’Hanlon, Darren Mallaghan, Martin McGuigan, Dougie Watt, Ronan Mallaghan and Paul Hughes. Not in the picture is the one and only Conor McAnallen the owner of Resilience Gym where we train. Conor shows up powerfully every single session. He pushes us to be there when we don’t show up and he coaches us skillfully, knowledgably, with good humour and with plenty of resilience as he pushes us to our limits and beyond at the early hour of 7am.
Finally, if and when you do try out acknowledging someone, check out how it feels for you … it can be addictive.
Have fun with this one.
Much love.
Peter