Transforming Lives, One Contribution at a Time

“I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.'' - Maya Angelou

I believe that,

the best way to attract SUCCESS and ABUNDANCE into your life is to help others become successful.

And irrespective of your age, gender, income, social status, educational qualification and geography, I am sure you do interact with a lot of other human beings in the course of a day. And each of these interaction is a chance for you to contribute to another person’s life, well being, welfare, growth, development and success. Every interaction is an opportunity for you to make them feel better, to Inspire, Influence and Impact them. The ways in which you make a difference in someone’s day is practically unlimited - your words, a smile, a simple gesture of kindness, everything counts and everything matters. In fact, the simple act of just listening to someone in distress, duress or depression, makes a lot of difference to that person.

And in today’s digital age, apart from those you meet and interact physically, you also have a chance to inspire, influence and impact lives digitally with your articles, videos, audio podcasts and the platforms are countless. Your reach today is practically global.

In return for your contribution to another human being’s life, well being, welfare, growth, development and success, what you get is fulfillment. And the amount of fulfillment you feel at the end of each day, is one of the best measures of your success.

Story

Let me tell you a quick story on the power of contribution.

Story of a 15 year old boy born into a family of 8 siblings, in some village in India. 

After his 10th, his father said, we have no money to support your further studies and I have found a good job for you,a go and join that. This boy travels approximately 300 kilometers to find out that it’s not a job but being a helper in shady hotel in some place.But he has no money to come back to his village so he joins there and in return of some food and shelter, he starts working there full day, morning to night with very little sleep and a lot of work. Its not a very good place for any young kid because he will go late to sleep and in the morning you are not able to wake up because you are sleeping under a cabin and your bed is a rug and blanket a rug too, the hotel owner used to take iced fish and shove it into his mouth and sometimes used to throw ice water to wake him up.

Pretty early this boy understood that this is not the place and work for him and he was quite stubborn and thought that it’s his life and his future and he has to take control over it and he started looking for solutions. He started interacting with the customers who came to that place for food.He found reciprocation from a particular person and he started interacting with him more.This boy would give a little extra piece of chicken or fish in his meals and finally he found an opportunity to tell this man that he wanted to get out of the hell hole and wanted to do something better in life. The boy asked this customer if he could arrange for him a bus ticket to the capital city and that he would manage to find himself any job there. The gentleman came back to him after a week or two and gave him a ticket to the capital city and told that he has arranged for a job for him there in the capital. The boy was happy to get this and went to the capital city. After doing a number of odd jobs to survive there, he got a job as a night watchman where he had to keep a watch on the sand, bags of cement, iron rods etc for a construction. In the daytime he started giving tuition to kids to keep up with his expenses. 

After a few days, a parent whose kids were tutored by him told him about some vacancies in the state secretariat for the position of typists. This boy then takes up typing and practices and gets selected for the job in the state secretariat as a typist.

Here life takes a turn and he starts money consistently, becomes a govt employees and life continues. From a typist, this person will retire next year as a section officer from the state secretariat. In his journey he become father to three boys and he made all of them all engineers and management executives. As I said already this guy was stubborn and he had decided that he will have a piece of land in the capital city, he will educate his kids much more than he got and he has done all that by this day.

The elder son of this person is me and yes, I was talking about my dad and his journey. I have omitted portions of the story to keep it short but the moral of the story is how one small act of kindness of that stranger to my dad has not only changed the course of life, but also the future of his kids. So,

Never ever underestimate the power, the potential, the impact of a tiny gesture of kindness that you can do for someone. 

So, the questions I have for you today are:

How many people did you meet today? How many people did you talk to today? How many people you interacted with today? All these people with whom you interact today, how did they feel after the interaction with you? Did you make them feel better? Did you uplift their spirits? How did these interactions made you feel at the end of the day? 

On the personal front, did you make your parents, your siblings, your partner, your kids and your friends feel loved, wanted, trusted, respected and understood? On the professional front did you make people feel appreciated, valued, trusted, wanted, empowered, enabled, encouraged, enthused and engaged? 

Can you sit down for just 10 minutes before sleep and document all these interactions on a daily basis? If you do it for the last 30 days, how would it make you look - a contributor or a non-contributor? This is what I refer to as, “contribution journaling” - the process of documenting how many lives do you touch and impact in a day, a week, a month, a year and the course of your life-time?   

Allow me to end this article with this suggestion,

If you truly want to attract Success & Abundance into your life, start tracking your contributions and making necessary adjustments to your contribution strategy.

PS: Photo credit - Image by ibrahim abed from Pixabay