I like to see results.  I rate accomplishment on getting a result I can see.  But that desire to see my impact has led me falsely, time and again, to underestimate myself.  This can be incredibly, and unnecessarily discouraging.  I regularly feel like quitting.

My friend, Lorna Brown once said, “Doubt discouragement.”  It was a poignant piece of advice I’ll never forget.  Why should we not quit when our efforts apparently go unrewarded?  Why not accept that our small drop in the ocean is too small to make any significant difference?

The demonstrator was holding up a plastic thing that looked like a wide mouthed, blow dryer.   I was at my son’s elementary school science demonstration in their gym, more fascinated than most of the children.  I watched as she pulled back a handle hooked to a rubber band X across the back of the tube.  Releasing it sent a huge puff of air out of the chamber and knocked over a large paper cup.  Then, she pulled it back next to some smoke, causing it to “inhale” smoke, turned it up toward the ceiling at least two stories high, and released it.  It sent a smoke ring all the way up to the ceiling!

I thought about how when we send out our love or take action, it is so much like that puff of air.  If we are not there to see the cup fall, or if we can’t put a smoke tracer on our actions, the results are invisible.  But, it does not mean the impact is not felt or is not there.  Unless people tell us, we may never know the impact we’ve had on them.  But, it doesn’t mean it is not there.

It takes an enormous amount of faith to continue to move forward and take small actions day after day when we don’t see the results we want or are expecting.  For example, if you are exercising to lose weight, and the weight does not come off, it seems that there is no reason to continue.  But if you quit or come to that conclusion, you would be mistaken.

“The fit, but fat, individual has almost half the risk of death of the unfit, fat individual” –from the research reported in Martin E.P. Seligman’s book Flourish.   So getting off the couch, even if you don’t see the results you are looking for, could literally save your life.   There are many invisible health benefits to exercise that could include lower anxiety and better cognitive function.

That is my point.  We can’t expect to see or predict the total impact of our thoughts, words, or actions.  Thomas A. Edison was such an example of this.  He set up a huge plant in Fort Myers, Florida to try to discover a cheaper and local means of making rubber.  He brought in plants from Africa and experimented, growing different types of grasses and trees.  All this work ended in a bust.  He had no reasonable way after many years to make rubber.   Exploring his museum, I found a note he’d written about the results of all these years of work, cost, and endeavor.  He wrote among the results, “a new friend.”

Edison didn’t think of it as a failure.  He saw what positive results there were, even if they did not match what he was expecting or looking for.  As every page does add width to a book, so our actions do make a measureable impact, the results just may not be what we expected.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”  –Thomas A. Edison

We can keep sending out our gifts.  We can have faith that they will bear fruit, even if often we can’t see it and don’t know what those results might be.

Even thoughts have impact.  Someone had to imagine setting foot on the moon, for instance, before the actual act could ever occur.  An invisible, hopeful thought made way for an event so absurd, so impossible, that only history can attest to it.  And we know that if we can get a man to the moon, there is nothing we can’t do.  (Excepting perhaps creating nylons that don’t run.)

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Who will dare to imagine that?  We have to believe it before we’ll try.  We have to try before we succeed.  Our impact spreads out in a widening circle over time, like the smoky circle widened as it flew up toward the ceiling and disappeared.

We might never see it, be we can’t make that mistake, assuming our impact is not or will never be there.

The fact is, you make a difference.

Namaste,

DarEll S. Hoskisson