You Make a Difference! Here’s why.

Note how the butterfly sees a reflection.

You make a difference. Regardless of how you feel, how powerful or powerless you may think you are, your very existence makes a difference.

What kind of a difference you make is up to you.

On December 29, 1972, Edward N. Lorenz, a mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who became a meteorologist, gave a speech at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He described a phenomenon that was used to describe the impact of minute influences upon weather systems, which he called the “Butterfly Effect”:

1. If a single flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, so also can all the previous and subsequent flaps of the wings of millions of other butterflies, not to mention the activities of innumerable more powerful creatures, including our own species.
2. If the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.

Let’s expand this idea more with this excerpt from John Heider, The Tao of Leadership called “The Ripple Effect”:

Do you want to be a positive influence in the world? First, get your own life in order. Ground yourself in this single principle so that your behavior is wholesome and effective. If you do that, you will earn respect and be a powerful influence.

Your behavior influences others through a ripple effect. A ripple effect works because everyone influences everyone else. Powerful people are powerful influences.

• If your life works, you influence your family.
• If your family works, your family influences the community.
• If your community works, your community influences the nation.
• If your nation works, your nation influences the world.
• If your world works, the ripple effect spreads throughout the cosmos.

Remember that your influence begins with you and ripples outward. So be sure that your influence is both potent and wholesome.
 
How do I know that this works?
 
All growth spreads outward from a fertile and potent nucleus. You are a nucleus.

We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men;
and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes,
and they come back to us as effects.

Herman Melville

If the flap of a butterfly’s wings in South America can affect weather patterns in Texas, imagine the effect you have.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to determine what kind of impact you would like to have on the world… and then go flap your wonderful wings.

This Soulgoal Missives was first published on my blog on July 6, 2001.

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Ready to consciously make a difference
so you know it and feel that you do?

Contact me at:

virginia@soulgoals.com

http://www.soulgoals.com

I help women to tune in to their true Selves, see clearly and live their personal and professional dreams.

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Tags: Butterfly effect, Edward Lorenz, Herman Melville, John Heider, Quote, Ripple effect, The Tao of Leadership, We cannot live only for ourselves, You make a difference