A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. – Jackie Robinson

Does your neighbor need some help freeing their car, or even clearing the sidewalk? What can you do to help?

What does that mean?
It can be kind of hard to admit, but with over 6 Billion other humans on the planet, we’re not all that significant in the overall scheme of things. To me, that is what the quote is saying. We don’t matter, we’re not important, with one significant exception, according to the quote’s author.

The quote states that the one thing that actually matters is the impact we have on the lives of others. That is the closest thing to immortality we as humans can achieve. To help others live better, to improve their condition, to help them believe in themselves, to help them achieve more than they thought they could. That is what is truly important.

Why is helping others important?  
Helping others is important on a number of levels. One of the most significant of them being the impact it has on the other person. There are also an impact on humanity as a whole, diluted by 6 Billion people, but it’s an improvement nonetheless. Then there’s the feeling you get when you have helped someone else, which is a big reason for helping others, for many people.

Helping others can also be contagious. Those who have been helped often feel a need to do the same for others. In this manner, helping others can often be leveraged into helping many others. In this manner, you can help someone, who in turn, helps a few people over the course of their life. If you keep helping people, the ripple effects can literally go on forever, or for as long as the human race lasts.

Where can I apply this in my life?
I’ll admit it, as a Boy Scout, helping others comes naturally (or perhaps it’s just that it has been pounded into my brain over the years). I enjoy being useful and providing assistance. For other people, everything is all about them, but I think that strategy, while marginally effective, is selfish and short sighted.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I keep busy helping others. While some actions are more sporadic, the more regular of my endeavors include helping with Boy Scouts and doing volunteer work at the school my daughter attends. I also do spontaneous things, helping people with directions and even the occasional flat tire or other miscellaneous mechanical malady.

I do these things for all the reasons I have listed before, but mostly because I like the feeling I experience when the other person says thanks. Even if they don’t say thanks, I still feel good, because I gave of myself to help another. And truly, the reward is in the giving.

Like leadership, helping others is probably something you do on a regular basis. Whether it’s helping members of your family, your friends, or a stranger on the street (or in the parking lot), you probably do a fair bit without even thinking about it. And even if you don’t all that much at this moment, you can probably see places in your life where you could, if you chose to do so.

For those who choose not to help others, I guess this blog post is over. For those who are looking for other ways to help others, the next step is to grab some paper and write down what you already know that you do to help family, friends, and strangers.

Even something as simple as grabbing a run-away shopping cart in the parking lot is helping someone, even if the cart is empty. When that is done, take a moment and consider what you already do, but don’t think about, that might qualify as helping others. To me, even a habit of a kind word and a smile counts, how about you?

Now take a moment and consider what you would have to believe in order to want to help other people more. If you don’t have the motivation within you, the change will only last for as long as you are thinking about it. If you change how you think, the change can last you a lifetime.

How do the ideas you came up with compare to what you presently believe? How similar are they? Hopefully, it will be easy to integrate the new patterns into your life. The more you care about others, and the more you enjoy the actions themselves, the more often you will look for opportunities to help others.

With the new patterns in your mind, what new opportunities can you envision for helping others? More importantly, how will your actions help you, help others, and help humanity? If you help one person per week, that’s over 50 people per year. If they each help 25 per year, that’s 1250 people per year.

If each of the next group helps 10 per year, and the next group helps 5 per year, that’s a grand total of 62,500 people. And some people will help more than that, and you aren’t the only person who is helping people now, right? Together, the difference can truly be amazing.

From: Twitter, @Inspire_Us
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jackierobi164443.html
Photo by Arlington County

I would like to say “Happy Birthday” to the late, great pioneer of baseball, Jackie Robinson. For all you have done to help other people, both by your resistance to what was wrong with the world, and by your example of personal excellence in all that you did, you truly have had an impact on the lives of others.