Compounding Kindness

Last week I talked about my speech in Las Vegas and emphasized how absolutely critical it is to use leverage if you want to make big money in a relatively short period of time.  But can leverage be used if you want to spread good words and good works so you can make a huge impact for good in the world?  All of us can spread good stuff around and many people do but where do they usually start?  They start right at home with family and friends. But if you want to spread good works and good words greatly beyond that you probably need to use leverage.

Let me try to motivate you with numbers showing how a great idea, a great deed and/or great motivating words can spread and become huge. Let’s call it “good message compounding”.  If any one of us passed on a great message or did a great deed and encouraged the recipients of our kindnesses to “pay it forward” to 10 people asking that they also request their recipients to keep it going by passing it along to ten more and everyone kept that going, what potentially could be the results?  Shockingly, if everyone in the chain were to do this and that passing it on continued 6 times or through 6 levels of people, your message or deed would have affected more than one million people!  If it went to the 9th level, you would have influenced or helped more than one billion people!

Of course, not all those first 10 people would follow through and pass it on and even if the first ten people did we can be pretty certain that not everyone down the line would pass it on.  But the point I want to make is it is possible to end up with huge numbers of people getting your message or being impacted by your good deed. If you keep that “huge potential” in mind it can really be such a super motivator for you and for all of us to push ourselves to do and say more to help others.

So I would encourage you to keep firmly in your mind that 9th level of over a billion people that you could potentially help.  Even though this “good message compounding” most likely won’t multiply into a billion it could certainly multiply into hundreds of good messages and deeds and probably even more than that. And that ain’t too bad coming from one little human on this planet of more than 7 billion people.  In my book that’s pretty exciting, knowing you, as just one person, can have that big of an impact for good in the world. And it all comes back to you in the great feeling it gives you and the happiness you see it bringing to others’ lives.