change your world1It’s Wednesday and another chance to talk about Changing the Your World.  I’m going to focus today on my second big AHA moment and quote.

Where I Was

Backstory Alert: So I worked your basic 9-9 job. (Not a typo) And I was frustrated with my place in the universe and my hopelessly small part in making a difference as far as Life, The Universe and Everything is concerned.  I mean, I was going to grow up to make a difference! I was going to grow up to help people! I was going to…

Yet, here I sat in a job that didn’t seem to make one smakeral of a difference to Life, the Universe, and Everything. And worse yet, it wasn’t even a very pleasant place to be. Boy was I doing it wrong!

Plus, how could I possibly make a difference anyway?  I wasn’t trained in anything. All I really knew how to do was work. The worlds problems were all so overbearing and big and well, impossible to tackle. Sigh…

Enter Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa, what a great model.  She made a difference. She cared for the sick and so extremely poor. She made a difference. In fact, I think it is safe to say she did change the world. She chose to make the world a better place, and that is what she did.

The she changed my world, with this quote: “We cannot do great things on this earth, only small things with great love.”

Ooooohhhhhhhhh. I took a deep breathe, then: I Got It.

T quote collageI Got It

 

Not too far from the “Be the Change” lesson is “Small things with great love.”

I learned to place a higher value on every relationship. I learned to treat challenges as “small things” to treat with “great love.” This was a key moment to changing my life and my world.

I no longer felt the weight of trying to figure everything out and carry the weight of problems I cannot nor will I ever be able to face. Instead I face the challenges before me, many of which are big things to me but small things in the context of, well, the world, and I choose to handle those challenges with great love.

I can tell you, my life has improved since then. And I have only begun to learn of the ways this attitude has expanded the worlds of others around me. There are nay-sayers who choose to remind me, regularly, “You can’t save them all.”

That may be. But at the very least, if I can help as many folks as possible to also listen and heed  Mother Teresa’s words, and do every small thing with great love, I don’t have to “save them” at all. They will save themselves.

What quotes have been your life changers? AHA moments?