Creating change can be a lonely pursuit.  It is often difficult to see or even feel like our efforts have made anything different .  That is why when my sister shared a story with me the other day I thought it was worth posting.

One of my co-workers just swung by my desk the other day.  He was always on the heavy side and has obviously lost a whole lot of weight.  I said to him, "You’ve caught my disease."  To which he laughed and said, "Actually I’ve been meaning to tell you that you were my inspiration to make a change in my life and get things back in order."  You can’t imagine how it feels to be an inspiration to someone.  It’s really amazing.  It was one thing to have succeeded in my weight loss goal but a whole other thing to be pulling others along with me!  Anyway….it just felt so good I wanted to share!  I’m sure we have all inspired people in our life times.  I hope whoever you have inspired has shared it with you too!

There are two important message in this story;

    – Those watching may be pulled along

    – If watching offer encouragement

Change is often difficult to detect if we don’t know how to look for the early shaping steps that would indicate things are being done differently.  Our impatience causes us to give up too early.  It also causes us to miss the other things that are going on around us.  Things like other people watching us to see what we are going to do and how we are reacting to others.  They may even be helping us out or modeling our behaviours in other areas.

You never know who may be watching you and deciding to make a change based on what they see you doing.  So don’t give up.

If you are watching don’t forget to offer up a word of encouragement.

Gandhi said "You should be the change that you want to see in the world."