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Dropping Love Bombs

loveBomb.jpgLast week the ItStartsWith.Us team tried out a new kind of mission. We wanted to find a person online who seemed to be going through a rough patch in life, and let him or her know that there are people out there who care about them.

The idea behind this type of mission is to amaze someone with the generosity of the human spirit and the kindness of strangers. They may be going through a really tough situation, but if they get a massive love bomb dropped on them by hundreds or thousands of people from all over the world, they’re going to remember this time in their lives not only for the pain they endured, but also for the love shown to them and the increased hope in humanity they will gain. And who knows? Something like that could change a life.

So last week I asked our team if they knew someone we could do this for – preferably someone writing about their experience on a blog so we could all leave a comment. I received dozens of submissions from team members, and I spent four hours myself searching the web for someone to help. I finally settled on a gentleman named Bill who was back home visiting his mom during her last week of life. He wrote a post on his blog about the difficult day he was going through trying to interact with his mom with the knowledge that she was slipping away. I’m not going to provide the link to his blog post right here, because it was a very vulnerable and personal moment in his life, and I don’t want to make a public example out of it.

What I will tell you, however, is that we found a way to do something very meaningful for him, and it was beautiful to behold. During difficult, emotional times like these, most of us don’t want others all up in our face about things, but at the same time, we do want to know that we are heard, understood, and cared about. So I just encouraged our team to simply leave an encouraging and comforting comment for him to read when he logged back in the next time.

We dropped over 200 comments on his blog that day – it was amazing. They ranged from small notes of comfort to touching personal stories of love, loss, pain, and ultimately joy. When I went back to check the post and see what the team had done, I hit the down arrow, and the page scrolled for over a minute. There was no way I could read them all. I did some quick calculations, and found that if each person who participated spent a total of five minutes to read his post and leave a comment, then we spent over 16 hours on his site that day, listening to him and providing support. I am humbled and honored to be part of a team that can do something like this for a stranger.

I was brought to tears by the overwhelming response of our team . . . and so was Bill. The next day he wrote a thank-you post, updated us on what he had done with his mother that day, and in the last line told us that the day we left all the comments had been his birthday – and he’ll never forget it.

Bill’s mom passed away two days after we did all this. In his final blog post on the subject, Bill once again told his readers how much all the kind words meant to him.

Once a month (or more often if there’s interest) the ItStartsWith.Us team is going to do something like this for a stranger. It’s incredibly easy and incredibly meaningful . . . a perfect way to help us accomplish our mission of changing the world. If you’d like to join us on this project, just put your name and email address in the box below. No spam, no hassle, no pressure. Signing up here just puts you on the list to receive any new bombing missions, and does NOT put you on the larger ItStartsWith.Us team (although you will have an opportunity to do that if you want). *NOTE TO CURRENT TEAM MEMBERS – The larger team will still be doing a shared Love Bomb mission once a month, but if you want to do more, you should sign up below, since this subgroup will operate independently.

We all come together for a brief moment in time, we flash a huge amount of love, then we disappear. Love Bomb.

Who’s in?

Photo Credit: decadence_creative

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment below or subscribing to ItStartsWith.Us to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. If you want to hear my inane, uncensored ramblings, you may Follow me on Twitter. Thanks!
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Guest Post On “Escaping Mediocrity”

Yesterday I was invited to write a guest post for Sarah Robinson on her “Escaping Mediocrity” site. It’s part of her “30 Days To Changing Your Game” series, with a guest author every day.

My article is titled “Changing Your Game, Changing The World.” Check it out, and feel free to join in the big discussion afterwards.

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ItStartsWith.Us 2009 Year In Review

I would like to pay tribute to all the members of the ItStartsWith.Us community who joined the team in 2009 and spent 15 minutes a week making a difference in the lives of the people around us. Because of you, we were able to accomplish some amazing things for others this past year. Below you’ll find a yearbook of sorts, highlighting some of our best work from 2009. Take a look; you may find yourself in there.

It is an honor and a privilege to serve on this team with each and every one of you. Thank you so much for your help this year in making ItStartsWith.Us a success.

This is how we change the world.

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Small But Meaningful Actions: My Kids Show Me The Way

Earlier this evening I was eating supper with the kids, and I told them I was going to write an article tonight, but I didn’t know what to write about. I asked them what they thought, and the boy said, “Maybe you can write about people helping other people.” I said that was a good idea, but I still didn’t know exactly who to write about. We all sat around puzzled for a moment, and then I said, “How about we each do something after supper to help one other person, and then I’ll write about what we all did?” There was an excited chatter of agreement, and the matter was settled.

After we finished our supper, I asked the oldest what he was going to do to help one of us. He said that he wanted to do something for everyone, and then went around and said “I love you” to each one of us.

I then asked the girl what she wanted to do, and she replied that she wanted to help do the dishes, so she led in the washing, and we all pitched in to help.

Finally, I asked the little guy what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to give us all hugs, so he went around and did that.

The oldest then asked me what I wanted to do, and I said that I wanted to spend time with all of them. So that’s what we did for the rest of night . . . four-player Super Smash Brothers on the Nintendo 64, and then reading books together (including The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter).

What struck me about this little exercise was the fact that I prompted them to do something nice for one person, because I thought it would be too much to think of something nice to do for all of us. But the kids surprised me by doing something small and easy that they could do in a meaningful way quickly and easily for everyone present. It seems they know the theme of this site better than I do sometimes. Their ages are 8, 5 and 3. I’m impressed.

Have a good night, all. And if you have little ones around, cherish every moment you have with them.

It doesn’t last forever.

Photo Credit: Soulfull

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Our First ItStartsWith.Us Meetup

Some of the ItStartsWith.Us team at our first meetup

Some of the ItStartsWith.Us team at our first meetup

One of my goals for 2010 is to build a more connected community around ItStartsWith.Us. We have somewhere above 900 members globally right now, all of whom are doing their small part to change the world. When I first started this group, I thought it would be kinda cool for this gigantic team to be working together without knowing who else was on it . . . kind of like this big secret underground thing. But as we went on completing our missions and helping others, I realized that it would actually be much more valuable to our team members if we could get to know the other people in our group and get a chance to interact with them, make connections, and form true friendships.

With that in mind, I’m going to be working to provide more opportunities for us to get together in 2010. We started last week with our first ISWU team meetup, held in Milwaukee. I sent out an open invitation to all group members, and a bunch of us met up to talk about the mission and vision for this upcoming year, discuss possible ideas for small and large group activities, and generally get to know each other a little bit better.

It lasted about 2.5 hours, and it was a lot of fun. We’ll have another one in springtime, where in addition to meeting new people, we’ll also come up with a meaningful mini-mission to accomplish while we’re together. Mari and I have already spoken about doing a joint ItStartsWith.Us / Foiled Cupcakes activity down in Chicago, so maybe that’s an option too.

Eventually as our group continues to grow globally, I think we can have meetups like this in different cities around the world, whenever one of our team members wants to take the lead and organize it. It’ll give our members a chance to get to know their local partners and build bridges that will hopefully last well beyond the ISWU stuff.

So that’s what we did last week — I’m pleased with how the first meeting went, and I’m looking forward to many more (and probably even a yearly conference with inspirational speakers somewhere on down the line).

Thanks to all who came, all who expressed an interest in coming but couldn’t due to distance, and all the rest of our team members who give 15 minutes of their week to help us change the world.

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