Time For A Gut Check

December 13th, 2009 by Nate

From time to time I like to share with all of you some of the mission results from our “Change the World” project. We now have a group of around 650 people who participate in small weekly missions to make a difference in the lives of the people around them. Missions usually take 15 minutes or less to accomplish, and vary widely in difficulty level. This one was one of the toughest we’ve ever done. Here was our assignment:

There’s probably a person in your life that you don’t like very much, for whatever reason. That reason isn’t important right now. This week, find a way to do something genuinely nice for them. I’m not talking about simply saying a polite “hello”, either. Try to sincerely do something that you think will make a difference in their life.

I know, guys – this is a tough one. I understand. I’m not looking forward to it either. But I think that stepping outside of our own attitudes for a short time, and treating that person as someone of value, may just open our eyes to something we haven’t ever thought about before.

Following is a small sample of what some of our team members did:

This is my first mission and I really loved it. I had a falling out with this girl and chose not to associate with her any longer. I stayed away, avoided going places if I knew she would be there, and pretty much quit thinking about her. Since the falling out, this girl has tried to upset me numerous times by bad mouthing me to others, harassing me and destroying my personal property. I saw no end in sight until now. I heard she was being evicted, was broke and had recently given a child up for adoption. If I had not been given the challenge of this mission, my first thoughts would have been “GOOD!-she deserves it.” I am happy to say I occupied my mind with better thoughts and came up with something nice to do for her.

This morning I received a very nice text message from her full of thanks and appreciation. Amazing.

Thanks for the challenge, Nate!

This was my first mission, and I won’t go spilling the details because that almost kind of ruins the results, but I sent a gift to someone who has been getting on my nerves lately. They don’t know it, which is the worse part, but this challenge really helped me reevaluate how much this person mean to me. Hopefully, I can stop holding a grudge, and find some peace in the relationship.

For me, even though the actual giving was relatively simple, the whole point was to bless someone else and find peace, forgiveness, and compassion inside our own hearts. It’s there; sometimes we just have to coax it out into the light by doing things that we might have never given a second thought to.

I look forward to the next missions.

Mine was a coworker – she’s generally pretty bitchy, never takes part in group activities like donating to charity, fundraisers etc. and complains a lot… she and I share responsibility of covering the reception desk a couple of times a week while the receptionist takes lunch, and it’s a huge pain in the ass – but I emailed her and asked her if she’d like me to take her shifts for the week so she could catch up on her work. It was pretty small, but I think it made her week a little easier.

About a year ago a very close female friend of mine got into an argument with a male friend. I sided with the male friend, and he and I were given the ’silent treatment’. What should have blown over in no time suddenly escalated after that to the point where we would not even look each other in the eye. Today after thinking of someone to do this assignment for, I chose this old friend. I called her up and apologized for how the situation ended and throwing away a good friendship, and caught up on lost time. She was very surprised and taken back, but I think it meant a lot to her to hear from me after so long.

Something I often tell the team is that, while we are indeed making a positive impact in the lives of those around us, we’re making an even bigger change inside ourselves. It takes a strong person to be able to put aside their own anger and pain in order to do something nice for the person who has hurt them. But it’s often in the hardest situations that we learn the most. Doing something like this doesn’t make us saints, or “good” people. But it does allow us to step outside of ourselves just a little bit and realize the power of love and forgiveness, especially when we hear about and consider some of the stories of reconciliation that others bring to the table. Just some food for thought…

If you think that doing small little things like this to make a difference in people’s lives sounds like something you’d like to try, we’d love to have you on the team. Just put your name and email in the box below, and I’ll get you on the mailing list. No spam, no obnoxious selling. Just one email a week that will enable us to change the world – in only 15 minutes a week.

Photo Credit: NatalieMaynor

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