The Ordinary Impact

Somewhere between who we are and who we’re becoming, there’s a quiet question most of us wrestle with ... sometimes consciously, sometimes not: What am I actually here to do? We spend years collecting answers. Degrees. Titles. Milestones. Experiences. Along the way, we discover things we’re good at ... things that come naturally, things that light us up, things that feel strangely like home when we’re doing them. These aren’t accidents. They’re clues. Pablo Picasso once captured this idea with striking simplicity when he wrote that the meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it away. The line lands because it names something we sense but rarely articulate: discovery alone isn’t enough. Finding your gift can happen quietly. In reflection. In practice. In moments when time seems to disappear. But purpose begins when that gift leaves your hands. And that’s where things get harder. Because giving your gift away is public. It asks something of you. It req...

From 1994-1998,  Sprite  sales skyrocketed. This increase in sales coincided with a two-pronged decision in their marketing campaign. In 1994, Sprite ended their upbeat ad campaign “ I Like the Sprite in You ,” and they began their new ad campaign with the slogan “ Image is Nothing. Thirst is Everything.  Obey Your Thirst .” Recently Sprite has focused specifically on the “Obey Your Thirst” part of the slogan, in my opinion, because our culture is driven by image. In general, we are suffering through plague of unhappiness. We long to be happy. We play hide-and-seek with it, but it seems elusive to us. It seems deeply hidden and, at times, unattainable.  Shawn Achor  emphasizes in his books that happiness is a choice. We can choose it, yet all too often we grasp at it and come up empty. I think it stems from the fact that each of us - at our very core - need to be known and loved; however, in our image-driven, social media-focused culture we settle for bei...