How to Make a Meaningful Impact in the World with Self-Awareness and Uniqueness

“Make a dent in the universe.” Steve Jobs

Ready to do something about the dysfunction in the world? Here’s what you can do to make a meaningful dent in the world.

1. Focus on your own personal development

If you want to affect change in the world, forego focusing on events and circumstances outside yourself. It’s counterintuitive but focus on becoming a better version of yourself. By this I mean, not merely becoming more skillful in how you perform work and interact with others, but more importantly, by becoming your own unique self greater integrity and character.

To foster your personal development, become aware of then let go of beliefs and behaviors that don’t work in your favor anymore. This requires you to do the inner work on yourself to “get real” with how you’re showing up when you’re in a reactive state – when you’re experiencing a threat response of fight, flight, freeze, or appease.

When you’re in this emotional, highly-charged state, you’re not showing others who you really are. Instead, you’re showing them the behaviors you adopted in infancy and early childhood to remain attached to your parents in order to survive.

But what worked for you as a child is probably not working for you now. So, it’s important for you to explore your Shadow qualities – those you deny you have or that you hide even from yourself because you got the message from your parents (and other influential adults) during childhood that these qualities were unwanted.

Based on my own experience, I had medical conditions early on in infancy, so I can see that I wanted to show that I wasn’t weak and helpless (because why would parents want a weak child?), so I sought to maintain my parents attachment to me by becoming “strong”, which meant I could show up as forceful and independent when stressed.

2. Buck the system by forging your own course through life

To make a meaningful dent in the world, you must free yourself from what society says you must be like. Simply look at what how we are marketed to through commercials, conventional wisdom, social tradition. The messaging is about how to look, the type of car, house, clothes to wear, where to vacation … all kinds of ways to spend your money. Additionally, your family’s culture also has messages about marriage, having children, appropriate careers, etc.

There is nothing wrong about following in the same footsteps of those who came before you. But that’s not how to fulfill your meaningful, purpose-filled dent. Instead, having learned all the social rules and expectations, follow your own instincts for what’s right for you or is calling to you.

In a medieval tale about the knights of King Arthur and their quest to locate the grail, after they set out to search for it, they came upon a vast, dark forest. The interesting thing is that rather than following any trails they could see, each knight entered the forest at a different point that seemed the darkest to them. That is each forged their own trail.

As Carl Jung said, "If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's." Your grail is the core of who you really are – your authentic self. And like King Arthur’s knights, you’re only find it if you follow your own trajectory and navigate by your own sense of what’s right for you.

It takes courage to go counter to what your parents want for you and what society tells you to want by acting from your own “center”, your own sense of knowing what’s right for you. The key is to listen to what both attracts and scares you at that same time.

An African folk tale about lions teaches us to “run towards the roar”. In this tale, the great herds of migrating animals on the vast plains must watch for predators, often lions. The lions, knowing that times of year when the herds migrate, position themselves to hunt for their prey. The older lions station themselves in one position where they will merely lie in the tall grass and roar. The lions in the prime of life who are the hunters will position themselves across from the older lions and wait to pounce. As the migrating animals move between the lion groups, they will dart away from the roaring lions, and in so doing, will run right towards the younger lions who will pounce on them.

The message of this story is that if you run towards (not away from) the roar – the thing that scares you, you are more likely to find that it isn’t as bad as you thought and will find your way to safety and a fuller life. Ironically, if you run in the direction you think is safer, things will chew you up and lead not to fulfillment, but to your demise.

These are things that may sound crazy but intrigue you. They goes against what makes sense. They may not be what society says you should want, what your parents want for you – what others expect of you.

An interesting exercise is to look back over your life to spot themes that have shown up often in unusual or serendipitous ways or topics that have interested you even though you’ve always dismissed them or ignored their pull.

For me, such themes and topics have shown up when I was asked to publish a college paper contrasting Lakota and Western worldviews, which I turned down because I needed to spend my time finding a job; interviewed as a governess for an executive who worked for the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which I didn’t get because I refused to learn how to meditate because I thought they were a cult; and hiked down a Utah mountain with two strangers (who I never saw again) while having an interesting conversation about Zen Buddhism and philosophy.

As I reflected on these events, I saw my interest in philosophy and in questioning my own world view, and I still strive to see how I can incorporate these in the work I do even more.

3. Concentrate on using your uniqueness to improve the world

While letting go of what doesn’t work for you and following your unique path, find those things you do like no one else does them and look for ways to use them to serve others. It’s like your ikigai, which is a Japanese concept for your reason for being.

Ancient cultures had the idea of the “genius”, which had nothing to do with your IQ. It was instead the “guiding spirit” within you, your unique point of view that has been in you from birth that is trying to live out its own, unique purpose.

For example, there are many singers in the world, but each one has their own way of singing and interpreting the songs they sing. So too do you have your own way of expressing yourself and using your talents.

You can make a meaningful impact in the world by becoming self-aware and tapping into your uniqueness. And in today’s chaotic and uncertain world, it’s more important than even that you do so. It will be easier to keep your ego comfortable and keep doing what you’re doing, but it’s not the unique life your genius self was meant to live.