The decisions we make are often bigger than just ourselves. We have the capacity to influence a friend, a community, and even the world when we start to share our personal experiences with others. Most people don’t even realize the extraordinary impact they make in the lives of those who bear witness to their experience. It’s a remarkable thing. Here are 10 amazing things that happen when you start inspiring others with your own experience.
1. You’ll heal the broken parts of yourself
Everybody is broken in some way or another, but most people want to hid their brokenness. Iyanla Vanzant said, “When you stand and share your story in an empowering way, you heal yourself and you heal others as well.” Keeping your pain, disappointments, and struggles inside doesn’t help you grow. It doesn’t help you heal. Your healing begins when you let out what’s been bottled up inside you. When you share you’re experience with others you’ll start to heal past hurts and disappointments.
2. You’ll find a new purpose
Sharing your experience does not just benefit you. As the quote above says you also heal others. When this happens, your actions take on a whole new meaning. It’s no longer just about accomplishing whatever goal or purpose you set out to achieve. Now, it’s about helping everyone else grow through your story. You will inspire others to write and share their own story.
3. You’ll strengthen your courage muscle
Let’s face it, sharing our lives and vulnerabilities with others is scary. You open yourself up to judgement, ridicule, and negativity. Most people can’t muster the courage to endure the possibility of criticism. When you do you are increasing your courage. Even if every bad thing you thought of happens you realize it’s not that bad. You were courageous and you survived. How freeing. Now you’ll have the muscle to conquer even bigger fears.
4. You’ll hold yourself accountable
When people are watching you and feeling inspired by you, you can’t just slack off. You’ll have to go the distance. This whole thing is better than just you now. Even more so, you don’t want to look like a quitter in front of the very people who look up to you. You’ll learn to hold yourself accountable, because people are counting on you. You’ll learn to give it all you’ve got.
5. You’ll increase your bounce back ability
Everyone hits a snag in the road, but when you’ve inspired others with your story you’ll increase your bounce back ability. You now know there’s purpose in your journey. You’ll have a reason to get back up again. Your reason is all the people who believed in new possibilities for the first time all because their exposure to your story.
6. You’ll increase the quality of your relationships
When you grow you give everyone else around you permission to grow as well. I’ve experienced this myself. When I started to invest in real estate it wasn’t long before coworkers, relatives, and friends were branching out and investing as well. You will single-handedly raise the standard by which people in your life live and thus increase the quality of your relationships.
7. You’ll experience the joy of watching others create their own best life
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “To give is better to receive.” There’s something special about watching people, especially those you love turn their life around. It’s even more amazing to know you played a role in helping them create their best life. When you’re vision for your own life increases, the collective vision of your circle of influence increases as well. And you’ll have a front row seat.
8. You’ll create your own personal cheerleading squad
When you inspire others with your own experience you’ll create a tribe of people cheering you on. They are rooting for you. They want you to succeed so badly, because if you can’t do they’ll lose faith in their own ability. When you win, everybody wins.
9. You’ll inspire yourself again and again
You can’t inspire others without inspiring yourself. When you inspire people to go after their dreams, overcome setbacks and live their best lives you’ll create a pool of inspiration for you to draw from again and again. The inspired become the inspiring.
10. You’ll go further and accomplish more than you imagined
All these amazing things happen to you when you inspire others with your experience. You’ve healed yourself and found new purpose. You’ve strengthened your courage and learned to hold yourself accountable. You have a strong ability to bounce back from any setback. Your relationships and therefore your networks are of higher quality. You have supporters cheering your own. You are constantly inspired and full of joy. With all of this there is nothing you cannot do. You can go further than you ever thought. You can accomplish more than you ever imagined.
In Butterfly Effect: How Your Life Matters, Andy Andrews wrote, “Your actions cannot be hoarded, saved for later, or used selectively. By your hands, millions of lives will be altered.” Perhaps that is the most amazing thing that happens when you inspire others with your experience. You alter millions of lives.
So, don’t hoard your experiences. Don’t save them for later. Don’t share them selectively. When you start to share your experiences with others you will start a ripple effect which alters millions of lives including your own.
