This weekend, I rolled off my volunteer position as Great West Leadership Team Chair and National Relay Advisory Team Member for the American Cancer Society. It was bittersweet leaving a team that I cared so deeply about, but I was thrilled to see new leaders rise to occasion.
After transitioning to the new co-chair of this team, I had the opportunity to watch part of its first meeting with me no longer at the helm. I was immediately inspired by the new energy that a new face and personality brought to the team - but that is a different lesson for a different time.
What struck me the most was a thought I had while quitely exiting the room during a passionate discussion about "dreaming big" and "making BIG ideas happen". The wall was covered with oversized, bright colored post-it notes on which team members shared their best ideas for accelerating the fight against cancer. Big, aduacious, ridiculous ideas plastered the wall. Ideas that 2 years ago would have been laughed out of the room. Now, staff and volunteers were asking for more.
I realized that my biggest accomplishment was not in coming up with and deliverying BIG ideas, but in creating a foundation for other people to thrive on top of. Sir Isaac Newton said that "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".
I don't have the brains to be Newton, but striving to be a giant seems like a good enough challenge - and accomplishment. For most things in life, we must stop looking at our personal accomplishments as our only measure of success, and instead consider that the most exciting thing can - and should - happen after we leave. Only than do we know that we are contributing to a world that will keep getting better and better. After all, isn't that they type of world we want our kids to live in?
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