Pay It Forward

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Sharon Fountain
Sharon@SharonFountain.com
301-421-0118

The Message is in the Movies:  Screen Gems to Help You Live Your Life as a TEN!
by Sharon Fountain

Pay It Forward

“It's hard for people who are so used to the way things are, to change,
even if they're bad. And they kinda give up.
And when they do, everybody kinda loses.”
-- Trevor

We never really know what ripple effects roll out from us and how we change the world. It's so easy to assume that if we can't see the changes we hope to bring about, that they didn't occur and all our hard work is pointless.  That's when we give up. And that's when everybody kinda loses, as Trevor says in Pay It Forward.

In Pay It Forward, Trevor is given a classroom assignment to do one thing over the semester that will change the world.  Pretty tall order for just a kid. But he comes up with an ingenious plan, based on the network marketing principles of each person in the group recruiting three more people. You may have seen the model in an Amway demonstration. The twist here, though, is that instead of recruiting three people to sell detergent (and recruit an additional three people each), you are doing three people an important favor.

  • Giving a homeless person a chance to take a shower and sleep in a safe place for just one night. 
  • Talking a suicide down from a bridge. 
  • Set up a scenario in which forgiveness can take place.
  • Setting a couple up on a date, with the hopes that their long, solitary loneliness might come to an end.
  • Saving a child's life in an Emergency Room by giving up your turn for attention.
  • Whatever you're inspired to do.

The deal is this:  Instead of feeling beholden back to you, which is a closed loop, you open up the possibilities by telling these three that they each must do important favors for three additional people.  And so you expand your network of influence, and even change the world!

Trevor's idea was ingenious, but it had one flaw (at least as far as he was concerned):  he expected to actually see the results of his efforts. And because he didn't, and because all he could see were people so committed to the way things are, even if they're bad, he was tempted to give up.  He didn't realize, though, that he had already set events in motion, and he was changing (and saving) lives coast to coast.

We're members of the Family of Man that's much larger than merely the people in our closest circles. In the ripples that emanate from each of us, what we do ultimately affects millions of people we don't know, maybe even in countries we've never even visited.  There's just no way of knowing what we do and how we do it changes lives.

The key is to keep our vision of making the world a better place clear and sharp in the front of our minds. When we can do that, we won't ever come to accept the way things are, even if they're bad.  And we won't give up. And nobody loses for having known us.  Or known someone who has known us.  Or known someone who has known someone who has known us.

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Sharon Fountain, Performance Development Corporation
Sharon@SharonFountain.com www.SharonFountain.com
301-421-0118