How To Truly ‘Make A Difference’ In The World?

How to really make a difference in life? The short answer. Stop thinking make, start thinking create. The longer answer. Read on.

We all know the often cliched saying ‘make a difference’. Well, with it being such a popular term it had to make the title of this article to bring in readership, but really when we say ‘make a difference’ we are really thinking, how can we ‘create a difference’.

What’s the difference? Why does it matter? And how can I ‘create a difference’??

Well, the term ‘make a difference’ implies adding something of value, whether we create it or not. Make a difference means to ‘have a significant effect on a person or situation’.

It’s about having an impact, often emotionally on someone or something.

Now don’t get me wrong, to make a difference is still a very noble cause, and one I tried to develop into the backbone of what Richly Wills is all about – to cause a change – so why use ‘create a difference’ instead?

Well it comes down to action. To truly affect change you have to act, and when you create a difference you are actively looking to do something, whereas the often sprouted ‘I want to make a difference with (enter term here)’ can just imply that you want to be heard or seen as making an impact, and sometimes that doesn’t involve the actionable steps that truly create change.

You can think of it this way. There a lot of people who want to be seen as making a difference through joining protests and marches to raise awareness of a noble cause, but many of the same stop there. Once a march ends people most tend to fall back into set routines and habitual patterns of thinking.

It’s why the phrase ‘make a difference’ became such a cliched term in the first place. It’s an easy term to say, even to virtue signal, without actively wanting to really ‘create’ a change beyond joining a temporary bandwagon.

Now this isn’t aimed to insult people for joining noble protests, as it is really is noble to want to be a part of changing history and raising awareness collectively, but when we talk about creating a difference we imply not going back to routine ways after and wanting to create a lasting change.

How To Start Creating A Difference

Of course, to truly create a difference in your life isn’t always easy, but it absolutely gets easier once mental blocks are challenged and once you realize that creating a difference doesn’t have to be such a huge psychologically pressured task. The sooner we drop this pressured mountain-top mindset the best.

Creating change can start with small actions that are ‘different’ to what we normally fall into. So, to start creating a difference we have to start creating, and start doing things differently to our standard routines.

To think we can actually ‘make a difference’ by not trying to change ourselves and our ingrained thought patterns first is naïve thinking. To be able to truly create change, either in yourself or in other people, you have to take ownership of your mind first and foremost.

Of course, meditation and mindfulness practice can help here, but we are trying to ‘create’ a difference, so getting into daily actions of creativity and change is what will serve us best.

If you want to be living a more flexible life and get away from the same daily grind you can’t approach your day with the same mindset, and you can’t even just try to calm yourself into a state of comfort, as that almost just puts a blanket around you to not change, but to be comfortable instead, rather than to start looking and creating differently.

The thing is, it’s not our fault. We are often ingrained into fears and structured ways of thinking that we think is making life easier through living on auto pilot.

After all, to challenge change is hard right? Well, it doesn’t have to be.

To truly create a difference really isn’t about changing the world in the ‘look at me, I’m the world’s number one this or that’, but instead it’s about the incremental steps we can do daily, even if for brief moments at first, that get us, firstly, looking at something differently, and secondly, seeking to create a mini-change.

Mini-changes are great for us. They eliminate the imagined pressure that we have to change the world in a day. They help us just focus on a small shift in our thinking not to overwhelm us.

Why Routine Fails Us In Our Quest To Make A Difference

Mini-changes are NOT about building routines over time either by repeating the same practices over and over.

To those who think building routines in life help us be more productive and find freedom, then I’m sorry, but they seldom actually do.

They might make us feel like we are being more productive as we become busier doing the same things over and over to almost desperately create a new habit, but the blind repetition often leads us to just give up when the intial buzz or adrenaline fades away.

Why? Usually because we think the new habit in our life will provide us the better life, because society tells us to be good and do certain things, to reach certain milestones and so on. Yet most of the time we stop after a few weeks because what we really wanted from it has gone. The feeling of freedom.

Adrenaline kind of replicates, or imitates, freedom. It’s why the first part of something new can feel great. People wonder what all the worry was about, but then surely enough they become dissiullsioned with that shiny new toy, and like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome they fall back to what they didn’t want or life before. It’s just easier to though right.

We all do it, and it’s completely natural as it’s part of our survival defense mechanisms trying to take the path of least resistance and conserve energy, even if that autopilot routine isn’t helping do anything particularly earth-shattering with our lives.

We then blame ourselves for failing, but we really shouldn’t, as we have already done something we might be consciously unaware of.

We have fleeted with change. We have created the door opening for it to happen simply by acting on it, but we also closed the door quickly because of the potential fear through the door (even though the fear is actually in our heads).

How We Can Create Mini-Changes Everyday

So, back to mini-changes.

Mini-changes are what build up to big changes, and that’s when we truly feel like we have ‘made a difference’.

Yet, to just do one mini-change and think that’s all we have to do, or to attempt to make a huge resolution and stick at it solidly for 3 weeks only to then fall back into habits and give up, well neither of these help us change in the long run.

So, how can we change in the long run and essentially ‘make a difference’ to our lives?

We can apply one simple creative technique to help us keep ourselves accountable for making mini-changes each day.

I created this technique to help myself during a long journey of self-discovery. I hope it helps you too.

The Get Out The Box Technique

Think of a box that you are stuck in and you want to get out of. The only way to get out of that box you are in is to do something different in your day to a usual routine. So, when it comes to falling back in habits, which we all do each day, then think of the box and ask yourself whether what I'm doing right now is helping me 'get out the box'. It will help keep your mind actively focused on change and improvement. 

An even better idea is to create a visual stimulus that you can see each day that acts as a trigger to promote a change in thinking. Mine ended up being the logo for the Richly Wills website.

To me it has personal meaning, which will certainly help you when designing yours, and it also signified an open box in a 3D angle, as well as wings, an open book and two colors that (to me) signify change and growth.

Design your visual stimulus around whatever helps you from falling back into set ways, and make it something you can easily see each day, as a desktop background or a sticker you can put places etc.

Only when you are actively aware of trying to create a change can you then truly make a difference in the world.

How To Make A Difference In The World

Each daily step towards the changes in yourself you make opens up your ability to create and adapt in ways you won’t have seen before.

Instead of wanting to make a difference for the sake of really just wanting to be heard or seen to be doing well in life, you will seek to create changes of value in places that really matter to you.

Plus, you know life-changing and world-changing acts all start from small changes in yourself, and also aren’t really grandeur in size anyway. They can be from the very small and seemingly insignificant openings that you created by getting out of that box of routine thinking.

But what if you do truly want to make a huge difference in the world, and want people to know about it too?

Well, you are already on the right track to that to, as through creating the ability to adapt easier you also create the ability to foresee change and needs easier too.

You start thinking in terms of the actions and creations that go along to making a better change in the world, rather than go along with the notion of feeling like you have to be seen as making a difference without really knowing how you want to make that difference.

With respect to yourself, your EQ grows, and with an eye on consistent change, your AQ grows, and coupled together you have the ingredients of positive change in your hands.

You don’t think of life as following routine and ladder climbing order. Instead you create the difference, spot the needs, conjure up your own unique job, and value the variety and spark you bring to your daily life.

At Richly Wills we try to help people take daily steps (both thoughts and actions) to make a change that leads to a better and more rewarding life, that is flexible, creative, and looks forward. This could be through helping people develop their AQ each day to be more adaptable and flexible in life, or develop a thrive-over-survive mentality and learn to challenge convention and think differently, or by adding value through envisioning and ideating solutions to present & future humanity needs.