Everyday Decisions Change the World

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then just feed one.”  — Mother Teresa

Doing epic things has received enormous attention. From university graduate ceremony speeches to social media taglines and videos, everyone is focused on the remarkable or incredible. “Epic” is a great goal but all the focus on it distracts from the simple fact that you don’t need to do grandiose things to change the world.

Despite what social media tries to sell you, most of life is not an endless back-to-back reel of epic events. Luckily, this doesn’t negatively impact your ability to change the world. Often its the everyday where you can help the most. For instance, it’s estimated 1.3 billion plastic bottles are used every day across the world, which is about 1 million per minute¹. This results in about 80 percent of the trash found on beaches to be from single-use disposable plastics, such as bottles, utensils, straws and food wrappers². If everybody simply cut down their plastic bottle usage and/or recycled, this stat would change overnight. In terms of planet repair, if each of us planted one tree it would eventually reduce the carbon dioxide level by around 6 percent from the current level³. That is a huge impact considering it would only take each of us a few hours to accomplish.

We support having epic goals and aspirations, but don’t let them eclipse the impact everyday choices can make. While you are chasing your overall milestones, work on the day-to-day. How do you minimize your waste? Do you recycle? What about giving back to the earth (i.e. planting, volunteering, donating food or clothing, etc.)? Sometimes it is the small efforts that add up to epic wins.

Action: What simple things can you do this week to improve the world?

Further Reading:

1. Important Plastic Water Bottle Stats
2. Tackling Ocean Trash
3. If Each of Us Planted a Tree, Would It Slow Global Warming?