One Hundred People Would Trade Places With You Today

“Within a mile of this room, in this swanky country club, there are at least a hundred people who would trade places with you today.”

Paraphrasing a bit from memory, these words from Paul Batz at Good Leadership Enterprises have always resonated. He shared this message at a Good Leadership Breakfast before asking the attendees to donate to the Bucket of Good Will. You would drop your donation and a business card in the buckets that got passed, and if your card got pulled, you could donate the amount collected to a non-profit of your choice. Handy Paint Products always matched the donation, and the amount that got donated would be in the thousands of dollars.

The point of Paul’s nudge hit home. It was a call to be generous and a reminder that as someone sitting in that room, you were fortunate. Call it blessed or call it prosperous or call it healthy. However you accepted the message, Paul’s point was simple… There’s someone out there who has it worse than you, no matter what you’re going through. In fact, keeping things in perspective, there are one hundred someones who would trade places with you in a heartbeat.

That’s the point of this reminder today. Maintain your perspective.

Things go sideways. A meeting goes off the rails. Your schedule gets hijacked. Someone creates some additional stress for you today at work. Keep it in perspective. Many people out there, within a mile and across the globe, would happily take your crappy situation and trade you for theirs.

How do we respond to that? We show up generously with our resources and our time. We share what we have. We extend people the benefit of the doubt and hand out some grace when it’s needed. We make room for some chaos and stress in our lives and live with more focus on relationships than transactions.

As Paul would say, we lead with goodness.

Call-to-Action

Maintain perspective. Lead with generosity. Remember that no matter your situation, someone else has their own situation, and theirs may be worse. With that in mind, quit measuring whose challenge is worse, and just be good to one another today.