It's Easier to Talk About Changing the World Than to Change It

I remember when that question seemed like a fun way to get to know a person. Now, at least for me, it feels old and tired.

What would happen if we started asking how you’re changing the world instead?

No matter your age, income, or experience, you can make the world better. So many meetings are spent talking about it, but we rarely share the details of what we’re actually doing, and we all know the world needs the kind of transformative change that readers of this essay can bring.

There’s a pattern I’ve noticed in rooms where professionals gather to network. Someone asks a surface question, and the respondent shares a makeshift mission statement, an elevator speech polished from repetition. Twenty minutes later, I still have no idea what has actually changed in the world because of them.

I care about impact.

The talking is polished, even passionate. Underneath is a hunger to be witnessed, a need for someone to reflect that the work is real, significant, and worth doing. I understand that hunger. I also know the best way to satisfy it is to experience what it means to do something meaningful, rather than talk about it.

I’ve noticed that when I ask about impact, it often leads to a question of income, and the person I’m talking to usually admits that what they’re doing isn’t working yet. Money is still the objective, and impact in the world remains a concept rather than a lived truth. They’re figuring out how to survive. On the surface, they look successful. Sometimes incredibly successful. And most of the time, their missions are genuinely worthy of the real work it would take to make them happen.

It’s important to point out that achievement is not necessarily impact. Achievement runs on an economy of attention. Who’s listening, who’s applauding, what certificate was earned, how many likes did something receive? There’s nothing wrong with recognition, but when the need for it shapes how much time you spend talking about your work versus doing it, something has gone sideways.

Impact is not a story you tell. It’s evidence that shows up in someone else’s life.

The people most deeply in the work, the ones actually making a difference, are often the hardest to get a word out of at a networking meeting. It’s not because they’re modest. It’s because they’re doing the work, not dreaming about it. They’re thinking about the person whose needs they’re meeting, and their time goes toward making an actual difference while you’re asking them what they’re dreaming of.

This is harder to see in ourselves than we’d like to admit. Visibility is often dressed up as power, and content has become synonymous with contribution. Posting about the work has started to feel like doing the work. It isn’t, unless you’re a content creator, in which case the creating is the work, not a description of it.

So here are a couple of checkpoints, not to judge yourself with, but to orient by.

This one doesn’t lie. Look at the last two weeks. How much time went to the doing, the actual service, creation, presence, or problem-solving that is the substance of your work? How much went to talking about it, marketing it, positioning it, networking around it? There’s no perfect ratio, and visibility genuinely matters if you want your work to reach people. But if the calendar is heavy with performance and light on substance, that’s information. Not a verdict. Information.

Not your methodology. Not your credentials. Not the transformation you offer in broad strokes. Specifically, what’s different in a person’s life, in the world, or in an organization’s functioning, because you showed up? If that answer comes easily, with names and details and texture, you’re in the work. If it slides into language about your process, your approach, or your philosophy, you may be more fluent in talking about what you do than in doing it.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing a win. But notice the quality of the impulse. Is it the kind of satisfaction that comes from having done something that mattered? Or is it urgency, the need to get it out somewhere before the feeling fades? People who are living inside their impact tend to pause before they share, and sometimes decide not to share at all. The work was enough. If your first instinct after every meaningful moment is to document it, that’s worth sitting with.

Creating impact requires knowing who you are and what you’re actually capable of, not your brand, not your elevator pitch, but your real capacity to help and the specific people who need that help. When you’re honest about that, the path gets narrower and more certain at the same time. You stop chasing and start showing up, consistently and specifically, for the people and problems where your presence makes a real difference.

The room changes when someone like that walks in. They don’t fill the air with their résumé. They ask a good question. They listen like they mean it. And when they do speak, they say something true. Not because they’re performing wisdom, but because they’ve earned it through the doing.

Moving beyond achievement into impact is so much more satisfying. If you need help making that move, let me know. I’d love to help light the path.