This morning I got up and went looking for a book.

Last night was the launch party for my first novel. Partway through the evening, my mother found me and told me there was another book going around the room. My oldest daughter couldn't be there, so she had sent a leather-bound guest book and asked my mom to carry it guest to guest, so that everyone who came could leave a few words behind.

That's the book I went looking for.

Friends. Former colleagues. Clients. Family. My mother. My children. My ex-wife.

Some wrote heartfelt congratulations.

Many of them wrote something more. How I inspired them, made them proud, or even impacted their life in some way.

I've been reading it this morning. It's something I'll have forever.

And as I read it, I kept thinking about a wall.

Two Quotes on the Wall

For years I had a dry erase wall in my office.

It held whatever we were in the middle of. Numbers. Names. Deadlines. All of it went up and all of it came down again.

Two things never came down. Two very important quotes.

The first was from Maya Angelou. “People will forget what you did, people will forget what you said, but people will always remember how you made them feel.”

Anyone who spent real time in that office knew those two quotes were up there.

On Tuesday, September 15th, my book came out. I woke up that morning to messages from all over the world. People I love. People I worked beside for twenty years. People in other countries who had no reason to know what day it was, and knew anyway.

I sat with that for two days before I could write and share a post about how that made me feel. When I finally did, I mentioned that there had been two quotes on that wall but only revealed the one from Maya Angelou. I ended the post by saying that whatever happens with this book, I will always remember how all of you made me feel on that day.

And the replies came back, and more than a few of them asked the same thing.

What was the other quote on your wall?

Here it is.

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on other lives” – Jackie Robinson.

I put that up there because I believed it. But for years, I had no way to prove it.

The first quote you can feel in the room. You know when you've made somebody feel something.

The second one happens after you leave. You make the call. You have the hard conversation. Everybody goes home, and whatever it did to them keeps going in a life you'll never see.

You almost never get the proof.

Unless somebody goes out and collects it.

The First Leather-Bound Book

When I left corporate, a leather-bound book was put in my hands.

Embossed on the front: Difference Maker.

A colleague had bought it and quietly sent it around, to people I had worked with, people scattered all over, and asked each of them to write something in it. Then he gave it to me.

It is one of my greatest treasures.

For twenty years I did the work the best way I knew how. I never had a record of what any of it meant to the people on the other side of it.

That book was the record.

Page after page, from people all over, written after I was gone, when there was nothing left in it for them.

That book was the first time I can remember holding the second quote in my hands.

And in a lot of ways, it's why I kept going. In a different way. In a different place. With the same belief underneath it that had been up on that wall the whole time.

Last night, a second one went around a room.

In Another Life

All night, before the reading and after it, there were wonderful conversations.

Catching up. Laughing. Talking about the book, and about life.

And somewhere in the middle of a few of them, almost in passing, something else would come up.

“I always wanted to write a book.”

“I always wanted to start something of my own.”

“I always wanted to go back and try.”

It's a sentence most of us have said about something. Usually with a small smile, like it's a nice thought that belongs to some other version of us.

And each time, my answer was simple.

Then do it.

They didn't always have words for what came next. They didn't need them. I could feel it anyway. A little spark. The one that shows up when you watch someone take the leap, and for a moment, it looks possible for you too.

That's what I keep coming back to this morning. Those conversations were never really about my book.

They were about theirs. Whatever theirs happens to be.

Most of us are carrying something like that. We keep it tucked somewhere safe, where it won't get in the way of the week. And when it does find its way out, it almost always arrives in the same three words.

In another life.

In This Life

When most of us say those words, we mean some other version of ourselves.

The one with more time. More money. More nerve. The one who got to go do it.

That version of you isn't coming.

There's only this one. The one reading this right now, with the same busy week ahead and the same thing still tucked away inside.

And if you felt something while you were reading this..., a flicker, a memory of the thing you always said you'd get to someday, I want you to take that seriously.

That spark has survived a lot. Every year you put it off. Every reason it made more sense to wait. Every time you smiled and said in another life and changed the subject.

It's still there.

Going after it might feel awkward. You might doubt yourself. You might have to start from the very beginning.

Do it anyway.

Because the people in your life are watching how you live this one. Your kids. Your friends. The people you work beside. And when they see you finally reach for the thing you always wanted, something lights in them too.

That's what a life is for.

That's the impact Jackie Robinson was talking about.

So the next time you hear yourself say in another life...

Stop.

Then do it.

In this life.

With Absolute Sincerity,

Ed Clementi,

Founder & CEO of Inspired Fire, LLC

Make an Impact and Feel an Impact!