Epilogue to - “Lives In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear!”

The day after I posted this article Lives In the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear! I got an nice email from a friend that supports the point I was making in the article. When you touch people lives that you come in contact with, in positive ways, it will make a difference. 99+% of the time you’ll never know what has touched the people you come in contact with and how. This is where faith comes in. You just need to believe that you are making a positive impact on others.

But once in a while you may just be lucky enough to hear from the people you have touched as I have. Thank you Martha for this great note and permission to use it in this article:

Hi Eric,
I just wanted to write and thank you. I don’t know if you’ve heard my news that after maternity leave I decided not to come back to UMW as director. Instead, I’ve come back part-time to work on special projects for DTLT.

Coming to this decision has taken a long time, and one of the things that influenced me a lot was our conversations at EDUCAUSE last year. Hearing you talk about the life changes you made, I came away from that conference thinking, “I’m not living the life I’m supposed to be living.” I remember repeating that over and over to myself on the plane ride home. It took a year for me to finally get my act together and make some serious changes, but I can’t tell you what they have meant to me and my family. I’m happier now than I have ever been in my life, and I’m grateful for people like you who have modeled for me the idea that in life we have *choices* about how we live. I think it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that life is just happening to us instead of us making life happen for ourselves.

So, I hope that goes a little way towards elevating you today — you deserve it. In my new found happiness, I’m trying to find more opportunities to tell people what they mean to me and to “pay it forward.” So your recent tweets have resonated with me. For too long, I’ve not believed that I can affect people, and I’m learning that by reaching out I can make a difference. Maybe this will make a small difference in your life today.

Take care of yourself!
Martha

So now go and elevate others. Smile and touch people in positive ways. Be kind and assume positive intent.