What's The Difference?

-Devlyn Steele

Have faith in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies.

-Mother Teresa

The alarm went off and Pete thought to himself, "Another ten minutes, that won't make a difference."  He then hit the snooze. When the alarm sounded again, he then thought, "I can skip the gym today, it won't make a difference."

Pete not only skipped the gym, he over slept, didn't eat breakfast and was 20 minutes late for work.

As Susan stood in line at the coffeehouse she kept eyeing the muffins and cakes. As she ordered her coffee before she knew it she ordered a piece of cake.  She looked at the cake as she took her first bit and thought to herself, "It won't make a difference."

John took a drag of the cigarette and thought, "It's just one cigarette, it won't make a difference."

Patricia charged those new shoes on her credit card and thought to herself, "It won't make a difference."

Weather it is that drink you take, the cigarette you smoke, that credit card charge, the extra sleep or other, the list of little single acts we do that we say, "It doesn't make a difference" are endless. Those little acts are the very things that do make all the difference. Take Pete for example, the extra sleep turned to not working out, which lead to being late to work. Today Pete is overweight, out of shape and got passed up for a promotion because of his on time performance.  Susan has never been able to lose the weight she wanted.  John is still smoking.  Patricia is in serious debt.

We didn't get where we are in our life by any one single act. It's those acts that we say ‘don't make a difference' that we repeat and repeat. The repetition of those acts is what gets us to where we are. We don't gain weight, go in debt or any other situation with the single act. That is how powerful a single act is though, it's the act that leads to how we behave. What's interesting is that as we say, "It doesn't make a difference"  -- when in fact we knew at that very instant it did make a difference.  Unfortunately, over time we actually start to believe it doesn't make a difference. Here's a riddle for you, we believe it doesn't make a difference not because it doesn't make a difference, but because we don't believe there is anything that can be different.

What happens to us over time as we don't follow through doing what we know we should, and we lose faith in our lives changing. We lose faith that we can affect our life with what we do. We have allowed ourselves to be convinced that things just don't change. In such, we believe that the outcome will always be the same, therefore what we do truly doesn't make a difference. To put it in simple terms, we have lost faith. We have lost faith in ourselves and in our lives changing.

Following the same logic that no ‘one' act creates the result, it simply puts the behavior in motion that produces the result over time, then you can start changing your life with one act. The moment you say, "It makes a difference" your life will be in motion to change. What you need to do is restore in yourself and in your life the belief that things can change. The fact that you haven't done it before doesn't mean you can't do it now. The moment you start having faith in yourself you can create change in your life.

Faith is the belief in something whether you can see it or not. You can't see electricity, yet you have faith that when you turn the light switch on electricity is there and that the light will illuminate. You can't see gravity, but you have faith that if you dropped a glass you were holding, it would fall. You might not be able to see the effect that one act has, but if you have faith you will know what the result will bring.

You must restore faith in ‘you' making a difference in your life. It is the very acts that you think, ‘don't make a difference' that make all the difference in the world.  Every time you are about to do something that causes you to say to yourself, "It doesn't make a difference," do the opposite and start making a difference in your life. Have faith, you are powerful and what you do ‘does make a difference'.