YOU MATTER. FULL STOP.
Your Presence Shapes More Than You Know
3-Minute Read
Dismissing yourself is the fastest way to sabotage your mission.
In a quiet valley, a farmer named Lin planted a handful of bamboo seeds. He watered the patch of dirt every day.
Spring passed. Nothing.
Another spring. Still nothing.
Neighbors teased that he should move on to something productive.
Year three passed. Then four. Lin continued to water his “dirt.”
Then in year five, the soil opened and a green spear pushed through. Then another. By the week’s end, a forest of shoots stood where there had been only silence. The stalks climbed fast, adding feet in days, rising taller than a house.
The neighbors called it a miracle.
Lin knew the truth. “It’s been growing this whole time.”
What no one saw were years of underground architecture: a lattice thick as rope, reaching wide and deep, strong enough to lift a forest in a season. The bamboo had not been idle; it had been building the necessary foundation for expansive acceleration.
Your life and work are like that bamboo. For years it may look like nothing is happening. No evidence. No applause. No results to prove it matters. But the roots are forming. The foundation is growing. And “in the fullness of time,” the growth will be extraordinary.
The key is this: you must decide it matters before there’s proof. Because it does. If you’re on a mission, and the impact you envision is delayed, today’s issue of The Grip is your call to keep going.
Let’s dive in.
dear mission-driven leader
I know the ache you carry. You have showed up day after day, and the world has not yet answered back with the growth you imagined. When you’re made for impact, that quiet can feel like a verdict. It is not.
While everyone else waits and watches, The Innovator Leader forges into uncharted territory:
Karl Benz built his first cars, and his wife Bertha drove them, before automobiles were even legal in Germany.
Gutenberg introduced his movable printing press when 80-90% of Europe was illiterate.
Fifteen years before germ theory could prove why he was correct, Semmelweis relentlessly advocated for doctors in Vienna to wash their hands in between patients; he died before his theory was ever adopted as common practice.
Innovator Leaders are rare, often facing great opposition and rejection to their service. And that’s fertile ground for, “What’s the point?” to take root. If you make your personal worth ride on the world’s response, your spirit will crash, and you’ll inevitably question whether you matter at all.
It’s normal to look to the success of your mission as proof for or against yourself. But have you ever considered that the very attempt to externally validate that you matter is what perpetuates the sense that you don’t?
I invite you to use a different criterion for determining whether you matter: You matter because of one thing and one thing alone…you are here. Your being here is the only evidence you will ever have to see that you matter. That’s it. No other proof will ever settle it. All other attempts to validate yourself waste your precious time and energy.
You are more powerful than you know. If you could get a glimpse of how much so, it would leave you speechless.
Your way of being calls forth being in others. When you play small, you call forth smallness in others. When you stand in your greatness, you call forth greatness in others. When you acknowledge your strength, you call forth strength in others. Who you are for yourself is who others get to be with you. Do you realize the impact you make just by being?
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You Are Contribution
Viktor Frankl—Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, and one of the most compelling leaders of the 20th century—has a message for you: “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Life takes on fierce purpose once you see that who you are is contribution. Consider the difference you make when you show up as contribution in your home, work, and community. You bring experiences into the world that would not have existed without you.
I want you to get that who you really are is significant and powerful and more than enough. It’s time to experience yourself this way. The world needs you living this out. Every. Day. Being fully responsible to life for who you are. Imagine owning that power unapologetically.
What would be possible for you then?
“You matter because...you are here.”
If you’re creating in the dark, remember: the deeper and wider you grow your foundation, the stronger and taller your life’s work can rise.
Breakthroughs come when you keep going precisely when progress looks pointless. Many entrepreneurs face seasons of anxiety and depression, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. It reveals the weight of the mission and the courage required to carry it.
Your work matters as well; not because the world validates it, but because you have chosen it. Decide that your mission is worth it for its own sake. Even if you don’t see the full harvest in your lifetime.
To anchor yourself this week, ask:
What becomes possible when I live as someone who matters because I am here?
Where do I still act as if my life does not count?
How will I show up at work, home, and community as contribution today?
What one act of kindness or clarity can I initiate now?
You are here, therefore you matter. Show up like you make a difference in your life and mission, because you do. Will you be responsible to live fully?
Keep creating.
key takeaways
Why waiting for proof of impact sabotages your mission.
How unseen foundations fuel breakthroughs that last.
Why your being—not results—is your greatest contribution.
May you prosper in every way!
Becky & TPL Team
52 Maxims of Conscious Choosing To Create the Deeply Satisfying Life You Desire.