Do the Right Thing

Why?

Imagine a world where everyone did the right thing.

No cheating, stealing, deceit, murder. Neighbors helping each other, strangers being kind. Corporations putting people before profit, producing quality products ever cheaper, prioritizing customer service, and stewarding a healthy environment by ensuring their waste didn’t produce harmful effluents.

Why would people do this? Why would corporations do this?

The more important question is: How can we inspire, support, reward others for doing the right thing?

It happens from the ground up. Personal examples… inspiration in the moment, not through grand acts but small gestures. Showing others how good it feels to do the right thing.

In our memoir work we’ve discovered/invented something we call The Fourth Act Effect. This describes our influence on others, while we live and after we’re gone. We’ve all benefitted from the kindness and wisdom of others, and we’ve contributed to the wellbeing of others. But something significant changes when we become CONSCIOUS of this and especially when we embrace the ripple effect of our actions.

In fact, the smallest actions can reverberate for years, accumulating immense value. for hundreds, thousands of people we will never meet.

My partner Chris and I are now writing a book about this, full of inspirational every day stories. Got any?

Most of us have a few. We invite you to submit them, you can send them via COMMENT, and we will select some for the book. We will also post them here so other readers can enjoy the inspiration of everyday actions of ordinary people doing the right thing.

We expect our book will stimulate interest in The Fourth Act Effect and hopefully inspire those who read and hear about it to become more deliberate and consistent with the positive actions they take to help others.

Here’s an example of the kind of story we are looking for:

Joan was raising three young children without a partner. The bills were piling up, and she felt overwhelmed, depressed, and frightened about how she would manage it all.

One afternoon, she went to a fabric store to buy sewing supplies for a little dress she was making for her two-year-old. Standing in the thread aisle trying to choose a color, she felt as though a dark cloud had settled around her.

Then she heard a woman speaking on the phone in the next aisle. Joan could not see her or make out much of the conversation, but she could feel the extraordinary love, patience, and care in the woman’s voice. Something in its tone reached through Joan’s despair.

“It felt as though she were talking to me,” Joan remembered. “As if she knew what I was going through and was telling me that everything was going to be all right.”

When the call ended, Joan tried to follow the woman out of the store, but she had disappeared before Joan reached the door. Joan stood there smiling, feeling as though the sun had suddenly emerged from behind a cloud and was shining directly into her soul.

“I never even saw her,” Joan recalled. “I thought maybe she was an angel.”

Let us know. Especially about those small incidents that had a big impact.