Success feels good, but significance feels right.
That's the truth behind John Maxwell's Law of Contribution: Growing yourself enables you to grow others.
Growth was never meant to stop with you. The purpose of learning, leading, and improving is to pass it forward?to help someone else climb a little higher.
The Shift from Success to Significance
There comes a point when personal growth isn't enough. You've learned, improved, and overcome?but something still feels incomplete. That's because true fulfillment doesn't come from achievement. It comes from contribution.
Success is about what you get.
Significance is about what you give.
You don't need a stage or a title to make a difference. Sometimes the most meaningful growth happens quietly?in conversations, encouragement, or the example you set.
The moment you use your growth to lift someone else, your purpose expands.
Leave People Better Than You Found Them
Back in 7 Life Lessons from the Trailer Park, I wrote that success feels good, but significance feels right. Growth means nothing if it stops with you.
I learned that lesson early. Life was tough growing up, and the people who made the biggest difference weren't the ones who had the most?they were the ones who gave the most. A kind word, a bit of guidance, a reminder that I could do more than just survive?it all mattered.
That's when I realized: we don't grow for ourselves. We grow for the people who'll need us at our best.
Growth That Multiplies
Contribution is growth that multiplies. When you share what you've learned, it doesn't divide your influence?it expands it.
Leadership isn't about position?it's about permission. People give you permission to influence them when they trust your character, respect your consistency, and feel your genuine concern.
Your growth gives you credibility. Your contribution gives you impact.
Here's how to make your growth contagious:
- Model it. Let people see growth in action.
- Mentor it. Share what's worked?and what hasn't.
- Multiply it. Encourage those you lead to do the same.
Growth that ends with you dies with you. Growth that flows through you lives on.
My Contribution Moment
There was a time when I was focused on achieving?building, teaching, speaking, leading. Then one day it hit me: everything I was doing mattered more when I helped others do it too.
That's when success started to shift toward significance. I wasn't chasing growth for my own sake anymore; I was using it to lift others?to create leaders, not followers.
And that's where the real fulfillment began.
Make It Count
You've spent this journey learning how to grow. Now it's time to give that growth away.
Help someone else find their voice, take their first step, or see what's possible. That's where your legacy begins?not in what you accomplish, but in who you help rise.
Because when you grow yourself, you grow your capacity.
When you grow others, you grow your impact.
The Law of Contribution:
Growing yourself enables you to grow others. Success is what you achieve. Significance is what you give.
Keep It Going
Growth isn't a finish line?it's a way of living.
These fifteen laws aren't steps to master; they're principles to return to, again and again.
Keep stretching. Keep learning. Keep leading.
And when you've grown a little stronger, reach back?and help someone else climb.
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That's how growth turns into legacy.