The Ripple Effect: A Story About How To Change A Life

Amazing how we learn things through stories. We can be "lectured to" and "preached at" by the best of the best, yet we will still retain so little. But tell me a story, and I not only will learn and remember, I may even act.

Here's a story that recently reminded me how much of a ripple effect our attitude, decisions, and actions make on the lives of others.

I'm reading Flow (P.S.): The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (Let's refer to him as MC from here on out.) While making the point that people can enter a Flow state when they are driven to an activity by pure enjoyment, MC tells the story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an Indian astrophysicist who's research became the basis of the Black Hole Theory.

Quick Time Out to explain "Flow state": In short, it's that feeling we get when we are so engrossed in an activity that we lose track of the effort and time we're putting into that activity. Some examples could be reading, writing, hitting pads, singing, cooking, running, or fixing a car.

The Ripple Effect

Chandrasekhar was hired by the University of Chicago in the 1950s to teach courses on campus while also residing and researching 80 miles away in the Williams Bay, Wisconsin astronomical observatory the school owned.

That winter, he was scheduled to teach just one course in astrophysics, but only two students signed up for the course. The university administrators expected him to cancel the seminar. It simply made no sense to have this professor and researcher commute 80 miles, twice a week, on back roads, in the severe Wisconsin and Chicago winter, for an entire semester, to teach only two students.

But Professor Chandrasekhar didn't cancel the course. He apparently loved the topic and the feeling he got when teaching it to others so much that he went out of his way to maintain the seminar.

Here's the part I couldn't wait to tell you: A few years after he taught this course, first one, then the other of those two former students won the Nobel prize for physics. That's the ripple effect in action.

Imagine:

... if the professor caved to the long list of obstacles (weather conditions, distance, university administration's expectations, etc.,) and canceled the course?

... if the professor canceled the course because his attitude told him "only two students weren't worth his precious time"?

... if the professor didn't love his work so much that he never entered the flow state, and therefore didn't have the drive to chase that experience despite the obstacles in his way?

There are lessons we can learn about the flow state from this story, and if you'd like to learn more, you can find the book here.
Flow (P.S.)

But I found this story inspiring because it reminded me that my attitude, decisions, and actions can have a ripple effect on the world and, quite literally, change the course of someone else's life. Going the distance and putting forth extra effort suddenly takes on more meaning because it's not just about me. For good or ill, I am nudging people on and off course with the words I choose when I speak to them, and the actions I take that involve them.