For a long time, my life ran on one belief: there isn't enough to go round.
I was born in Belgrade, and the world I grew up in taught me to be tough. You had to be quick on your feet and sharp in your mind. You took what you needed, faster than anyone else, because there was only one first place and only one gold medal, and if you didn't get there first, someone else would. I felt as if I were always swimming with sharks. I contributed little and took what I could, and I thought that was simply how life worked.
Then everything changed. Not overnight, but completely. And the change started with a question I'd never once asked myself.
What can I give?
How can I make a difference in the world?
You make a difference by shifting your focus from getting to giving, and starting with the people in front of you. Ask what you can do for others that's valuable to them. The wish to contribute is proof that you have something to give. You don't need to become someone better. You can make a difference as you are.
That last sentence is the one most people don't believe. So let's look at why.
Why do so many of us wait to make a difference?
Because we think we're not ready yet.
Most people who want to make an impact are quietly waiting. Waiting to be more successful, so they'll have something to offer. Waiting to be more healed, so they won't be a fraud. Waiting to be more qualified, more confident, more sorted. The waiting feels responsible. It's actually one of the oldest ways of staying small.
Here's what I've come to believe. If you're already inspired to make a difference in the world, it means the resources to do it are already in you. You couldn't feel the pull toward something you had no capacity for. The wish is the evidence.
There's another quiet trap here. Many people imagine that making a difference means something large and visible: a movement, a charity, a big platform, a name people recognise. Measured against that, their own ordinary kindness looks too small to count, so they don't count it. But most of the difference that's ever been made in the world was made by people nobody has heard of. The teacher who noticed a struggling child. The neighbour who kept checking in. The colleague who told the truth when it was hard.
You aren't a blank wall waiting for enough paint to be useful. You're a fresco someone painted over. The colour is already there, the capacity to give, to care, to contribute. It just needs uncovering, not adding.
What changed when I started serving instead of taking?
Almost everything.
When I finally had a change of heart, I discovered a great deal of passion for other people. I found joy in helping someone see something they couldn't see before, and in watching them change. I used to have many jobs. Now I have a calling. It shifted me from doing what I had to do to something that feels, most days, like play.
And I noticed something I never expected. The more meaningful the effect I had on the people around me, the more valuable I became, and the easier and more meaningful my own life became. The more I focused on giving, the less I needed to take. The scarcity I'd grown up in simply stopped being true for me.
I've never been more fulfilled than since I made that shift. I'm not saying that to impress you. I'm saying it because the swimming-with-sharks version of me would never have believed it was possible.
Isn't wanting to help others just a form of people pleasing?
It's a fair question, and the answer is: it depends where it comes from.
People pleasing is compelled. It comes from fear: fear of conflict, fear of disapproval, fear of not being loved unless you're useful. It leaves you drained, a little resentful, and quietly invisible. I write about that in how to stop people pleasing.
Serving is chosen. It comes from fullness. You give because you have something to give and you enjoy giving it, not because you're afraid of what happens if you don't. It leaves you energised rather than empty. From the outside, the two can look almost identical. From the inside, they feel completely different.
That's why the most useful thing many would-be helpers can do is first remove what makes them give from fear. Then what they give becomes a gift rather than a payment.
How can I find my way to serve?
Here's a practice that takes about ten minutes. You'll need a pen.
Draw two circles on a page, overlapping in the middle. In the first circle, write down what you genuinely enjoy doing, the things that light you up and make time disappear. In the second, write down what the people around you actually need, the problems they come to you with, the things they thank you for.
Now look at the overlap. What's in both circles?
For most people, something is. A friend who's always the one others call in a crisis. Someone who makes complicated things simple. Someone who makes people laugh on hard days. Someone who cooks for people who are struggling. Whatever's in that overlap is a clue to how you're already making a difference, and how you might do more of it, on purpose.
Then ask one final question: what's one small way I can do more of this, this week?
Do it, and then notice how you feel afterwards. Contribution that comes from the overlap tends to leave people energised rather than drained. If you come away tired and a bit resentful, that's worth noticing too. It usually means you've drifted into pleasing rather than serving, and it's a signal to come back to what's actually yours to give.
Does a small difference really matter?
More than almost anything.
The effect you have on others, in ordinary moments, adds up to far more than most grand plans. One of the stories I think about most on our stories page is Divya Kaur's. She helped her mother out of two years of depression with a single tool from the room, before she'd even completed the full course. Where health is involved, that's the outcome as the people involved reported it, and anyone in clinical care should keep working with their professional. What moves me is the scale of it. One person, one tool, one person she loved. That's how a difference in the world usually starts: close to home.
Every change you make in yourself changes the people around you. Every burden you set down is one less you pass on. That's why inner work is never selfish. It's the most direct way I know to change the world, starting where you actually have access.
Where can I begin?
With the part of you that already knows how to give.
I wrote about this in my book, Unbecome. Most of what stops us contributing isn't a lack of ability. It's the conditioning that told us we weren't enough yet. When that comes off, what's underneath turns out to be generous by nature.
So here's the question I'd leave you with, the one that changed my life. What can I give? Find something you can do for others that's valuable to them, do more of it, and see what happens for you.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.