A couple of months ago I was accepted in a mentorship programme organized by the Global Thinkers Forum, and that’s how I met my amazing mentor, Annie Krukowska. The mentorship programme focuses on supporting professional women on their journey of personal and career development, addressing challenges encountered on our path to becoming leaders. It’s not meant to give me answers, but to provoke questions that I might not have thought of before.

On my application essay I wrote that ‘I would like to make an impact on the world around me’ – and yes, as I read it back later on I realised I sound exactly like the stereotypical millennial! By the time I started working with my mentor I had forgotten that I wrote this, but my mentor, Annie, hadn’t. And so, my first question/homework from her was to answer ‘What does ‘making an impact’ mean to you?’.

It’s a tough one. I’m still not sure I have an answer to it, but that did spark a never-ending list of questions for me. So I’ve decided to document part of my thinking process below, share it and ask for your thoughts –

What does ‘making an impact’ mean to you?

This is where I got to so far –  ‘Making an impact’ is about finding my purpose, so that what I end up doing  does not makes me feel unsure about whether my work helped destroy more than it helped build.

‘Making an impact’ is about finding the challenges that would push me to think and do things a bit differently.

And most importantly ‘making an impact’ is about being able to positively impact the lives of others around you, while following your purpose.

That’s how I will measure making an impact. And while I don’t know yet what this abstract notion of ‘purpose’ translates into for me yet, I now have a starting point.