What is "making an impact"?

I wanted to pose a question to you, because it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. In my definition of life success, I have 6 pillars that function independently and contribute to overall success which are health, wealth, lifestyle, love, integrity, and Impact! I’m having a tough time quantifying exactly what is “making an impact”.

There are a few different ways to think about it, and the first way is to think about people and their life path as a river, and as someone who is impactful. You can either serve as the banks of the river that helps guide the water where it needs to go, or you can focus in on the individual drops over the waterfall. It’s a trade-off between helping many people in a smaller way, or a few people in a very individualized way. Neither is better, but both are different.

When I posed this question in the Self Improvement Accountability Group, I heard other interesting perspectives that were also centered around improving the well-being of individual people. And we realized, making an impact doesn’t need to involve people. The same applies to animals, environment, resources, and so many other things. But, I do find it interesting that we are so people-centric when it comes to “making an impact”.

And then, how can impact be measured? I always thought that the validation of someone telling me I made an impact was the level of impact I wanted to attain, and how I would measure it, but a lot of times we do great and impactful things that go unrecognized..