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How one woman made a call and a difference

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By Daryn Kagan, DarynKagan.com 10:44 PM Wednesday, October 27, 2010

She picked up the phone.

That’s pretty much the only difference between Nancy Lawlor and the rest of us who long to make a difference in the world but figure we can’t.

Nancy had that feeling of longing back in 2004 when she was a struggling actress paying the bills by working as a temp in New York City. She wanted to make it in show business. But even more, she wanted to feel part of something bigger than herself.

To find relief from the grind of her daily job and the heartbreaking rejection she felt in the acting world, she went every day to the grand Waldorf Astoria hotel.

She just wanted to sit and enjoy the magnificent floral displays. Imagine walking into a fine hotel and seeing flowers from faraway places arranged like pieces of art. They can take your breath away.

While she soaked in their beauty, Nancy did what so many of us would have done. She wondered: “What happens to the gorgeous flowers after the hotel is done with them?”

What Nancy did next, most of us would not do. She stood up from the upholstered lobby chair, walked a few steps and picked up the house phone.

It was such an easy thing to do. She had no idea she was about to change thousands of lives, including her own.

“I was wondering if you could connect me with whoever is responsible for the hotel flowers,” she asked the operator, not even knowing the proper title of whom to ask for.

Before she knew it, Nancy was talking to someone who said she had no idea what happened to the flowers after they left the lobby, but she would find out.

That was enough for Nancy to blurt out, “If you give them to me, I think I will take them somewhere. I’ll take them to a hospital or something. I just really think we shouldn’t throw them out.”

How’s that for a not-so-well-thought-out sales pitch? It might not have sounded brilliant, but it was enough.

“The next week I had $2,000 worth of pink flowers and a bit more of a plan,” Nancy said.

Nancy broke the flowers down into smaller bouquets and delivered them to patients at a New York City hospital.

With that, the Flower Power Foundation blossomed.

Today the organization has re-purposed more than $2.5 million dollars worth of flowers in New York and Los Angeles. Flowers are donated to the foundation after big weddings, charity dinners and corporate events. The foundation then repurposes the flowers and delivers them to hospitals, nursing homes, VA centers and hospice centers.

Nancy and her team of volunteers have one job — to deliver joy.

“I’ve seen thousands of people transformed before my eyes,” she marvels. “All over a simple bouquet of flowers that originally would’ve been thrown out.”

And all that joy happens because one woman picked up the phone. She was on the path to making a difference when most of us would still be sitting in the lobby chair, listening to the negative voices in our head: “I can’t make a difference because I don’t have enough money, enough know-how, enough power.”

It’s time to say, “Enough of that.”

“Listen to your heart,” Nancy says. “Stop listening to your head.”

So the next time you have some far-fetched idea to make the world a better place, be like Nancy. Go pick up the phone.

Daryn Kagan is the creator and host of DarynKagan.com, an online community that features a daily Web cast of inspirational stories. The former CNN anchor and news reporter is the author of “What’s Possible! 50 True Stories of People Who Dared To Dream They Could Make a Difference.”

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