I am an undeniably self-centered person. My goals and aspirations for the future are all about me. My past accomplishments are all about me. My life story is about me. Though that may seem logical, it’s off-base. My life is not supposed to be about me – it’s supposed to be about the difference I have made to others.
No matter how you slice the pie of my life, everything I have ever done has been at the expense of others for the glory of me. I have created a career path, a health plan, a success formula for building myself up to become the greatest me on the planet. However, as awesome as I may want to become I will never reach the height of my own potential without building up others.
Success in America is about personal achievement. As much of a fan as I am of personal growth, achievement, and development – all of that work is nearly meaningless – until you can optimize your gifts, talents, and abilities for the development of other people.
Don’t get me wrong – I love personal development. Doctors need to spend years in training developing themselves, so that they may one day use their skills to help their patients. Artists must hone their craft to one day sell beautiful works of art to the masses. Businessmen, athletes, teachers, administrators, homemakers, and chefs all must develop their greatest talents in order to offer up something of value to their target audience, those they can help the most.
Businesses survive by making a profit – but a true enterprise will thrive when it makes a difference. Likewise, your life will have true significance when you actively look for opportunities to engage with another person – doing whatever you can to care for, build up, and positively transform their life.
Here is a segment from Darren Hardy that truly inspired me to write this post. I believe he hit the nail right on the head.
“As a society I think we often misunderstand the word, success. No matter the means, ethical or not, our society celebrates those who obtained fame, wealth, power, and celebrity – and we call them successful. Success is often equated to an achieved status, not a measure of value or contribution.
We are taught early on in life to strive for success – to achieve this status, win the trophy, get the notable degree, land the big position, win the impressive title, acquire the big house, bring back the enviable vacation photos, and collect the cars, boats, jewels, and big bank account. And then when we are waiving from the mountain top having finally achieved these markers of success, we often still feel this stark emptiness inside.
What’s wrong? We might have acquired everything we ever wanted except the one thing that really matters: significance. We want to know that our lives meant something – that we’ve had a positive impact on the lives of others. And only significance provides us that. Success by itself cannot.
You see, success has come to be defined by self-focused achievements: a rank, class, position, or level obtained. Significance, however, is about the impact one has on others. Success is about what we get. Significance is about what we give. The interesting thing is you can be successful but not significant, but you cannot be significant without being successful.”
- Darren Hardy, Success Magazine, October 2011
