A lot of people will tell you to do what you want, pursue your passion and to live for yourself. Focus on making yourself happy and doing those things that are fun and only those things.
I think this is a completely false belief on how to achieve a happy, successful life. It’s just chasing after some other source of fulfillment, one at a time.
You will not always get to do what you want, not always be passionate about everything you do and if you only live for yourself, you will never be fulfilled.
Happiness comes from within us whereas success is created by what we do each and every day. But the best way to both is to live a life in service of others.
Now, before you go all crazy saying that you “do not want to serve anyone”, realize that every job that exists today is only there to make the lives of everyone else easier.
No one will pay for something that does not benefit them. Meaning there is no job out there that you can do for just yourself.
That being said, let us take a closer look at what this means to “live a life in service of others”.
The first thing you will notice when you start your life this way is that the cause is bigger than yourself. Suddenly, you have something in your hands that is more valuable than your own life, because it is affecting many more lives across the board.
When you realize this you begin to feel meaningful because you are changing the world… okay… maybe not the entire world, but you are changing someone’s world.
This adds a crazy amount of value to everything that you do, because you succeeding, feeling happy and living an amazing life will have a gigantic impact on the people around you.
It becomes your duty to be happy, successful and live an amazing life. Think about it, who will help more people or help people in a more meaningful way: The person who does not have their life on track, is sad, depressed and is living a sub-par life? Or the person who ensures that they are happy every single day, that they are healthy, fit and living a successful life?
This becomes your reason to accomplish things that you could never grab the motivation to accomplish on your own. The bigger the goal is the stronger your reason has to be to achieve it. And we have seen it throughout the course of time that the reason “for others” is the strongest reason.
Even today, if you look at the most influential people on the planet you will find that from their point of view, they do their job because they think they must to give the most value to the world.
The second big thing that happens when you start to live your life for others is that you feel a thousand times more alive than you do living your life for yourself.
Think about what happens when you get to the top of the ladder working for yourself. You moved up in the world, went through a lot of hardships, but did it all for yourself. But when you reach the top, what will you do?
You have nowhere else to go. There is no one there with you, you have achieved everything, can buy everything and do not have to worry about anything. Sure, that may seem amazing at first, but try to hold that thought longer: is it really what you want out of life?
Instead, let me propose a counter example. You work for others.
When you achieve anything of value you get feedback from the people around you, telling you how thankful they are because you changed their life, helped them out or just gave them a lift when they needed it.
Being at the top in service of others means that you affected so many people, that their lives changed and that everyone is celebrating your efforts. And you will still have achieved a lot, can buy almost anything and have to worry about nothing.
I do not expect you to believe me off the bat. In fact don’t believe what I just told you. Think about it yourself instead and answer the questions for yourself:
How do you feel when you help someone else out? How does it make you feel when you work for others in complete disregard for yourself? How do you feel when you surprise someone and give without expecting anything in return?
And how would you feel if you did something so big that a person comes up to you, crying tears of joy and only able to bring forth a simple “thank you” because they finally met the person who forever changed their life?
Doing the most for others means you have to be successful and in a top state of mind. But you will get the best feedback and feel like you did something meaningful at the end of every day.
Wouldn’t you say you live a successful life if you could say you changed the lives of thousands or millions of people for the better?
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