If you want to change who you are or search out a more meaningful life, you’ll need to make a promise. The promise is simple. If you want to grow and change who you are, you have to promise to help other people change and grow into who they want to be.
I know this seems counter intuitive at first glance. If you spend your valuable time on other people’s dreams, you might wonder how will you ever find enough time to spend on yourself, and so, you might feel that your own dreams will be neglected and pushed aside. But the strangest thing happens when you forget yourself and focus on helping other people. You discover who you are and you find yourself in places you never dreamed of.
We are all plugged in to the same ultimate unifying universe, as much as we are connected by the world wide web. Life is not a chess match where we influence one figure at a time. Life is like the ocean. A single tear drop which falls in right in the middle of one, will in time become a crashing wave that thunders upon the shore. Life is exactly like an ocean, very fluid and moving this way and that.
When make the promise to help other people you are making a promise to yourself, because it is impossible not to change when you’re bringing about change. It’s fluid. Being there for a friend when they are struggling, builds your soul and gives you biggest majestic wings. Having children for example, is the toughest thing I have ever done, but which is the single most wonderful thing that has come to shape my life.
Children have a lot of needs. They are unapologetic. Full of life. They don’t hide themselves. They tell you, and sometimes too often, what they want and don’t want. They have taught me that by living for them I am living for myself.
My children are too young to read these words. I am not writing for them, but in a sense I am. The greatest book they will ever read, the most inspirational thing they will ever witness, is to have someone in their life live out their life to the fullest, and it might as well be me. They need to see that mistakes don’t define them and that boredom is an insult to the infinite possibilities of the universe.
They need a promise.
They need to see the promise in my eyes and in my heart. The promise to help other people be who they want to be without judgment or interference. I learned this lesson listening to old recordings of Zig Ziglar. I am so very grateful for that man and those cold winter days. Those long drives back and forth to work, which have become the foundation of how I think and what I intend to do.
If you want to get what you want, you have to help enough people get what they want.
Make your promise.
Make your promise to humanity and in turn, make a promise to yourself.
Cover photo generously provided by photographer Rawpixel via unsplash.com
