Someone asked Dr. Karl Menninger what he would recommend if someone told him they felt a nervous breakdown coming. He replied:
“Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something to help that person.”
It’s a good reminder for me when I need to get out of my head.
One person. Just help one person with whatever skill you have, whatever problem she has.
This one act doesn’t have to dictate the entire course of your life, business, career, or whatever else you’re worried about.
Nor do you have to plan everything perfectly from the start. No need to create a business plan, figure out all the courses and certifications you need to take, or get an accountant on retainer. At least not right now.
The important thing is to start. Help this one person in front of you.
If it goes well, then you can decide whether to help another in the same way. Or not.
One decision doesn’t have to dictate every other decision that follows.
Why is it considered strange that my bookshelves are full of history, philosophy, and business texts? Furthermore, why is there a cultural push to make people choose between those seemingly disparate subjects?
If you want to study business, you must go all in on it. There is no room for history or philosophy. Or so the prevailing wisdom says.
But that’s ridiculous! Let’s put aside the fact that some of history’s most outstanding leaders were business people as well as great leaders, philosophers, and students of history.
You cannot be a well-rounded citizen without these three subjects combined. One helps you understand yourself and what’s right; another enables you to understand the world and why things are how they are; and the third teaches you how to serve others while making a living yourself.
When combined, all three do a bit of each and compound the effects.
We need more polymaths, Renaissance Men (and women!), and multipotentialites, not fewer. Stop stressing over “picking,” and follow your interests wherever they lead.
But you can help the person in front of you.
We often get overwhelmed when we see a problem. “There are so many people suffering from this. I don’t even know where to start.”
That thinking paralyzes us from taking any action. Because we can’t understand how we can possibly solve the big issue, we do nothing.
The solution is simple: help the person in front of you. Right now. In this moment.
Then, when the opportunity presents itself again, repeat.
One thing, one person, one idea at a time.
It’s a lot better than nothing at all.
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Most of us read that phrase and think it means “earning a lot of money so we can buy nice things, go to fun places, and have a life of ease.”
But what if we took it literally?
Maybe it means making good things to make others’ lives better. Or perhaps making “good” (the concept) part of your life and modeling that to others.
Maybe it just means making the world a good place. After all, we do live here.
Work is how we express our gifts, our skills, our selves. It’s how we contribute to society. Hopefully doing well at our work will let us be compensated well (while also allowing us to both enjoy our time here and be generous blessings to others).
But I don’t really think money has much to do with good living. At least not after a certain point.
That’s my definition. What does “making a good living” mean to you?
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Earl Nightingale:
“It’s foolish to sit in front of the fireplace and tell it ‘first give me some heat. Then I’ll give you some wood.’“
Of course, it’s a little foolish to talk to your fireplace at all. But that’s not the point.
Why would you expect the fire to warm you up with no wood? That’s as foolish as thinking people will buy from you before you’ve created value for them.
You have to help people before they’ll give you money…
You can’t get warm if you don’t put wood on the fire.
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If you’re like most people in the United States, you’ve taken at least one personality assessment at some point in your life.
DiSC. Myers-Briggs. StrengthsFinder. Enneagram. There are too many to name, but I’ll bet you’ve taken at least one.
On the DiSC profile, I’m a CSI, with an extremely high C. That means I tend to be:
And I can attest that all of those things are 100% true about me.
But because I’m so rigid, I tend to take everything that I learn as a rule that can’t be broken.
For example, when I get “career results” back about what I’m ideally suited for, I instantly assume those are the only jobs I can do. It’s how my personality works.
So when the field of marketing was nowhere to be seen in my “ideal” careers, I immediately wrote it off as something not worth looking into.
Even though I was fascinated by marketing…
Even though I wanted to learn how to do it ethically, with a service-oriented style…
Even though I could use it to help make the world a better place. To help other people start and grow successful businesses…
But I couldn’t! Because a personality test told me so.
Doesn’t that sound ridiculous?
Personality tests are great for:
But they do not define who you are or what you can do.
If anything, they help you learn how you would do certain things.
So now, years later, I’m involved in marketing—doing it and teaching it to others on a regular basis. And I do it in an analytical, detail-oriented, service-to-others way.
Remember that personality tests are tools, nothing more. One of my mentors, Ashley Logsdon, put it this way:
“Never make the profile bigger than the person.”
They aren’t supposed to define what you do, but HOW you do them.
This is just one of the many conversations going on in the 48 Days Eagles Entrepreneur group during our Monday Mentor Calls.
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Feeling unhappy? I can probably guess why…
You don’t have a project to work on.
“Prod any happy person, and you will find a project.“
—Richard Layard, economist
I don’t mean a project at work: one of those mindnumbing, agonizing, tedious, pointless tasks you’ve been given by your boss just to look busy.
I’m talking about something that matters: a project that makes you happy. A project that makes a difference. A project that changes someone else for the better.
Seth Godin would call that kind of project “art.” And it doesn’t have to be a painting, song, or movie. It just has to matter to you.
And it helps if it makes the world a better place.
A quick way to find real happiness? Start working on a project.
(If you want to learn more about this argument, check out Layard’s book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science)
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Some people see this and think I mean “What gets you out of bed in the morning?”
They’d be wrong. Plenty of us have very little that gets us out of bed in the morning.
Maybe we have jobs we hate. Or tough relationships that don’t fulfill us. Or life situations we can’t seem to escape.
If you don’t have that “something” yet, think about it this way:
“What would make you WANT to get out of bed in the morning?”
My “why” has everything to do with my own personal freedom.
But I also feel I have a purpose that involves helping other people find freedom, happiness, and joy in their lives. And I genuinely believe the best way to do that is to help them create and run successful businesses or freelance practices.
Why? Because it’s the best way for them to have the freedom to live life on their terms. To do what they love and help the people they want to help. To make the difference they seek to make in the world.
And I feel like I can achieve that purpose as a copywriter and marketer. That work helps people serve their customers, grow their businesses, and achieve the kind of freedom I’m talking about.
What’s your “why”? Tell me in the comments below.
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Here’s a simple definition from Donald Miller to help you understand what a business really is:
A business is a for-profit entity that solves problems for paying customers.
Let’s break this down:
Without profit, a business can’t survive. Yet we’ve tied some evil stigma to the idea of a business making a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they can’t do the thing for which they are created. And what’s that?
THIS is the purpose of a business: to solve problems for people. And is that really such a bad thing? Wouldn’t you be happy to pay someone to solve one (or several) of your problems? Of course you would.
Now, there are numerous businesses out there that don’t solve problems for their customers, yet they still make a profit. Those exist only to get as much money from people as possible without providing any real value. That’s theft, and it’s both unethical and immoral.
The good news is those businesses tend not to last very long. How often did you do business with a company that gave you no return on your investment?
Paying customers… This is the hard part for a lot of us. We’d all love to be non-profits, helping as many people we can without them paying us a dime. But you can’t fill someone else’s cup if yours is empty.
Customers need to pay for what you’re offering them. Here’s why:
That last point is important. When someone pays for something, they are more likely to follow through with it. Whether you offer education, a service, or sell a product, the thinking goes, “I paid for this, so I might as well get my money’s worth.”
This simple definition of business has a lot of meat in it. It definitely helped me overcome my own issues with making money, because in the end we’re helping people.
We’re just doing it in a way that lets us keep the lights on. And lets us grow so we can help even more people.
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