When we talk about success, a lot of us instinctively think only of our individual success. For instance, how much money they will have to make, how big of a house they will have, or how many cars they will have, etc. But, we never consider how this journey of our success would impact those around us i.e. would they even play a part in it? would it be a constructive or a destructive one? Perhaps it is because everyone thinks that they are the protagonist of their own story which often leads them to thinking that their success will also be defined through their eyes. That right there is a fallacy. You shape your ideal version of success from the stories of other successful individuals that you admire but you do not realize that this version of story that you see or hear is from the lens of other people surrounding your self-proclaimed role model, rather than from his own perspective. In fact, if you really think about it in your life as well, you will find out pretty soon that you are not really as independent as you would like to think you are. You constantly have to rely on other people for learning new things almost every day in life, so why should your success not incorporate a significant benefit to the people who helped you build yourself up from the ground all the way to the sky?
Helping others is crucial to your success
Before you begin thinking that you can barely do enough to worry about yourself and that others should pick up their own slack, I need you to understand something very important about life: “You are not living inside a vacuum bubble!.” Every action you take has an effect on those around you and every action they take can impact your life as well. This help to others can be broadly classified into two types as follows,
- Helping other people you do not know
- Helping people around you that you do know
For both of these cases that I will discuss below, the underlying principle remains the same and I like to call it the “Principle of Value”. While I will write more of my detailed thoughts on this principle in another post, the basic takeaway for the current discussion is that you can consider every interaction, be it personal or over the internet, as a system of exchange of value. This value can take on different forms depending on the context of the interaction, and/or the needs and requirements of the person you are interacting with etc., but it is always beneficial in nature. Keeping that beneficial nature in mind, the principle dictates that for any value that you can add in someone else’s life, you will have an equivalent amount of value added to your life as well. The value returned will not necessarily be in the same form as the one you provided and it will almost always be returned over time rather than instantaneously. You can think of the aphorism “A rising tide lifts all boats” as the root of this principle as well where you want to be the cause of that rise in the tide and all success that follows is just natural laws taking their course.
No matter which avenue in life you decide to pursue your success in, you only have to consider how you can add value in the lives of other people you do not know to set yourself apart from others. Rather than thinking only about yourself, you should think of genuinely helping others and about sincerely trying to improve their lives by either using your product or your service. There is a famous quote from Albert Einstein that says, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” You can verify the validity of this principle of adding value to other people’s lives and its reciprocity using this quote as well. Imagine you studying a concept that is difficult for you to grasp. Try changing your view to now learning that concept not only for yourself but to help explain it to someone who is even worse at it then you. If you manage to put in the hard work to do that, you will have added value in that person’s life by teaching them a new concept and you yourself would not only have earned an even greater understanding of the concept itself but also the gratitude of your student. A very important thing to consider here is that the amount of effort in the former case for studying only for yourself could potentially give you the same level of understanding as well, but it was also possible for you to stop well before that level by thinking that you had already achieved what you set out to do. The latter way not only yields the better results for you but it also provides you will an indicator of your success.
For the second type of people that are around you and whom you know already should benefit from your success but not in a traditional way. Essentially, you should not help them by giving them the fish that you have caught but you should help them in learning how to fish for themselves. A lot of unsuccessful people suffer from childish competitiveness where they want to succeed in life by they measure their success by comparing themselves to their peers whom they started out with. I call it childish because they care more about the margin between them and their peers rather than the heights that they can reach for themselves. Instead of living inside such a bubble of their own, they should instead look at the bigger sky and aim higher. And not only that, they should propel others around them to do the same. In an ideal world, you would want to help motivate them or sometimes even forcefully push them as much as feasible(if you care about them) to keep trying to achieve more and more success. Your success should be contagious to the others around you i.e. they should envy it rather than be a source of jealousy for them. So, you should think to add value in the lives of others who are struggling like you so that they can do the same for you and in this way, you all can achieve greater success and reach greater heights together.
Conclusion
To conclude, I want anyone reading this to at least try sincerely adding value in other people’s lives with whatever project or business that they are going to embark on next. Even if it is something that you are just thinking about for now, I know you will have much more success than you currently think is possible if you can just manage to help others reach success in their stories. I wish you luck and I expect the very best from you, thank you for reading!