FOCUSING ON WHAT MATTERS
In my life — Every time I start working on something bigger, better, and my experience of the contribution I have to make to society increases — there’s this level of well-being that comes over me. Noticing that led me to a model which I want to share with you.
There’s a few models to general overall happiness.
The first one is by far the weakest. It’s the model that says you’re unhappy therefore there’s something wrong and you need to be fixed. We need to figure it out, analyze it, and put energy around what doesn’t work. This model is continuing to be less and less popular and if anything has created more sickness than it’s helped.
The second model is very powerful. It first comes from the space that you are already whole and complete and all there is to do is get what’s out of the way from you experiencing that. That of course is very powerful and everyone from Tony Robbins to Landmark Worldwide has used this model in some sort or another very successfully. You can call it the empowerment model.
Then there’s a third model which goes along with the empowerment model very well. This is the value creation model and this is what I discovered through my constant experience of well being whenever I would start creating some new project or way to make an impact. The model essentially shows that there is a direct correlation between your level of overall well being, peace, happiness, and simly general feeling of responsibility and control you have over life AND this will be in correlate to how much value you have produced in the world for other people. People ask me why I share? It’s very simple. It’s an honoring of the human spirit and a natural self-expression. This shit makes no difference if I can’t share it with others. It will just die in my head. Creating value for others in the realm of performance and human potential is a natural expression for me and I would feel like my soul was dying if I didn’t share. I would be out of integrity with the deepest part of my core.
So if you find yourself feeling a lacking in these areas sometimes all there is to do is to start creating value from your highest Self and purpose helps even more. If you’re feeling like there’s something missing the trap is “TO WORK ON YOURSELF”. This just causes you to go inward. It doesn’t create value for others. That’s such a psychological trap that has become not just accepted in society but encouraged and almost fad like pop psychology / self-help.
It’s usually much simpler than deep analyzing and reading all these self help books trying to find the answer. Just provide greater levels of value for others.
Want more love in life? Money? Friends? Closer connections? General overall happiness? Provide more value for others and expand and expand and expand that.
There’s no RIGHT way or correct path for this. Only you can know that for yourself. Everyone knows that just not everyone LISTENS to what they intuitively know. It’s literally so damn simple.
There’s a great book that was recommended to me by the Chief Investment Officer of Markel Corp, Tom Gayner. He’s a great value investor who has created a ton of value at one of the most well run insurance companies in the world. His whole thing is to be kind to people. He’s very much about kindness and creating great culture. He loves people. And he’s been able to live out his values through creating lots of value for Markel and for the people Markel impacts. That’s a lot of difference making and when you see Tom he’s a generally pretty happy fella!
He recommended a book to me that he had recommended to all his employees to read called “The Signal and the Noise: The art and science of prediction” by Nate Silver. For those of you who don’t know who Nate Silver is. He’s an American Statistician who people give a lot of clout to based off how accurate he tends to be. His book was about being able to distinguish what matters from all the noise which doesn’t make a difference. In the digital age, there’s a lot more information but a lot of that information is useless to making the impact. There’s lots of information on how to find the love of your life. Doesn’t mean it will help. And often the things that make a huge difference are one or two tiny little things that make ALL of the difference.
For instance in the value investing game — the principles of margin of safety and intrinsic value will make more of a difference to high performance over decades in the investment management world than studying technical analysis for 20 years. Reading chapters 8 and chapters 20 of Benjamin Graham’s Intelligent Investor will make more of an impact financially over decades than a lifetime of studying technical analysis which is the study of reading stock charts and finding patters to to make money trading.
So in this game of happiness the signal is provide value and do it from your highest self. The noise is all the mantras, positive thinking, pop psychology, all the fixing and changing, and all the negative interpretations of reality and scarcity conversations that are easy to buy into in society.
Focus on what matters: More Value to More People at a More Expanded Level. Done. End of Story.
