It wasn’t until we started pursuing our calling that we learned a very important lesson: deep satisfaction in life comes when we contribute to the world and build up other people in a meaningful way.
The simple truth is that we don’t get true satisfaction by focusing on ourselves. Think of it this way: whom are we building up when we interact with people? We are usually either creating some sort of result for ourselves or for others. We know that one day we will be gone. When we are engaged only for ourselves, we can sense a bit of the futility of our actions, and we aren’t satisfied.
Imagine that when we engage with someone else, we paint the person we are building up with blue paint. The blue paint is just a visual to help illustrate the point. We can either paint ourselves blue or we can paint others blue.
For example, we give ourselves some cool experiences, like a tropical vacation, and so we paint ourselves blue. Then we buy some cool gadgets for ourselves, and add some more blue paint. Then we engage in fun activities by playing some games, or spending time in our hobby, so we add more blue paint. At the end of our life, we’ve piled all this blue paint onto ourselves. Then we’re dead. All we’ve accumulated gets scattered to the wind, and the blue paint is buried with us. There’s no blue paint left behind, and the rest of the world is pretty much as it was.
Now imagine that we instead focus much more on other people. We mentor someone, so we paint that person blue. We coach a soccer team, and paint the players blue. We spend some effort building houses with Habitat for Humanity or donate money, so we paint some homeowners blue. At the end of our life there will be a lot of other blue-painted folks in the world – people we have positively affected. If others have been painted enough, they may even be able to start painting other folks around them, so our results multiply. When we choose our activities and experiences, who is getting “painted”, others or ourselves?
We all know deep down that focusing on ourselves ultimately leaves very little impact in the world. This is why our happiness in our hobbies and purchases are so short lived. When we focus on others, we gain a deep satisfaction. Are we painting ourselves or painting others? When we die, will the results of our life die with us, or will there be significant results left behind?
This is an excerpt from our new book “Splash! Increase Your Life’s Impact” (pg 72). Our hearts desire is to see everyone have that sense of deep satisfaction that comes from living a calling. We hope this excerpt is useful for you, and if you want more, you can get our new book on our website here, or on Amazon.
