The is the last post I will be writing about achieving greatness, at least for the first round. It’s possible that there will be supplementary material as time goes on. After last week’s post, I thought of a few more things that specifically pertain to becoming content, so that may become a post in the future.
So now that we have gone over how to improve performance and find happiness, this week we are going to combine those together and work on cultivating success. A lot of people will tell you that happiness comes from success, and that is true to a degree, but I feel like it is the other way around. A successful venture that comes from a place of discontentment is not really a success at all. In order to have lasting success that continues to build with time, you need to have the right mindset first.
Once you have the other tips under your belt (feel free to go back through the blog to find the first three posts if you haven’t already), these three will help propel you forward into becoming the great person you want to be. These are things that I have done and continue to do, and while success is slow to come, I am always making progress.
Define a Legacy
When we are all kids, one of the most common questions we get from adults is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question later turns into “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” when we hit high school and college. How many people actually have answers to these questions? Sure kids are quick to come up with an answer that they think is cool, but those dreams are often forgotten over time. Very few people actually have a dream from the beginning and stick to it. Most people either pick a practical profession to get by or don’t pick anything at all and just float through life wondering when things are going to turn around for them.
This is why I prefer this question more than the other ones: “What do you want your legacy to be?” I had thought about this before, but the importance of the question didn’t really hit me until I heard this interview with Dr. Jeffrey Spencer on what he calls the Champions Blueprint. Defining your legacy is not only a vital step to achieving lifelong success, it is the first step. Until you have a destination, you can’t really know what to do next to get there.
The best part about defining a legacy is that legacy can mean anything. You can reach for the stars (“I want to be remembered as one of the best presidents ever!”), or you can keep it simple (“I want to be the one that my whole family can rely on in all situations”). This can in line with your chosen profession, but it doesn’t have to, it can be completely outside of it. Perhaps what you really want to be remembered for has nothing to do with what you are currently doing. If that is the case, then it’s even more important that you decide now what you want to leave behind so that you can make the next steps towards it. Deciding what your legacy should be will put you into the right mindset, which you will need to be able to work towards it every day.
Just to take myself as an example, I have three main aspects to the legacy I want to leave behind. First, I want to be remembered as a great provider of entertainment to millions. Second, I want to be remembered as a great teacher to young and old alike. And third, I want to be remembered as a great friend and family man. As I said before, your legacy doesn’t have to be big. When you boil my legacy down, all I need to do is be a good person, help others grow, and be creative. Of course I also want to be well-known too, I’m not ashamed of having a little ego.
If you haven’t given your legacy much thought, I encourage you to do so sooner rather than later. It doesn’t have to be set in stone, but you need some end point to go to. Otherwise you just end up sitting at the starting line.
Learn Useful Skills
I remember late last year when the internet blew up over an article written by David Wong on Cracked. A great number of people didn’t like what he had to say about being useful to others. Personally, I think it’s one of the best articles written on the subject, and you really should go read it if you haven’t (fair warning, lots of expletives ahead).
If you just want the short version, your usefulness is 100% tied to the skills that you have. Being a good person doesn’t make success. Doing things for others makes success. So if you don’t have skills that are useful to others, you’re not going to go very far. The best part about gaining skills is that you can do it whenever you want. And the rarer the skill is, the more likely you will get asked to do it and get rewarded well for it.
I would suggest that you do what David says at the beginning of the article. Take a piece of paper and write down five skills you have that you can use to help others. These can include the skills you use for work. And remember that a skill is something that is difficult enough that most people cannot do it with zero training. I will go ahead and do five for myself as an example:
- Can program in multiple languages
- Can play drums
- Can write
- Can teach mathematics
- Can cook
Obviously I’m better at some of these than others, but I never stop trying to get better at them. And there are plenty of other skills I would love to add to my repertoire. Things like learning to play guitar. Becoming conversationally fluent in German. Learning to knit and sew (yes, seriously). Becoming a mixologist. The list just continues to grow.
Learning a new skill can seem really daunting, especially for adults who are busy just trying to get other things done. But I think most people will realize that they have the time, they just don’t prioritize enough. They spend more time consuming things than producing. There is certainly nothing wrong with consuming media to unwind, but you need to also spend some time progressing. Which leads me to the last point.
Be Creative Every Day
Much liking reading every day helps focus, being creative every day helps progress skills and goals. Now being creative is not limited to producing things for others to consume, it just means using your brain to do things that require some thought. It could mean spending some time writing a blog post, or it could mean working on a painting. It could mean coming up with something different for dinner, or it could mean coming up with a bedtime story for your kids.
For a lot of us, we are lucky in that our profession forces us to be creative. Being an engineer automatically makes me creative every workday because the whole job is about solving problems. For us, it can be hard to be creative outside of work because we only have so much capacity per day. It is much more important for those of you who have jobs that demand more physically than mentally. Admittedly, physical jobs can be just as draining as mental ones, so the preference is to veg out on the couch. But even if you spend just 15 minutes putting your brain to use, it will make a difference. Once you set a baseline, you will find that it gets easier to go for longer periods of time. If you can, try to do this as soon as you get home. You are more likely to get distracted the longer you wait.
Why is it so important to be creative on a daily basis? Surely it’s okay to just do it on the weekends or whatever days you have free. You can go ahead and say that, but when you get to those free days, you know what you’re going to do? The same time wasting activities you do after work. You don’t make good habits by only doing them twice a week. I know, I’ve tried. Lots of times. It never works.
Be sure to put some of the other tips to use when it comes to it too. I put a creative goal on my today list every single day. There are days when I cannot be fully expected to keep it (like this weekend where I was at PAX all Friday and Saturday), but it doesn’t break my habit unless I go for a week or more. And the more you do it, the easier it gets and the better you become at it. You’ve heard it a million times, but practice is the only sure way to improve. And the only people who are truly successful in this world are those who create products and solutions, so practice a lot!
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Thanks for reading my thoughts on how to become a great person. Again, if you missed the first three installments, just go back through the blog archive to find them. Next week I might do a shorter wrap-up post with some supplementary material. Or I might have some thoughts on my first week at my new job instead. We will see.