156 Who Do You Think You Are?
Who do you think you are?
I think that evolves a lot for people over time, based on life experiences
and how we contribute to the lives of others. Right now, I think I’m a guy
who cares about improving how people work and how they work with
each other. That can take many different forms. I’ve always thought of
myself as the mirror rather than the light. I’ve discovered how to enable
people to contribute to the world in ways they may not have imagined,
and to become more effective at what they do and how they work with
each other. That’s my mission right now. It would be interesting to ask
people that question at different times in their lives, and see if they still
saying the same thing over a long period of time.
What event or series of events led to your discovery?
I grew up around a great deal of scarcity. Early in my life, I found myself
on a path that people would consider traditional success. I really wanted
to gain business power and make money, because that was never in my
family. That was not a possibility for us when I was growing up. I was
able to start an early business career, and as I did that and had some early
success, I discovered that people who had business success were not any
less dysfunctional than I was. They would be suffering in a sense of
betrayal of success, where the traditional definition of success was money,
fame and power. That’s what it actually says in the dictionary, amazingly
enough. What people find is that there is usually a betrayal of those values,
and that’s not really what drives your success in the first place. It’s
certainly not what gives it meaning or purpose in your life.
I’ve come to a place in my life where I believe that this is the
highest and best use of my time, and I can make a contribution in terms
of being able to help you determine what your purpose is. The secret to
success is finding meaning, finding what you can contribute to others,
and combining those with some core passion, then turning that into action.
Those are the ingredients people are looking for. I think people have to
find their own sense of success rather than relying on others to define it
for them, which is usually the default in people’s lives.
I started an early career in the investment business on Wall Street
and now I’ve ended up teaching, writing, and speaking all over the world
about how to create success that’s built to last.