“You fill your cup not by doing more for you, but by doing more for them.
How easy is it to be a ‘me' guy’?
It’s effortless.
That’s why selfishness is as unrewarding as it is.
Significance is a byproduct of understanding this:
It’s not what you’ve got.
It’s what they get.”
-Ray Zingler on X
The times in my life where I’ve struggled the most have always been when the attention has been on me.
Self-consumed, self-absorbed, making it about me, me, me.
And whenever I’d struggle, my dad would always tell me to “take the attention off yourself and put it into others.”
As a young, immature person that didn’t make a lot of sense.
And it’s because selfishness is a hardwired, evolutionary trait.
We needed to get ourselves food, ourselves water, ourselves shelter, ourselves warmth. We needed to protect ourselves.
And while the above is still very much true, the picture looks a little different than it did hundreds of years ago.
Do you have to work to provide?
You’re damn right.
Are you at risk of being attacked by a sabretooth tiger as you’re carrying your freshly killed game back to your hut?
You’re not.
As I’ve gotten older and started to really notice my father as the most even keeled, fulfilled, content, and generally happiest person I’ve met, it started to make sense.
That fcking guy is all about others all the time.
Of course he takes care of himself, but he wakes up and goes to sleep every day with a servant’s heart.
I don’t care if it’s in his business..
If it’s with his family..
If it’s at the UPS store, making hourly employees feel like a million dollars, or at church as the usher.
The dude “helps people” find their seats when there are rows of empty pews for no other reason than he wants to go out of his way to engage with and share himself with you.
He will inconvenience himself, with pure, unrelenting desire to make your day 1% better.
It’s almost like the guy spends so much of his time focused on others that he doesn’t have time to stress about things most stress about.
The man is imperfect. He has flaws. He makes mistakes.
But he has a heart that is brimming full because he found out that it is pouring into others that fills it.
If you’re in a rut, mental, physical, emotional, or even spiritual, try for a full day to take the attention completely off yourself and put it on others.
Watch what happens.