Look Beyond Yourself

If you think back to when you first learned about your future, you were probably taught to learn about yourself and what paths you can take for your personal success. Maybe you took career assessments, had a teacher that guided you, or all you had was a parental figure who said, “go find a job.” No matter what, it always begins with a self-focused narrative. Your upbringing begs the question, who am I and what do I want to do with my life?

This time of self-reflection is crucial. Before you understand yourself, how are you to understand others? Each of us needs time to be in solitude and process what it means for you to be you. We need to come to peace with ourselves by understanding and accepting our identity. But what happens soon after this time of identity and investigation is a fork in the road: do I want my life to be about myself or about helping others?

Every person has wrestled with this idea, whether they admit it verbally or not. It’s easy to tell the extreme examples. Take the person in your life who cares only about their self-progression, spends all their resources to live extravagantly, and lacks the ability to earn the interest of others. On the other side, you may think of figures like Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King Jr., who are people that gave their lives for the sake of others. It is not that extravagance is wrong or self-progression is unwise, but rather that most people struggle with wanting their lives to count without considering how they want to help other people. There are people in need that likely require a person like you to help them. It does not always necessitate a drastic change in career, it may just require you to open your eyes and use the gift you are already using for yourself for others. As Zig Ziglar once said, “you can everything you want in life if you help others get what they want.” It’s not always the end goal for you to get everything you want, but so often as you learn to think of others, life begins to look back and reward you, too.

Continue taking time for self-exploration. If you haven’t fully wrestled with who you are, start today and realize that there is a need for you to be you. And once you begin to see the fork in the road, take the path that lets you use your gifts to help others that need it. Not only will the world become a brighter place, but you will grow to have a brighter heart.