One of the entrepreneurs I look up to is none other than, Elon Musk. Elon believes that
We must be useful to other people. Whether that be a big impact impacting a small amount of people or a small impact benefiting a large amount of people, either way this is useful.
I’ve written extensively about a similar topic titled, Create Something of value Or Solve a Pressing World Problem to Positively Impact Humanity and Generations to Come, which I encourage you to read. However, listening to Elon talk about the simple task of being useful to others in some way hit me in a different way and made me want to add my own point of view.
Before we can even begin to help others and be useful to others, we must first be useful to who?
Right, ourself.
What do the air hostesses say on an airplane, “in case of an emergency, please put your oxygen mask on first and then on others.”
You can only fill another cup when your cup is full.
What does being useful to yourself mean?
Well, it can mean a variety of things, such as:
- Having a positive relationship with yourself, giving yourself positive self talk and remaining optimistic about any situation
- Giving yourself tough love when it’s needed
- Eating the proper healthy diet for yourself and exercising
- Letting go of anger, hate, jealousy, regret
- Feeding your mind
- Incorporating the right habits such as meditation, reading, writing, etc.
- Forgiving yourself and reminding yourself that you are human
- Loving yourself unconditionally
- Harmoniously connecting your mind, body and soul as one
Life is a never ending journey and on this journey you will always have yourself, so love yourself and help yourself.
Once you’ve done that you can then become useful to others.
You see, being useful to others can mean going out there and creating something so grandiose that it lights up the whole world, providing light to even the most impoverished remote areas on Earth. It could mean providing fresh clean drinking water in places where there is no fresh clean drinking water. It could mean finding a cure for a disease that has, in the past, killed anyone whose ever faced it before.
Or it could simply mean, helping an old lady with her groceries, providing food for the homeless, starting a school in a poor remote village, providing financial help for your family, or simply saying “I love you” to a family member or friend.
No matter, if your good deed is big or small it is still being useful to others.
For me, family is everything. When I think of the word useful, aside from helping humanity, one of the first things that comes to mind is, “how can I be useful for my family?” This could mean, when my family is trying to solve a pressing problem or may need some financial help, I want to be the one to step up and help them. I want to be the one in the family that they can turn to when they need help, in any sort of way.
When I was younger, being useful meant getting good grades, taking care of my brothers, setting a good example for them, excelling at sports, helping my parents with our grocery store etc.
Later on, after getting my first job out of college, being useful meant giving $3,000 per month, every single month for 4-5 years, straight, from my bank account to my parents to help pay for our mortgage. I didn’t see this money nor did I care, because this was the least I could do to being to repay my Mom and Dad for all the hard work, blood, sweat, and tears that they sacrificed so that my brothers and I can live a privileged life.
Now, as a Husband and Father, my responsibility to be useful has heightened to a much higher level. For me, being useful now means providing for my wife and son, making sure there’s enough food on the table, a roof over our heads, health insurance, opportunity fun activities, being able to go on family trips, having the resources to purchase things we want but not going into excess and getting carried away by material possessions.
In addition to my wife and son, my responsbility for being useful extends to taking care of my Mom, Dad, and two brothers. I still to this day assist with our mortgage on our second house and strive to financially and physically help my parents and brothers with whatever they may need. Granted, there have been times when I couldn’t, such as when my son was born or when I got laid off from my job due to Covid.
However, when I am able, it is my duty to be useful to my family. It is when I am useful that I am most happy. If I cannot help my family, I am miserable and sad. There is much truth in the saying from one of my biggest mentors, Tony Robbins, in that,
The secret to living is giving.
And from the inspiring, Joel Osteen,
Keep in mind that you’ll have true happiness, true fulfillment, not living to get but living to give.
Apart from being useful to myself and my family, my other big dream and goal is to be useful to others in our world. This has taken shape in the form of my writing to inspire others to purse their dreams, through donating to underprivileged kids in Nepal, providing money to our monks in Nepal, New York. Also, I’ve offered advice to young kids, high school students, college students, and post college students on life, career advice, passion discovery, navigating life’s struggles and much more.
In the future, I have plans to possibly invent something useful for humanity, help in solving a major world issue, and assist in making our world a multi-planetary space faring civilization, but that’s far off into the future. For now, it is the simple I will focus on simple acts of being useful.
So I encourage you to find a way you can be useful, no matter how small or how big. Just lead and give with your heart.
Give without any expectation of anything in return.
Use whatever resources you have with you right now. Trust me, you have something to give to the world, even with what you have right now. It doesn’t always have to be financial either.
Share your gifts and knowledge with the world. Who knows, what you possess, may help saves someone’s life or inspire them to pursue their dreams. You just never know.
Let us all be useful to ourselves and to others.
Sonam