Measuring Stick
The most important, overlooked question there is.
Intro// These are things I wish I heard and most importantly, listened to, when I was younger. It’s crazy how we put off the most important questions because we don’t want to deal with them. I put them off because no one else was talking about them. I was on a mission to acquire as many personal achievements as possible, but not anymore.
About 1 year ago I asked a question that changed my life forever. It’s a question I’ve overlooked countless times in my life, but I finally decided to lean into the question. It’s by far the best choice I’ve ever made.
I’m writing this as a member of Generation-Y, now with a different perspective than the majority of my generation. Most of you will disagree with this posture because it goes against our normal 2014 society and culture.
But it might help just one person. Therefore, it’s absolutely worth publishing. //
Measuring Stick
As you read the question I’m about to ask, I bet you’ll think ‘here we go again’, roll your eyes, and think you don’t have time nor do you even want to think about this question. I know that’s exactly what I used to do. As soon as it popped into my head, I’d quickly change my mind because I didn’t want to deal with it. And since seemingly no one else deals with it, by default I just did what everyone else does. You might begin to do the same… but what if just this one time you actually spent some time thinking about this question. Thinking about it from a different perspective.
It’s arguably the most important question there is. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most overlooked, under-thought questions in our lives. It could very well be the most important thing we don’t want to think about. If we do in fact take time to think about it, we usually resort to how everyone else around us is answering it. We’re immersed in our culture. It molds us. It brainwashes us. It engineers us to a particular way of thinking. We think about how our friends, our family, our role models, and how our generation approaches the question. We look to what the current of our culture is doing and consequently end up doing the same as they do.
So I challenge you for this one time to truly consider one of the most important questions you could ever ask:
What’s your Purpose and How are you Measuring your Life?
I bet your initial reaction is to stop reading this. I know mine used to be that. Why? Because it’s too hard to analyze this question. It’s easy to just not think about it. Just become numb to it. To act like it doesn’t exist or it doesn’t matter. That’s easy, and that’s what we do. For years I put it off almost to the point that I was about to go down the same road everyone around me was going down. I had a strategy of what I wanted to get for me, but no strategy for the purpose of my life. Why would I want anything else? These are the glory years, right? Eat, drink, (achieve, hookup) and be merry!
I was living for myself and maybe I’d figure the purpose stuff out later. I had an identity to catch, and the way to measure it was through personal achievements that everyone could see.
Could this maybe sound familiar to you?
I’d usually measure my life by short-sited tangible goals. Being young and ambitious, it’s easy to grade (measure) the achievement goals. Maybe you can relate to these:
I’d measure my life by my GPA.
I’d measure my life by what college I got into.
I’d measure my life by what girl I was dating.
I’d measure my life by the girls I was ‘hanging out’ with.
I’d measure my life by what friends I had.
I’d measure my life by how popular I was at a given time.
I’d measure my life by what job I got and the work I did.
I’d measure my life by how much money (exactly) I could make this year.
And on and on and on.
Since I didn’t have a clear purpose, I would get my identity through my individual goals and achievements. It was a never ending game of comparison that I could measure.
Unfortunately, I think the majority of our generation makes decisions based off of this lens: what will other people think? How will I measure up?
There’s a reason why our generation measures these things this way. We want to show off the dollars, the grades, the graduate degree, the boyfriend/girlfriend (the hookup), the job, the business, the car, the body, the trips, the parties, the engagement ring, etc. — anything tangible that we can measure against someone else’s tangible.
Reason: It provides evidence that we can physically see — that we can measure. There’s a sense of temporary accomplishment — you’re moving forward!
By now you’re probably thinking the following:
“Yes I understand what this guy is saying because that’s exactly what I want to measure it by. No offense, but what kind of loser measures life in a different way?”
But stick with me and be open just this once. Here’s the what if question. It’s different. Not many of your peers are thinking this.
What if there’s a different, better way to Measure your life?
What if the purpose of why we are here is not to show off our achievements?
What if we’re not being measured by individual accomplishments?
What if we’re measured on what we give, not what we get for ourselves?
What if when it’s all said and done, God doesn’t care how many dollars you made. He doesn’t care how many hours you worked.
What if you didn’t let your job title define you to the outside world?
What if you didn’t measure your life by the same way everyone else in your generation measures it?
Let’s compare and contrast. The former is a collection of actions that bring us personal ‘achievement’ that we can easily measure. The latter is a list that doesn’t really get an immediate sense of achievement — harder to measure.
Former: You launch a business, finish a design, give a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted, get a beautiful boyfriend/girlfriend. Buy a new apartment. Get 100+ instagram likes. It’s a lot more getting.
Latter: You invest time and energy in your relationship with your parents, your brother or sister. You commit to grow in your faith. You begin to put others before yourself. You commit to getting healthier. You’re doing more for other people. You’re leading people and mentoring those that need you. It’s a lot more giving.
The latter doesn’t really get that same immediate sense of achievement does it? This kind of stuff takes longer to materialize. We can’t see it immediately. Can’t measure it the same way.
Jim Collins and Clayton Christiansen are two of the most respected and accredited business management gurus we have. To be extremely concise, both of these men conclude that if you study the root cause of business disasters, over and over you’ll see the cause is shortsightedness with too much emphasis on initiatives that offer immediate gratification.
Could we compare that to how we go about our late teens, college years, and our twenties? If we look at our personal lives through the same lens, we’d see something similar:
We allocate our time and resources to immediate gratification/achievement, and we allocate fewer and fewer resources to the things that we say matter most. We’re so damn focused on the immediate achievement that we unconsciously underinvest our time on things such as: purpose, giving, relationships, family, helping others, community, and faith.
We don’t even realize we’re doing it. It just happens because that’s the culture we live in. And the danger that compounds it even more is how we admire the ‘high achievers’, the uber-ambitious — we think that’s the only way to do it.
Brainwashed. Brainwashed into aimless distraction.
Clayton Christensen is also a professor at the Harvard Business School. Ask anyone; he’s regarded as one of the smartest guys in our country. Here’s what he said on this topic:
“I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life.”
That speaks volumes.
Let’s look at a simple example of two hardworking, ambitious girls getting their MBA (to make it personal, please use your own goal for the MBA).
One girl decided early on that she needed to clarify her purpose and questioned how she was measuring her life. The other girl did not ‘have time’ to give thought to what her purpose would be.
Example 1)
Sarah is a smart, driven student getting an MBA. Sarah has a very tough course load and she also works for a respected marketing firm. One of Sarah’s MBA courses is Accounting. An important class and something she certainly needs to learn to get her MBA. She spends 100 hours studying accounting during her time receiving her MBA (personal achievement). Sarah spends 0 hours thinking about her purpose in life.
Sarah graduates, but she actually never has to use accounting as a skill set. Sarah also has never spent time on figuring out the purpose of her life. By default, Sarah lives her (lack of) ‘purpose’ every single day. But hey she graduates and gets promoted — everyone says bravo!
Example 2)
Lauren just graduated college and enters into a MBA program. Lauren knows that she’s going to be incredibly busy and that her 20s will be full of ambition, fun, and climbing ladders. All good stuff and great goals.
Unlike Sarah, Lauren promises herself that before she starts the rat race, she will spend 2-3 hours each week of her first semester to think and pray for her purpose. At age 23, Lauren understands her purpose, which is to measure her life by how may individual lives she’s touched. Lauren goes on to practice her purpose of life every day for the rest of her life, and she practices what she learned from her MBA a few times per year.
Lauren has a clarity of purpose that trumps what she learned getting her MBA. How she’s measuring her life is now clear and is her guiding compass. I’d argue this is the most valuable, useful piece of knowledge that she has ever gained.
Which do you honestly think is a better return on investment? Sarah’s approach or Lauren’s approach…?
It seems like Sarah badly misspent her time, and Lauren figured out the most important question of her life.
Isn’t it crazy that we invest so much time into things that we won’t even use in our lives, but we won’t spend any time figuring out the most important question of our life?
So it would make sense that if we do not have a clear purpose, then we move forward investing in the things that bring us measurable ‘success’ and we underinvest in family, relationships, giving, faith and helping others.
Last quote from Christensen: “Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.”
We think there’s no way it will ever happen to us, but yet we go on doing the exact same things they were doing. We think one-day we will stop, but we never know when that one-day will be. While we’re ‘so busy’ chasing our personal achievements, we neglect the people around us, God, and those we can help.
We move from personal achievement to personal achievement on the hamster wheel of life. It’s a vicious cycle. But there’s some weird mystique to it. Deep down we know how toxic it can be, yet we still long for it. It sucks us in, and sometimes we never get out of the vortex. I’m not sure why, but it might be because of our competitive nature for measurable personal achievement.
In contrast, there are other things (family, close friends, faith, health etc.) competing for our time, talent, and energy. These are the areas we say matter most, but yet we spend thousands more hours allocating our resources to our personal achievement goals. Is that what we truly want to do? Probably not, but it’s what happens.
What type of person do you truly want to become? What truly matters?
At our age, I don’t think the majority of us are answering—or even thinking — about these questions. We’re just ramping up for the culturally accepted hamster wheel that everyone else in our generation jumps on.
Our heads are down, we’re having fun, and we’re building our careers—living the dream! While we’re busy doing that stuff, we dismiss the purpose and life measurement question.
Fortunately this does not have to be the case.
We have the opportunity to take action as early as we want. We have the opportunity to understand the most valuable, useful piece of knowledge we could ever attain. We can start creating a more fulfilling, loving, and purpose driven life. We can be different than everyone else. We can be leaders. We won’t have to wait until we’re 50 (or before we die) to start questioning and regretting our measurement decisions.
You can set the measuring stick of life where you want to set it, not where everyone else is setting it.
This will impact who we marry, where we live, our values, number of hours we work, our happiness, our humility, how we love, how we treat our parents, our relationship with God, how we treat others, etc.
Before we wrap up, there’s a quote I’d like to share —I added in the parenthesis.
“We make a living by what we get. We make (measure) a life by what we give.” - Winston Churchill
If we ‘make a life’ by what we give (not get), then could we measure our lives by what we give? Is something like that possibly a better measuring stick?
Give does not just mean what we give monetarily, although that’s important. Giving means the time we give. We all know time is the most valuable commodity. And we know when you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back. Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time. Giving means the help we give, the advice we give, and most importantly: the love we give.
It’s your life, and obviously you’re entitled to your own opinion, your own worldview. So here’s a question:
How would you change if you had clarity of purpose
and knew exactly how you wanted to measure your life?
It might be scary to think about this, because it would require a change. It’d require guts and courage to be different. It’d require you to be more selfless. And it’s uncomfortable because a lot of us don’t think we want that right now.
I think the way you measure your life shapes your life. How you define life determines your destiny. Your perspective of measurement will influence how you invest your time, spend your money, use your talents, and value your relationships.
I’ll close this note out with a personal testimony. I think a lot of people can relate to the first paragraph below.
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I was fortunate and had a lot of opportunity. Like many of you, I saw where my life could go and the achievements I could personally gain through hard work. I saw the roadmap. Please don’t get me wrong; I’m a very driven person. But what I couldn’t answer is what is my purpose? Why am I planning to do this?
Is life really just about ‘accomplishing’ and getting more for myself?
I thought there had to be more than this. So instead of ignoring it like I always did, I leaned into it. Below is not intended at all to be preachy, I’m just being transparent.
Long story short, I personally found my purpose through a renewed faith in Jesus Christ. This was the catalyst. With that, my measuring stick was now about how God was going to judge me when that time comes. Is He going to care more about my individual achievements or my heart and how I love others? What is He going to be proud of?
How are my kids and (future, unknown) wife going to measure my life? How are my friends and co-workers going to measure it? I don’t think any of them will measure it by my individual achievements. Because they don’t care about what I accomplished for myself. They will measure it by how they were treated and how I treated other people.
I came to the personal conclusion that it’s undoubtedly more important to measure my life on how I love God and how I love others, than to measure my life based on personal achievements.
Again, I’m not at all being preachy, or saying I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m just being transparent. It’s the most amazing choice I’ve ever made and I wish I didn’t wait until I was 23 to do it. This is the measuring stick of my life. It’s the purpose. It’s the most important and it matters more than all the other stuff. And because I’m measuring on how I love God and how I love others, it requires me to measure my life on what I give, not what I can get for myself.
(end testimony) ***************************************************************************************
So here comes the most important question every single one of us will face. It’s challenging and uncomfortable, but it’s real. It inevitably will happen. It’s just a matter of time — time that we never know when will run out.
When it’s all done, and we give the account of our life to God, what do you honestly think he’s going to care more about… your individual achievement (earthly gains) or how you loved and treated people?
Your selfishness or unselfishness?
I’d hope that most of us can agree on this notion: God is not going to assess life on dollars and what we get, but by how we give and by the individual people whose lives we’ve touched.
So now you have a choice.
You can ignore all of this, or you can make a bold decision and lean into this question. In my humble opinion, I think if you took time to assess this question, it just might be the most important thing you’ve ever discovered.