The Surprising Secret To Changing The World
Introduction
The more you want to impact the rest of the world, the less you have to think about others. In fact, the more you want to impact the rest of the world, the more you need to think about yourself.
“I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” — Martin Luther
The cause, effect and drive that ends up creating the outcome of changing a large number of individuals at a global scale, is driven by a tireless machine that’s constantly looking to expand — the machine known as the individual self, driven to maximize it’s potential.
The secret is that you need to continually work on you, more than anything, and not only maximize your potential, but recognize that you have unlimited potential, and continually strive to expand your personal growth so that you:
- Raise your consciousness (Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa).
- Pick the right craft — the craft you were born to practice (code for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg).
- Become so good you’re able to transcend your field and re-write it’s rules (Elon Musk with Tesla’s electric car).
- Arrive at a state I call ‘voracious enthusiasm’, which transforms the context of your ‘work’ into riveting fun, which creates an endless drive and energy that makes you hungry to live every moment at your best (all of them who live what they do without working a day in their lives).
Radical commitment to one’s self, or ‘radical selfishness (in a good way)’ is disguised as “improving the world” or “serving others” when in fact it’s simple natural selection that drives someone to be so good at something thereby making them feel called by duty to touch as many people as possible.
Elon Musk is so good that he’s able to give back.
Mark Zuckerberg is so good that he’s able to give back.
But giving back isn’t what drove them to achieve the result that actually creates the giving back.
How do I know this? Because the people they serve are also inherently selfish, and are allowing themselves to be touched. They also only care because it’s best for them.
If you don’t believe me, ask the hundreds of failed company founders and non profit launchers who made a product or service no one cared for.
The inner force, drive and everything that makes you (and Zuck and Musk), voraciously enthusiastic, is a selfish one — a commitment to one’s self.
A drive to be excellent.
The by-product of that achievement becomes work that reaches people.
This isn’t a bad thing and like many terms and concepts, we misunderstand them.
And finally — this isn’t to be a negative piece by any means though I know some will choose to perceive it that way.
What Do You Think Drives People to Change The World?
What does ‘changing the world’ even mean?
In today’s world, we usually use it in the context of work we do and becoming our best.
Do people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk first set out to ‘change the world’? Or are they on a journey to be their best?
The drives and motivations of what it’s taken people like Mark Zuckerberg (moving forward referred to as Zuck) and Elon Musk (later referred to as Musk) that gives them the drive and motivation to “connect the world” for Zuck and “solve mankind’s biggest challenges” for Musk.
It’s a combination of a commitment to one’s self, a radical selfishness, that’s committed to maximize it’s own potential, with the by product of it’s impact being how others (the world) adopts your effect.
My Quick Story and Inspiration For the Piece
When I write something, I feel like I’m on top of the world. It’s an indescribable fire that makes me voracious every second during it’s activity.
Driven to read and write, learn and create.
Sharing it with others is what makes it meaningful because relationship makes it meaningful. Without relationship to other people, nothing matters.
Why? Because the human species is successful because of cooperating in large numbers. If we didn’t have the capacity to cooperate with relationship, natural selection would have killed us long ago.
When I’m about to hit publish, I feel as though I’m in outer space, looking at the Earth and physically pushing the globe making a dent in the world.
I believe I was born to write and want to do nothing more as I watch myself become my best.
This is all the wealth I need, and this is all the wealth Zuck and Musk need.
They were never driven by money.
Zuck turned down $1 billion without an ounce of doubt and Musk put down his hard earned life savings of $180 million to save his company.
I now feel like this and believe this is the cause and creator of the massive impact that I’ll eventually make, with financial representation which will follow.
For millennia the sages have said to serve others to make yourself passionate and this has been misunderstood and weakened many emotionally.
I don’t say this as a philosophical statement, I say it as a fact.
For example, when we hold back to save someone’s feelings, we do them a disservice by not teaching them and generations of people have been affected by it — myself included until now.
Serve others to make yourself committed, they say. That’s a recipe for decay, not evolution— which is what we’re witnessing in the world today.
That is absolutely not to say to not be compassionate or sensitive. Use compassion to be understanding, but more truthful.
Use sensitivity, to deliver intelligent communication.
We’re wired to survive selfishly first, and serving others facilitates that survival.
If we weren’t wired and driven for survival, serving others would serve no purpose and we therefore wouldn’t do it.
When we reach this state of self-commitment and see the fruits of it’s labor, life becomes so exciting and fulfilling, and the journey becomes it’s own reward — voracious enthusiasm itself is the rewarding vehicle.
You live each moment and show up each day and you’re time is slowed down because it’s so meaningful.
The good news is, when we maximize our potential, we make the biggest impact on others, often for progress and for the better (though this can always be debated) and of course, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are larger than life examples who have changed the world.
I’m pointing out their ‘why’, is not outside (humanity, connecting people) but inside (affect as many as I can, growth to be my best) — which leads to their most effective and ultimate result.
I weave in my own life lessons and how I went from entrepreneurship to writing, and finally provide you the 3 step process that I used, and what pioneering psychologist, Dr. Mihaly Cziksentmihaly prescribes to creating your own ‘Voracious Enthusiasm’, the inner drive of personal expansion needed to be driven to do something ‘voraciously’ enough on a daily basis, which is ultimately needed to create something so bold that it changes the world.
In this context, I define ‘voracious’ as a state that’s hungered for, a yearning to exist and get better. It may not be exactly correct. I just happen to love the word and it captures exactly how I feel when I read and write.
I don’t want it to end.
I gobble up every second.
I taste every second like I’m breaking a three day fast.
- **Also, I am not a ‘professional’ psychologist or psychiatrist though I’ve read hundreds of books way beyond the basics of what an undergraduate or graduate degree in the subject would give you, and I’ve been coached by a a PHD in organizational psychology for the last two years. I’ll also point out the work experience of hiring and firing over 100 people in a leadership position at a company, leading teams to accomplishing financial goals and leading people to career fulfillment has provided a real world understanding of people’s drives and motivations. So much so that I now coach high performers for a living. Nonetheless, please recognize that this is still just my point of view.***
And finally:
Any breakthrough in science is likely to come from outside the system. “Experts” are the most thoroughly familiar with the developed knowledge inside the prescribed boundaries of a given science.
— Dr. Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS and author of Psycho-Cybernetics; a pioneering book that’s sold 30 million copies.
First
What makes the biggest change agents driven enough to think so big to believe they can change the world in the first place?
What makes them believe they’re capable of something so bold as making our massive world of 7 billion people a different place than it was before?
What drove Mark Zuckerberg bold to “connect the world” and what drives Elon Musk to take on humanity’s biggest challenges like energy and outer space?
The effect is how you’re doing what you do, and the cause is why.
The simple yet profound secret is the local context that transforms what appears to be “working hard” into the experience of “riveting fun” — voracious enthusiasm.
It becomes working each day without working a day in your life.
Your work is experienced as an extension of yourself, inspired and excitedly driven to be your best — using your chosen vocation or craft as a vehicle to maximize your potential at faster and faster rates.
When you watch your own growth improve faster and faster, and begin seeing feedback faster and faster, you continue to accelerate personal growth which produces more game changing work that eventually spreads to affect others.
This is true because people also share for selfish reasons. Whether it’s word of mouth marketing because they’ve discovered something cool or share an article because it represents what they stand for.
Sharing isn’t caring about the other. Sharing is selfish.
Natural selection at it’s best. Selfish people selling to selfish people.
1. The First Step To Achieving Voracious Enthusiasm
“Selfish genes actually explain altruistic individuals, and to me that’s crystal clear.” —Dr. Richard Dawkins; Legendary biologist and author of The Selfish Gene
Recognize and embrace your selfishness and appreciate that it’s good for you.
This is not a bad thing and need not be suppressed, but rather embraced.
We’re selfish organisms wired to survive and are the result of 4 billion years of genetic success. Go with the tide, don’t resist it.
Resisting natural selection never works, and is a recipe for failure.
Zuckerberg and Musk (and all of us) are fundamentally selfish and aren’t driven by external things like ‘connecting the world’ as much as we’d like to believe we are.
They’re driven intrinsically by emotions that strike deep chords they’ve made meaningful— mostly based on past suffering (this is common).
It’s the result of an inner drive that comes from strong beliefs and their own conviction — and the confidence to believe that they can pull off ideas so big (whatever they may be) to feed their quest to be their best.
Elon Musk can start anything, he’d do it huge.
Others may attack the same problem and do it 10,000 times smaller.
The only difference, the perception of their size, capacity, belief and confidence.
***A quick note: the purpose of the piece isn’t to knock Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or say that all humans are bad because they’re selfish. I’m being factual and pointing out a hard truth I’ve realized recently about human nature. Many people will get hot and bothered by this or say it’s not PC to acknowledge the way I write about these truths. I’m not even saying that we shouldn’t actively change them given our ability as sentient beings blessed with the light of consciousness. What I am saying however is that 95% of our actions are unconscious, and we’re wired and therefore driven by selfishness in general.***
Noting further that it was also Dr. Richard Dawkins who said:
“Let us try and teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to. Because we may then have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”
Back to our scheduled programming:
2. Following Your Individually Unique Inclination — The Second Step
It Starts Here: You Must Do What You Can’t Not Do
“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your life’s task. What you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live. In childhood, this force was clear to you, it directed you toward activities and subjects that fit your activities and inclinations that sparked a curiosity that was deep and primal. In the intervening years, the force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers. This can be the source of your unhappiness. Your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique. The first move toward mastery is always inward. Learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force. Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place.” Robert Greene, Author of Mastery
What Green is saying is you’re biologically wired to be great at something and connected to it more than any other activity. This is what makes you genetically unique to the 7 billion other people on the planet, who, a long with you, play a role in the cooperative natural selection process that makes humans the winning species.
It’s not about EQ or IQ, but individuality.
So everyone’s not smart or dumb. Everyone’s just great at one thing (or type of thing).
He quotes the ancient Greek poet Pindar and paraphrases:
“You are born with a particular make up and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become — an individual, a Master.
This force is what celebrates the individual differences in us and was easy to know as a child.
It may be an activity you endlessly wondered about or were drawn to you too over the years and has always remained an itch you wanted to scratch.
You must be selfish in making this choice of what to commit your life to because it needs to be something you’re exceptional at.
You must not feel guilt and push aside the naysayers like parents and peers who tell you to play it safe or take a different path.
I did that for four years and it costed me. You must find the courage to follow this calling if you want to tap into the day to day drive and enthusiasm that’s necessary for masterful work and becoming the best.
It doesn’t need to be today, or now. Take your time. It took me three different companies to build the confidence and courage to know I need to write.
This is why Greene concludes:
Becoming Your Best And Changing The World
Being the best at what you do in a crowded world requires this deep connection to your craft so your work doesn’t feel like work.
Not mentioning, you spend a third of your life ‘working’, it’s a shame if it’s not fun and enjoyable.
It’s hard enough rising above “the rest”, it takes being connected to your craft to rise above the best.
You need every inch, and as we just read, it begins with following that deep inclination and activity that sparks the emotions of love and peace within yourself, which ultimately manifests in your work which others then feel.
I’m talking about the 1% or .1%. How do you compete with them?
These people work on what they can’t not do.
For me, it’s been writing and reading. I can’t not do it.
I’ve never been able to during my entrepreneurial journey of five years thus far.
There were signs of it as a child, but it lay dormant most of my life. In the early years until not too recently, I was simply focused on following the path that myself and my parents thought was right.
There was really nothing else to worry about. Go to college to make money. Call me a late bloomer.
I began noticing the writing bug after my first try at a company I’d just shut down. As I was starting my second year of full-time entrepreneurship, I got lost in books, voraciously trying to take in as much as I could.
I realized I’d learned so much from even that one experience trying to launch a big idea fast, and could perhaps give back with many of my lessons.
I began noticing that writing took me to another place. I began to notice how good at it I was and how fast I was improving.
One day, I was walking in the park with my parents dog and got this burning sensation, the “fire in the belly” people talk about.
I finally learned what that was and I’d never felt like it before. It took over my entire body. I went home and read and wrote in the deepest flow I’d ever been in. I was so excited about what was happening I couldn’t contain it.
I knew I’d discovered something, but in hindsight I didn’t quite know what at the time.
That day’s outward manifestation inspired in me the activity of reading and writing. As in, I felt called to immediately go read and write. A thirst for humanity was it’s result, and I wanted to know everything. The insatiable activity I can endlessly do without a moment of it being considered ‘work’, that inspired insatiable energy all day everyday.
The mistake I ended up making from that day was I didn’t channel that calling into myself and that activity, as in, I wasn’t selfish about it.
Rather, I channeled it into the other external forces I was already being controlled by.
I was all in on the path of fast growth technology start ups, so my takeaway from it was:
“I enjoy practicing productivity, personal growth and philosophy, so I should make productivity apps (which evolved into learning software) to help people in the best way I know how.”
Though I’m a productivity nerd and love optimizing everything about myself (what I read and write most about), the activity I channeled it to was the wrong one. The activity of selling software to large enterprises didn’t make me voraciously enthusiastic.
Had I been called to code (Zuckerberg), perhaps it would have been a different story.
It didn’t make me want to tear up each and every day. It still took immense amounts of willpower to show up and that ultimately never lasts if you want to do something that fulfills you each day and brings out your absolute best.
So I made two mistakes:
- One, the activity of selling software wasn’t my uniquely decided talent (I don’t code).
- Two, I was thinking about ‘serving others’ incorrectly. I was thinking I need to help people for it’s own sake and that that would make me enthusiastic and voracious about my work each day. But that was incorrect.
I need to practice the activity I’m best at and enjoy the most, so I can wake up daily feeling my best so becoming my best for that day results in becoming the only ultimate goal.
When this flywheel gains momentum, and you begin expanding at faster and faster rates, you begin to see evidence of the unlimited potential you have within you (and eventually the capacity and belief to create change at a global scale) and your belief of what’s possible goes through the roof.
This is what will have me ultimately make the biggest impact on humanity — maximizing my own potential.
I’ve realized not being selfish and doing what’s fatefully mine, has held me back — and it likely holds others back.
And it’s this selfishness that makes the human being have unlimited potential.
This is important because this is what makes “work” enjoyable, and it’s about me (or you).
“The neurochemistry that drives animals to promote their genes is what drives you to care about your legacy. Understanding that is important to your happiness.” — Dr. Loretta Breuning
So We Know How To Pick Our Activity, But What Creates The Endless Enthusiasm That’s ‘Voracious’?
Now that we know Mark Zuckerberg is not driven to serve humanity by being motivated to “connect the world”, how is he driven?
When someone says a problem pisses them off so bad, they want to commit themselves to solving it, they’re committing to their own (selfish) emotion.
Not because of those who suffer (though re-contextualizing it to touch and impact others does make it meaningful, their intent and drive still comes from overcoming personal challenge and making a difference, for themselves and their fulfillment to live a meaningful life). The result becomes people being changed.
So the next time someone says they care about the future of humanity and want to make a dent in it for the better, what they don’t know yet or will learn the hard way is they need to do something that’s expansive of themselves first, so they can become good enough for enough people to notice and care.
Because the people being impacted are selfish too, and will only care about what you’re doing if it helps them, immediately.
So for Zuckerberg, when he said:
What that meant for when he first started Facebook was: “I’m the best coder and maker of software, and girls didn’t like me, so I used that skill to create a site so girls would like me.”
This is well known as Zuck’s initial motivation and it’s not a big deal or uncommon.
Most of mens motivation is driven to find a mate, and it’s a huge fear to never attract one.
As he evolved and attracting mates was satisfied, he went beyond girls for everyone around him at his college.
As he surpassed his college and evolved further, it became all colleges in America.
As he surpassed college students across America, he evolved further and it then became “I want to connect the world” which is every great mans primal conquest which is to ‘leave a legacy’ or ‘change the world’.
This is why Zuckerberg has never worked a day in his life and the best performers never do. They just have voracious enthusiasm and then their primitive nature takes over them to become their best.
They’ve found the activity that’s unique to them, which get’s their brain to light up when they’re working, adding and expanding themselves that makes working so much fun and so fulfilling. Every moment is fire and yearning for more.
So it appears we work for causes that are greater than ourselves, and we ultimately end up creating something more than just us, but the drive comes from something else.
The drive comes from intrinsic selfishness and love for what we’re doing because it makes us feel like we have maximum control, agency and impact over others (the world).
Like many, I overcame childhood challenges I carried with me until only recently, and have an obsession with expressing it with writing.
I’m writing for myself, but I make it as well and dense as I can so it can touch and impact as many as it can.
If you think this is selfish, it is. But it’s required for me to be my best and impact others in the best way I can.
If you aren’t doing anything that isn’t exceptionally selfish, you won’t have the voracious enthusiasm required to live a life that’s electric and expansive, every single day.
This is why so many corporate workers have a hard time being happy with their work, the structure of corporate enterprises isn’t built for people to expand themselves, it’s built for people to maintain themselves.
There’s no room to pushing and expanding to the point people think you’re possessed (you are, in a good way) at a giant company (if you do, everyone will think you’re weird, make fun of you or just wonder why) by doing what you love.
People think it’s hard work or talent or luck or any of these things but it’s not.
This is what gives someone the courage to burn their boats and go all in.
What gave Musk the risk appetite to put his life savings of $180 million on the line he’d just made from a hard earned sale of a company. It’s not for others, its’ for his evolution.
I finally decided to follow my calling to read and write and nothing else mattered. The lack of ‘proper funding runway’ in my bank account, the risk. Nothing mattered.
This is all the wealth I’ll ever need.
This is what sages have referred to as being “called by God” over the Millenia.
This is how religious scholars were pushed to serve others by masterfully writing the best religious books then, and this is how Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are driven to build world changing companies now.
This is what drives the best founders to work all the time, because it’s not work — it’s them.
This is what makes the best writers read and write all the time, because it’s not work — it’s them.
This is how the best artists, musicians and creators can practice for 10,000 hours. They’ve discovered what they were born to do and be best at, and they never worked a day in their lives, but they sure as hell put in 10,000 hours, because it was for them and they loved every minute of it.
3. Find What’s Meaningful To You
There are a number of ways to arrive at your personal truth.
Many are driven by past suffering, or a personal challenge to overcome — which can be re-contextualized into a hidden gift.
We know Zuckerberg did this, and most of us have an issue to overcome.
I overcame my small self to be treated how I want to be treated and wrote the most viral article I’ve ever written because of it.
My friend was short and proved to the world he was big by becoming a massive business person.
I’m not saying that’s ideal, but if there’s a tide, take it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates changed my life after this talk at the New York Public Library — I was so pissed at the injustice against blacks he talked about.
I’m now writing film scripts and tv screenplays to eradicate the problem because of the painful emotion it brings out of me.
An emotion I want to channel into my own work to affect others.
Overcoming suffering or connecting with others suffering, and re-contextualizing it to overcome is a common way to live a voracious life through voracious work.
In his pioneering book, Flow, the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Dr. Mihaly Cziksentmihaly suggests:
Acknowledging that suffering or trauma, even in childhood, has a hidden gift in it. It’s your job to interpret it as a possible challenge, thereby embracing it to better yourself. This gives you purpose. Then you recognize there’s a whole world of others out there just like you who suffer from the same problems. It becomes your mission to become your best so you can impact others who have your problems.
Cziksentmihaly calls it ‘dissipative structuring’, the ability to draw order from disorder.
He further suggests: “The challenge then becomes generalized to other people or to mankind as a whole.”
He provides a beautiful story of an (anonymous) successful and high profile person who suffered as a child he called “E”.
E’s parents came to America with nothing but their dreams and were financially poor. On his 7th birthday, they bought him a bicycle.
One day while riding it, he was hit by a car by a wealthy doctor. The doctor promised to cover the hospital bills if his father didn’t report it to the police. His father, not really having a choice other than to believe the doctor, agreed. The doctor disappeared and was nowhere to be found. E’s father was forced into debt and never recovered becoming an alcoholic
Cziksentmihaly continues to say:
“This event could have been a trauma that left it’s scar on E. Forever, turning him into a cynic who would from now on look out for his own self-interest no matter what. Instead, E. drew a curious lesson from his experience. He used it to create a life theme that not only gave meaning to his own life, but helped reduce entropy (helplessness) in the experience of many others. He decided to become a lawyer, not only to better his own life, but to make certain that injustices such as he had suffered would not occur so easily again to others in his position. Once he had set this goal for himself, his resolution was unwavering.”
E ended up becoming a leading attorney, and then a judge who became an aid to the President of the United States who fought for civil rights policy and legislation for immigrants and minorities.
Dr. Cziksentmihaly concludes:
“E’s example illustrates several common characteristics of how people forge discovered life themes. In the first place, the theme is in many cases a reaction to a great personal hurt suffered in early life. To being orphaned, abandoned or being treated unjustly.
The external event never determines what the theme will be. What matters is the interpretation (and meaning) that one places on the suffering.
He continues:
“So the next question is, what kinds of explanations are one’s suffering lead to negentropic life themes? If a child abused by a violent father concluded that the problem was inherent in human nature, and all men were weak and violent, there would not be much he or she could do about it.
On the other hand, to find purpose in suffering one must interpret it as a possible (personal) challenge, which becomes generalized to other people or mankind as a whole. In E’s case, formulating his problem as being due to the helplessness of disenfranchised minorities, and not to his father’s faults. E was then able to develop the appropriate skills to confront the challenges he saw at the root of what had been wrong in his personal life. Thus, whatever solution he found to his own problems would benefit not only himself, but many others besides. This altruistic way of generalizing solutions is typical of negentropic (positive interpretation) life themes brings harmony to the lives of many.”
Conclusion
This is why so many people are driven to succeed. If you want to become your best and change the world, the first step is to start telling the hard truth.
- What can you can’t not do?
- What brings out your best?
- Why do you want to change the world?
The answers are neither good or bad, they’re just the conditions that make us human.
For Mark Zuckerberg, it started with coding to get girls. Now it’s to connect the whole world.
For me, it’s writing and proving myself to the world.
What Is It For You?
Our wiring and sophisticated minds come up with all kinds of ways to assign meaning to events.
If you want to change the world like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk did, it starts by living with voracious enthusiasm, a state that makes every moment electric and exciting — where it’s never work, because it’s all about growing yourself.
You’re driven to maximize your potential which only get’s pushed to higher and higher levels the faster and faster you grow.
Your ideas get bigger than you do and you begin to impact more and more people.
But know this, the more people you impact, the less you need to think about their potential, and the more you need to think about maximizing yours.
Work this way and you’ll have so much fun so changing the world won’t even matter.
It’s these people who get lucky to wake up one day and realize they’ve changed the world like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 275,554+ people.
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