Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Being School Podcast delves into the essence of being human through engaging conversations with a diverse array of individuals pursuing interesting endeavors. Through the power of story, this podcast aims to uncover the lessons and insights gained by these individuals, offering inspiration and education for listeners seeking a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Join us as we explore and learn what it means to be the creator of our own lives.
Is Your Life Significant?
Erik: [00:00:00] Is your life significant? What a question. I think that's a question that I know keeps me awake at night and I think about often, and I'm sure many others think about it as well. So I thought what I would like to do today is just kind of dissect that question, is your life significant? And the way I like to do that is I wanna show you a little tool that I use and we can kinda walk through it as we're doing it.
Erik: Something called a mind map. So basically you put your word here in the middle that you're thinking about significant,
Erik: and then we're gonna put, make a nice little circle around that. And then off of that, we're just gonna draw some lines and what we're gonna do with these lines, really. So we're gonna come up with some other words that relate to this idea of significance. Now the point of this and the point of a mind map is to not to think of these words.
Erik: Ahead of time. The point is just to kinda see what comes up for you as you off [00:01:00] the cuff. Just start writing out whatever words come up. The point is not to think about what those words are. It's just to start writing down words as they come up. Now, I. You probably have a few words in your mind already and that's okay, but don't think about this too much.
Erik: So here we go. So for me, what I'm gonna write down as I think about this, I'm just gonna take a minute or two. So one word that comes up is starfish. Another word that comes up is dichotomy. Another word that comes up is impact, relevance.
Erik: Attention,
Erik: family, friends,
Erik: public, private.[00:02:00]
Erik: Um, let's throw in another line or two just to see, 'cause kind of when it stops coming easy, then that's when you start to force yourself a little bit and just, just don't even think about it. Just see what comes up. Um, so what else comes up? When I think about is my life significant? I hope
Erik: curiosity.
Erik: Why.
Erik: Okay, so there we go. Let's start with that. So now we have our mind map here around this idea of, is my life significant? Now, the way I take this mind map is to just to start working around this and start looking at it and see, see what comes up when each word comes up for you. So the first thing that comes up as I look at this, and the first word that came up was this idea, this, this notion of starfish.
Erik: Now, Why did Starfish come up when, when [00:03:00] significance comes up? Well, there's this story. I don't know if you've heard it. If you have, great. If you haven't, I'm gonna share it with you now. So there's a story. This little girl is walking down the beach early one morning and she's, she's with her, you know, with her father there, and they're walking along and the little girl there are thousands and thousands of starfish washed up on the beach and they're everywhere.
Erik: And. You know, the tide is going out and all these starfish are laying up on the beach then, and it's starting, you know, it's early in the morning, but the sun's starting to heat things up and. They're, it's obvious that they're gonna die because they're there. There's so many of 'em on the beach, and there's nothing that really can be done.
Erik: But the little girl is walking along and she picks up a starfish and she walks down to the shore or down to the waterline, and she throws the starfish back in the ocean. And then she walks. As she's walking along, she's, she goes again and she picks up another starfish and she throws it in the ocean. And as she's doing this, this stranger that's walking [00:04:00] down the beach comes up to her and says, Little girl, like, you know, what are you doing?
Erik: Don't you understand that, that there's no way that you can save all these starfish and that just by throwing one or two, like what impact are you having by throwing a couple back in the ocean? Like it really doesn't matter, which is a horrible thing to say to a little girl. But besides the point, um, the little girl.
Erik: Bends over, picks up a starfish and is holding it. And it looks, looks at the guy and she throws it in the ocean and she says, it may not matter, but it mattered to that starfish. And then she does it again, walks over, picks up another one, and she's like, it matters to this starfish and throws it back into the ocean.
Erik: And so for me that. Story is a huge indicator on how I think about this idea of significance, and it's the question that most people leave out. I think many, yeah, I'm gonna go with it. Most people don't even think about this, but when they're trying to think about their life as significant or not [00:05:00] significant, which brings me to this other word dichotomy.
Erik: Most of us see this as a dichotomy of our life is significant or our life is not significant, and. Yeah, that's the wrong way to look at it. The thing that everyone leaves out is this idea of scale, and this goes back to the Starfish story. Now it's a question. Here's the question. On what scale are you thinking about measuring your significance?
Erik: Let's take the starfish now for, for the little girl on the starfish. Sure. In the grand scheme of the scale of every starfish that's up on that beach, is what she's doing significant. When if we're talking thousands and thousands of starfish, no. In that sense, it's not significant. But if we're talking about the scale of an individual starfish, the individual starfish that she reaches down, picks up and throws back into water.
Erik: In that case, is it significant? Incredibly [00:06:00] significant. So we always think of that. It's either we, either significant or not significant, but we never think about what scale are we trying to operate on. And that's where this dichotomy comes in. It's not a dichotomy, it's a gradient. So I think the first thing you have to do is get clear on what does significant mean to you?
Erik: What scale in your world do you want to be significant on? Now as I look at that, so we've talked a little bit about dichotomy and starfish, so let's talk about scale a little bit. Okay. Well, on that scale, I think family falls into that, right? Like if you're measuring significance, are you measuring significance?
Erik: Do you wanna be significant to your family? In that case, treating your families, that individual starfish, where if you spend your time and have a huge positive impact or impact in your fam on your family and become a significant person in their life, does that make you significant? Well, absolutely it [00:07:00] could.
Erik: What about friends? Let's talk about friends a little bit. You can obviously be significant in your sphere of friends. And so I, I think that's another thing to think about. What level of significance do I want to have in each relationship with my friends? Do I want to be, um, I mean, we can only have so many best friends, right?
Erik: But I would say to your best friend, you are significant to your 2300 friends on Facebook. Are you significant? You know, probably not. Right, but, but you gotta remember, where are you measuring significance? So now public, as I think about what public may mean here, it, it starts to make me think about this notion of, let's talk about how we measure significance.
Erik: So a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, What you thought of as the [00:08:00] world, right? The, the level of the world that you could reach as an individual was fairly small. I mean, it, it could have been your own community. Many people never traveled more than 15 or 20 miles away from where they lived, right?
Erik: Where they grew up. They spent their entire life within 15 or 20 miles, I mean, until five, 600 years ago. Uh, actually, maybe a little bit longer, but let's say a thousand years ago. You know, people got to the ocean and nobody knew it was on the other side. We didn't even know the world existed beyond the land that we lived in.
Erik: And so in that case, if you were impacting your community, if you were known in your community, if you had, um, you were known in your family, you may have, you may have impacted a couple hundred people and in that level of scale you could be significant. But now in 2023, when we talk about public, we have the internet.
Erik: I'm talking to you. On YouTube or you're listening to me, who knows where you are in the world. And so we [00:09:00] have the ability to reach the entire world. So the number of people that we have to impact on that scale to be quote unquote significant, is tremendous. It goes from a thousand years ago, maybe a few hundred people to now to be significant billions of people, right?
Erik: And so it's, it's not. It's, it's almost impossible to measure, to think about and, and we just by default think, oh, if we're gonna be significant, that means we have to have a significant impact on the world. Well, you know, in that case, like the thousands of starfish on the beach, your odds are very small of having significance to the whole world.
Erik: But I think you should really think about, first of all, what level do you want to be significant on? Do you just wanna be significant with your family, which is. Amazing and wonderful and can be a life well fully lived. But we always measure things in this idea of a dichotomy. [00:10:00] So that's the public nature.
Erik: Private. I think those public, private just kind of juxta juxtaposed to one another. Private life. I think about that as kind of your friends, your immediate close family, your immediate close relationships, and to have a significant impact on. That scale is very different than thinking about having a significant impact on quote unquote the world.
Erik: As I think about attention, what comes up for me is that the economy now, the, the social world, everything that we. Do everything is trying to grab your attention. It's, it's calling for your attention. So in essence, attention is one thing that we show that we use. It's a, it's a commodity, a measure that we use to show significance.
Erik: So if something garners significant attention, then that is a [00:11:00] measure of significance. The more attention it gets, the more significant that that item seems in the world. So attention is really a measure of. Significance. Now, the question then becomes, what are you giving your attention to? One, what are you creating or putting out into the world that is worthy of garnering others' attention?
Erik: So attention circles back and drives significance. If you create things, if you do things, if you. Impact people in such a way that they give you their attention, then that by default makes you a significant person, significant impact in their world. Curiosity popped up here and truthfully, let me just think about this for a second.
Erik: As I said, it's a mind map, so, so what does curiosity have to do with significance? Well, [00:12:00] A lot of people are searching for when they think about significance, they think also tie that to finding their meaning, their purpose in life. Because if I can find that one true path, that one true purpose, then I will be significant in the world.
Erik: So curiosity, as I think about it, really is the driver towards finding your purpose. And I even hate the term your purpose. I think you don't have a single purpose. Um, we could talk about this, I'll talk about this more in, in other areas, but you do not, I believe my personal belief is that each one of us does not have one single purpose in this world.
Erik: We have lots of purposes, and so I. Curiosity is the driver that that leads to finding your significance. Because as you're curious and explore different things, that curiosity is gonna help you find things you're passionate about. Then your passion is gonna ignite your creativity, and your creativity is going to lead you to create things that draw [00:13:00] attention from others, which leads to.
Erik: Feeling more significant and being more significant. And you know, this, this attention you, the goal is not to necessarily impact as be significant to as many people. It's really for you to get clear on what level, who do you want to be significant to? Do you wanna be significant to the public? Do you wanna be significant to your close friends, your family, like.
Erik: I think you first have to define what a significant means to you and what your target is so that then you can decide how to become more significant in different areas. Impact, well, I mean impact, I'm not sure why it popped up in my head. It, it is a little bit of a buzzy word, um, but I think, you know, we can create things and.[00:14:00]
Erik: The measure of impact really is do people, does it elicit, elicit a change? Does it elicit attention? Right? If, if, if you create something, you do something, you have an impact on someone's life, oh, here we go. Now this is it. This is why we, my map things. Because if you have an impact on someone's life, then by default, the greater your impact on their life, the more significance.
Erik: You have, the more significant you are to them. That little girl walking down the beach, she didn't have a huge impact on thousands of starfish, but the ones that she touched and picked up and threw into the water, she had a huge impact on them, and therefore she was very significant to the life of that starfish.
Erik: Similar relevance has a similar vein. You know, I think people are gonna be more impacted. They're gonna, there's gonna be more significance when whatever you're doing is relevant [00:15:00] to their interests, to their curiosities, to their passions. It can also be just relevant because you're their family member.
Erik: You're their father, you're their mother, you're their daughter, you're the son. You know that, that, uh, Proximity creates relevance, right? We see that a lot of times in, in workplaces or you, you're at a job and you have friends that are your friends. Simply because you work with them, you're, they're relevant to you because you're in close proximity to them every day, as opposed to you, maybe you leave that job and a couple years later you're kind of still friends, but you, you don't really stay in touch because the level of relevance has decreased.
Erik: They're no longer a significant impact in your life. And then finally this word up here is hope. And hope. I think we all have hope. We all hope that we are significant, that our lives are significant and have purpose and meaning. But I think it all really comes back to this notion of getting really [00:16:00] clear.
Erik: On the kind of significance, the scale of the significance that you hope to have? You know, I sometimes I think about famous world leaders. I mean, let's, you know, let's say Gandhi, mother, Theresa, any, uh, Nelson Mandela. These people are extremely significant in terms of the worldview like. Many, many people in the world know who these folks are, and I would say believe that they had a very significant impact in the world.
Erik: And I would agree. Now flip that around a little bit though. To be, to give that much time and energy and focus to the public, to humanity as a whole, to trying to make their portion of the world a better place. Think about the impact. And how [00:17:00] does that affect the significance they had for their family members?
Erik: So everyone only has so much time in a day, right? So if you're focusing and giving your attention to the outside world and working on a big world stage and moving the needle on, on, you know, huge problems, that's time away from. Your direct interaction with your, you know, your significant other with your children.
Erik: Um, and so there's a trade off there. They could have been even more significant figures in the lives of their family members on that scale, but they may not have then had the significance in the impact on the global stage the way that we all know them. And there's no right or wrong there. This isn't, there's no judgment.
Erik: It is just literally understanding that. There is a scale, there's a trade off between these two. You, you can't, you know, everything takes energy. So, just to answer the question, let's circle back now to this notion of, is your [00:18:00] life significant? I, I think it really comes down to you getting a clear definition on what significance means to you.
Erik: What level of significance do you want to have in the world? You control your life of significance. So there we go. A little podcast session. We've dealt with some mind mapping. Um, hopefully this is a tool I would highly recommend that if. You know, something's kind of spinning around in your mind. You want to dig a little deeper on a mind map is a great way to do it.
Erik: Um, put the, put the word that you're curious about in the center and then just kind of go for it. Don't think about it. Just see what words come up. And then you can kind of circle back and, and reflect kind like I did on the fly here. And then hopefully gain more clarity on this idea of. Significance, but more clarity on whatever idea that you put in the center here.
Erik: And it's really fun, you know, you can even continue to build off of these. I mean, [00:19:00] we could, we could draw lines here and, you know, we've talked about starfish. We could be one versus many. You know, you can just, you can keep building levels and levels and levels on this. And so you can really use this as a great way to get clarity around topics that are top of mind for you.
Erik: So thank you for being here. Um, I think this is what we're gonna call trailer park sessions. So I hope you've enjoyed it, and I'll just add that obviously without sounding cheesy, because I truly believe this is true, of course, your life is significant. Everyone's life is significant. Alright, keep rolling.
Erik: Be well until the next time.