I was listening to Matt Church talk about the way we show up in the world and the impact that it has on people around us and I was stuck by the simplicity and the profoundness of the thinking.
He simply said that we create the biggest impact when we show up being both selfish and helpful or in another way self-full.
Being selfish means that we love what we are doing and how we are showing up. This also means that we know what we want to achieve from every interaction or in other words we are being intentional (self-aware) in the way we show up. This helps us to love what we do and how we do it and at the same time makes it easy to be consistent in the way we show up.
Being helpful means that the way we are showing up is helping those whom we are leading or serving or interacting (social awareness). They see value and impact when being around us when we show up with our selfish interest. This is our tribe. This is the set of people for whom we want to create a positive impact.
It does take some time for us to find this combination where we are adding significant value to our stakeholders by simply showing up how we want to show up and doing things that we want to do. However once we have cracked this, it enables us to serve and do so with love and consistency, which I think is one of the most under-rated trait.
In conclusion, all I would say is the following – “Do you know your tribe where you can show up as you want to and add significant value to the members of the tribe by doing so?”.
If you have found the tribe, congratulations! Do great work!
If not, go look for them! Then do great work!
If you can’t find the tribe, find out what your current tribe needs and become creative and find a way to be selfish about how you serve the current tribe! Then do great work!
