Serve First to Succeed

Zig Ziglar has famously encouraged his audience to get what they want by first learning to help others get what they want. I am grateful I was taught at an early age that by serving others first and helping them improve their lives, I could make a better life for myself.

It pains me to see how these truths seem lost in our culture today. It appears we have an entitlement mindset instead of a servant's mindset. People do very little to fill the lives of those around them and then wonder why their own life is empty. This shouldn't be.

In addition to the entitlement issue is the scarcity mindset: the belief that what you have to give is a finite and fixed commodity. To have more, you must give more. To give more, you must be more. This means a commitment to a lifetime of continual improvement. If you are constantly bettering yourself - educating and stretching yourself - you will most certainly have more to invest into the lives around you. And it's easier to give of yourself if you can clearly see what you have to give is multiplying.

I think the process of perpetual self-development is a key element in overcoming the toxic attitudes of entitlement and scarcity but it only happens with deliberate and determined actions. Humans don't improve by accident. Ask yourself, " Am I doing anything that will make tomorrow's version of me better than today's?" Then make a plan to make sure the answer to that question is unequivocally, "yes." Lastly, go out and give.

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