Make Yourself Obsolete

We all want to feel important and needed, but are we really?

For every profession I look at, I find myself wondering how necessary it really is.

Many of us are not truly working from the deepest, most serious part of our hearts.

Instead, we see it as just a job, just a way to make some money, just a temporary station on the way to something better.

Ask yourself, when something goes wrong with your work, do you care about this deeply? And if you do, is it because you truly care, or just because you worry that others will think less of you? Be honest and sincere here with your thoughts. I am asking you to reflect on these questions, not to feel the need to get defensive.

A few months ago, I spoke with someone in the Education field interested in developing a better curriculum for her students. I told her that she would succeed when the student no longer needed the teacher.

I felt that this was not what she was expecting to hear.

I advised her to make her job unnecessary.

Why would I do that?

I’m not sure it’s a success when students graduate to need another teacher, and another, and another. I’ve often heard that students decided to pursue the next level, whether it’s to a bachelor’s degree, master’s, or even a Ph.D. because they didn’t know what else to do.

Is that worthy? Is that success? Or is it futility?

On the one hand, ongoing learning is honorable. On the other, we keep learning more and more stuff and not having much to show for it.

Is it the contents in our minds that are valuable, or the power we have to make something happen in the real world? Many of us have been led astray or forgotten which of these actually mattered.

No one wants to hear that their job should be made obsolete. No one wants to think that success is in finding a way to make your job unnecessary.

We want to hear that we are essential, that society needs us, that society would crumble without our involvement. But that simply is not the case.

We need doctors so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we have neglected our health, to the point that we have outsourced its care rather than taken responsibility for it?

The most common “solutions” offered are medicines, which to some degree, act as poisons with their side effects.

We need teachers so badly, you may say. Sure, but isn’t that because we never taught students to think from the beginning? We led them to become reliant on digesting specific curriculums and memorizing them, only to forget most of it anyway. And the material they remembered would become obsolete in a few years.

The most common “solutions” offered are more degrees and more courses, often with no clear path toward careers. And for the ones that lead to careers, there is no guarantee that such careers will still exist in a few years.

When the “solutions” keep us reliant on needing more and more “solutions” from the same place, are they truly solutions?

I have no problem with doctors or teachers. I have merely used these as examples. I could have used any other profession.

For any career I can think of, the motivation of that job is to keep you locked in. There is never a true solution to any problem. It’s just a treadmill that keeps you running but staying in place at the end of the day.

Whether conscious and done purposely or not, it seems to be a consistent theme across most jobs. The client becomes an eternal source of revenue – always needing to come back for something more.

We never arrive at some desirable end point. There is just this empty feeling of needing more.

I don’t expect anyone to take today’s lesson seriously. I expect you to read this and continue about your job the same way you always have, and I can’t blame you for that either.

You are one piece of a much larger system. If you talk to your boss tomorrow and tell him: “I realized we’re just running our clients in circles here, and I think I know a way to get their problems fully resolved, so they never have to come back,” you’ll probably get fired on the spot.

There is no profit in true solutions.

We fear becoming obsolete the most, but perhaps it was what we needed all along.

Somewhere, in the Amazon rainforest, there was probably a panacea (cure-all) plant that would have cured everything. And it doesn’t matter because it would have made no profit for anyone. The only profit would have been to destroy the plant to avoid competitors, make it into a patentable drug, and then sell it at a high price.

This is where we are.

We are more interested in making people need us rather than truly offering something worthy. The most worthy thing to offer would be that which would make us no longer relevant or needed.

No one wants to hear this.

I don’t even want to say it because I know no one wants to hear it.

No one will hire me to give presentations at a Fortune 500 Company to tell them that they should make themselves obsolete. They would laugh at the idea that they should look for ways to dismantle their job positions and the company they work for.

Instead, they are focused on growth.

But the more a company grows, the more it shows they haven’t solved anything. They have learned to make others reliant on them, is all.

But if [Insert famous product here] is so great, why do we need more of it? Why does it never satisfy us? Why do I need to keep buying it or keep doing it to get that feeling?

Mind you, this is a feeling which is fleeting and illusory anyway.

If it were truly the best product, I think I could buy it once, and I would never need it again.

Those products don’t exist, of course. The products and services we have are the ones that keep us chasing our tails, coming back for more, like strung-out addicts.

The “solutions” we have are those that work for a few minutes, maybe an hour, maybe even a day, but not much more. In a recent post, I said: “The problem with solutions is that they are all temporary fixes. No problem has ever been permanently fixed.”

Our whole lives, nothing ever worked, but we think: “Maybe this new product or service will do the trick.”

I hope my books and Thoughts help someone somewhere, but I don’t want anyone to feel like they need me, my books, or my Thoughts.

My goal is not to keep you on the line, needing more.

Some of the “best” writers out there are actually the worst. If I read someone’s blog post, and it’s so great, why would I feel the need to read all their books and posts? If they were so great, I wouldn’t need to. If they were that good, I could read an article or two, get the message I needed, and never return to them again.

But that is exceedingly rare.

These days, I am writing everything I feel the need to so that it wouldn’t matter if I were to die. Even if I die, you can still access all that I thought was ever worth saying.

There isn’t this sense of “I must write 100 books or 1,000 articles.” That is irrelevant. The point is, did I say everything I needed to say, to the point that if lightning struck me dead one of these days, it wouldn’t matter?

Did I make myself obsolete? If so, then that was a success in my book.

Again: I don’t need you to need me. If you can click away from this site, and never return and be better for it, then I have succeeded.

Here is a quick example of how making oneself obsolete can lead to success:

A friend of mine had a Master or Guide in his life. He provided direction and words of wisdom regularly. One day, that Master decided to move on. My friend had often received good counsel and friendship and was saddened by his departure. But after this, my friend grew immeasurably. He started to realize that he did not need that Master at all. Rather than following or abiding by the lessons taught, he was paving his own way. In being left Masterless, he was now finding the Master within.

The Master, Guide, Parent, or Teacher who can leave and make you something better for it is the truly worthy one. Don’t misunderstand me to condone abandoning anyone. Only you can decide the point where it is better to walk away, or give space, or leave and never come back. But know whether you do this selfishly or selflessly.

Make yourself obsolete. Make it so that even if you vanished, the world would somehow become better for it.

We risk being made (or revealed to be) obsolete by the natural order of things every day. We might as well do it ourselves.

---

Today’s post may be a heavy dose of Truth for some of us. If you would like to dig deeper into Your Life’s Truth, you may wish to read a book I just published, Your Personal Truth: A Journey to Discover Your Truth, Become Your True Self, & Live Your Truth.

You can read the book on Amazon and other major retailers.

Are you Personally Fulfilled? (What is Success, Really?)

We tend to throw around words like “success,” – and usually, I think it is assumed that we are talking about bigger paychecks, faster cars, and gated communities. But is this really all there is to success, or is there something we are missing here?

Whenever someone mentions success, I always find myself thinking to myself:

What is success, really?

A study I read showed that college students tend to drink more alcohol than they would like, and this happens because they think everyone else is drinking a lot and enjoying it. Because of these perceptions, they feel like they should be drinking more and enjoying it. This ends up with college students drinking more than they would truly like – which perpetuates the idea that college students drink a lot and like it.

Extrapolating from this, sometimes I wonder if many people are chasing what they think other people view as success.

These perceptions of success are perpetuated in the news, media, social media, and so on. The idea that is created through this is that:

You should want conventional ideas of success for yourself, or something is wrong with you.

Some popular influencers will hire a model or rent fancy cars or create a background that makes it look like they are on a private jet. They will include these props in their supposedly real videos to create the illusion of success. Perhaps they all bought into the idea that they should want success, and perhaps they thought that by appearing to be successful, others would be more interested in them (thus, helping to actually make them successful).

For most people, is it more important to actually be successful, or are we just obsessed with the need to appear successful?

In life, I think we are often presented with a choice. Will we allow others to impose their ideas on us, or will we take the time to think things through and form our own thoughts and ideas?

Consider: What is success to you?

To me, it’s not about the money, the houses, or even the appearance of having it.

At its most basic element, to me, success is fulfillment.

So then, what is fulfillment?

You can be fulfilled in many different ways.

Purpose

One of the primary roads to fulfillment is to know what your purpose is. What do you find meaning from in your life? Many of us will find purpose through our work, helping others, improving ourselves, or raising children.

Physical (e.g., exercise and stamina)

We can find physical fulfillment through exercise, playing sports, or even just walking. Some people need more physical activity to feel fulfilled, and others can get by with less. However, a part of meeting our fulfillment will likely involve keeping ourselves in a good enough shape that we can be satisfied with and meet our other life goals.

Mental (e.g., intellectual, creative)

Mental fulfillment may be found through challenging yourself intellectually or creatively. Some people who always like to read, learn, or discuss interesting ideas will have a high need for mental fulfillment. We all have different needs in this regard, too – some people may meet this by painting or drawing, and others may need a mentally engaging job to feel fulfilled. Some people need to change things up regularly – they may enjoy being with nature, traveling, visiting museums, and learning about different cultures.

Social (e.g., bonding, spending quality time, and emotional support)

Most of us interact with a variety of social circles regularly, such as family, friends, colleagues, and perhaps neighbors or other acquaintances. As I keep stating, we all have different needs in this regard. Some people only need a few friends to feel fulfilled, and others will need many more. In general, we all need to engage with some people to feel whole. In the end, this is likely because our individuality happens in the context of the people around us (e.g., how can you be the shy one or the funny one if there is no one else there?)

Spiritual (and mental health / mental balance)

Some people may not like the term spiritual if you do not relate to it, but in that case, you can view this as mental health and balance. There are many ways to pursue this, of course. Some have prayer, meditation, yoga, or positive thinking. Some people may explore their thoughts and beliefs through journaling their personal journey. Of course, one way to strive for spirituality and mental balance is to make sure to pursue all the other ways toward fulfillment – purpose, physical, mental, social, and values. For me, spirituality also involves considering my personal role in the whole universe and how I interconnect with everyone and everything.

Living By Your Values

It makes perfect sense to me that you must know your highest values and live according to them to be fulfilled. If you are not living according to what you think is most important, how could you possibly be fulfilled?

To help you brainstorm which values are most important to you, here is a list of 50 core values from James Clear’s website.

My core values are truth, balance, love, knowledge, and transference – which I discussed more deeply in this post - The Path to a True and Fruitful Life.

Final Thoughts

True success lies in fulfillment. To recap, the ways to fulfillment are by pursuing your purpose, and also physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, and living by your values.

Before you go, consider these questions:

• How fulfilled are you in your life?

• What can you do to become more fulfilled?

• Is there something in your life you can let go of which has not properly fulfilled you?

• Did fulfillment mean something completely different for you?

The Winner’s Mindset - 8 Tools for Success

Introduction

Quite often, I see that people are not equipped with the right mindset to win, succeed, or resolve the problems in their lives. Of course, there is no magic solution. What I am going to present here may take a lifetime to master, but it will provide a pathway toward accomplishing more than many of us even would have thought possible.

Consider the importance of using all these tools together. If you only use a few of them, you will be limiting your potential.

1. Growth Mindset

Dr. Carol Dweck has studied the growth mindset – a mindset where you believe that you can grow in your abilities. This is important because if you attempt to do something and fail if you have a growth mindset, you will believe that you can always work on it and improve. If you have a fixed mindset, you will believe that your skills and abilities are fixed, and there is not much you can do to get any better.

With the growth mindset, you believe that the more you work and push yourself, the better you can get. And this belief turns out to be true. Likewise, for those who believe that they are limited, or those with the fixed mindset, their beliefs also turn out to be true for themselves because they limit their own potential with this mindset.

2. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The growth mindset may actually be a form of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Note that people who think they can grow and improve can do so. Those who do not think they can grow and improve are unable to do so. This may be an oversimplification – but at least those who think they can are much more effective in accomplishing their goals.

With the self-fulfilling prophecy, whatever you expect to happen is quite likely to actually happen. There are limits to this, of course, but this concept is one of my favorite because it shows us just how powerful the human mind is.

As an example, if I take two forty-year-old men who look to be in average shape, and I ask them to do 40 push-ups for me, who is more likely to accomplish this? The one who doubts his own abilities, or the one who is sure he can do this? If they both had the same height, weight, health status, and muscular build, the one who was more sure of himself would have a better chance to accomplish the goal.

In my life, I have found that when I believe something is going to happen, I don’t spend any energy doubting or thinking about failure. That means I use more energy to accomplish what I want to do rather than on negative emotional energy. Therefore, I am much more likely to succeed at what I believed I would succeed at.

Often your belief will create reality. Be careful about what you expect, as it will probably happen. In this sense, it will pay off to be optimistic and expect things to go well.

3. Affirmations and Visualization

A“belief” with nothing to back it up can feel empty and meaningless for many of us. If I tell you to believe in yourself and believe that you will succeed, this sounds like empty motivational speak. It doesn’t feel real, and it seems unlikely to actually make a difference in your life. For that reason, you may wish to try creating affirmations and visualizations to make your beliefs more real in your mind.

Affirmations and visualization are tools you can use to create stronger positive beliefs in your mind, making it more likely that they will come true. This is an application of the self-fulfilling prophecy, where you train your mind to expect something to happen through affirmations. Affirmations are statements you make and say to yourself in effort to make them feel true and real. Once you have your affirmation, you can visualize that thing happening in vivid detail so that your mind feels it already has happened. Then there is nothing left to do but live out that which has already happened in your mind. Ultimately, your mind will feel comfort in simply living out that path which you have already created. This will feel like destiny, in a way. To do anything else outside of what your affirmation/visualizations indicate would feel like going against nature.

As an example of an affirmation, you may write down a statement such as:

I will live my life today without allowing negative emotions to guide my actions. Instead, I will be guided only by positive emotions, reason, and intuition.

With visualization, you would visualize yourself living out the above affirmation. You may envision someone verbally attacking you. But rather than allowing negative emotional energy to overcome you, you would respond calmly by suggesting that you continue this conversation when the other person has calmed down, or you could state that you have more important things you need to do at the moment. They should write their grievances in an email to you so that you can respond at a later time. If the person continues to be verbally aggressive, you may calmly walk away and say, “Have a nice day!” Notice that with this affirmation, the goal is not to extinguish negative emotion but rather to stop such emotions from guiding our everyday actions.

4. Ongoing Learning

Part of the way you win and do better than others is to learn more than them. In many fields, you must develop your expertise to perform well. Even if your field is not intellectual or informational, you could be surprised at the importance of continuing to learn. For example, someone who plays sports at a high level would want to study their opponents’ weaknesses to search for ways to gain a competitive advantage.

Our world changes and adapts rapidly, and so to keep up with this, you must continue to learn regularly. The prior principles focused on your beliefs and mindset. But if you have a positive mindset and you have not learned anything, then you may be an overconfident amateur.

5. Work Harder and Smarter

Working hard is a continuation of ongoing learning. You will need to learn and work harder than most people if you truly want to win. Generally, this can mean working more hours or training more rigorously. Then when you reach a level where everyone is working quite hard, you will need to work smarter to gain an advantage.

Working smarter could mean finding any critical weaknesses in your abilities and working to develop those. It could also mean finding your greatest strengths and fine-tuning those to become even better at what you do. Working smarter can also mean prioritizing what is truly important for you to work on. All work is not equal. You could work very hard and make very little progress if the work was not important or instrumental.

Working smarter can also mean finding the right leader, colleagues, or organization to work in. If you are highly skilled but in the wrong environment that can not properly use your skills, you will not accomplish much.

6. Make Your Own Luck

To increase your chances of winning or success, you should aim to make your own luck. This can mean increasing your chances for something good to happen. The way you approach this will be different depending on your field.

For example, if you have written something that you think everyone needs to read, you may pay to translate it into several languages. Even if no one in your native language is impacted by what you wrote, perhaps you will find people who truly believe in your ideas with another language.

Also, you may practice sending out an email to an author, political figure, or owner of a company regularly, depending on your goals. Be quick and to the point. Don’t ask for anything big such as for a job. You may start by recognizing their good work and how you are interested in what they do. Then you may ask if they have any suggestions to help you with a particular problem. Or perhaps they can suggest a resource that may help you. If you feel it is appropriate and you are especially interested in learning more from someone, you may offer to buy that person lunch so that you can have a quick conversation with them.

The general idea is that you will want to put yourself in positions where you will more likely accomplish your goals, whatever those goals may be. I recently heard that in high school, Bill Gates and his friends hacked into his high school’s computer databases so that he would get placed in classes with all females. The idea was that this would help increase Bill Gates’ chances of getting a date. Surely he must have had better chances of getting a date when he was surrounded by females.

To increase your luck and opportunities, ask yourself questions such as:

• Where can I position myself to increase the chances of meeting my goals? (This may even involve moving.)

• Who can I network with or contact to increase the chances of meeting my goals?

• What can I do to make more people notice my skills and talents (e.g., starting a blog, podcast, or volunteering to work for free for someone who is known for being the best in their field)

Notice that to increase your luck, you do not need particular goals. The general goal is to put yourself in situations or circumstances that will make it more likely for good things to happen. Of course, you probably should have some specific goals that you are working toward in your life at the same time.

7. Creative Problem-Solving

When you practice generating many solutions to your problems, you can get very good at this. If this becomes a daily practice for you, you will find that eventually, you can effortlessly come up with a variety of potential solutions to virtually any problem.

This creative skill is one of the greatest assets you can have because so many people are not used to thinking this way. In school and our work lives, many of us get used to searching for one solution to our problems. When that one solution does not work, we become frustrated and need to call the boss or Google it.

If we practice our creative idea generation abilities instead, we could become better and better. In time, we would feel confident that we could solve new problems on our own without always needing extra assistance.

As I already indicated, the world we live in is rapidly changing and demands that we adapt to it. Those who can look for creative solutions will be in the best position to succeed when difficult circumstances arise.

To practice this skill, the next time someone makes you aware of a problem, try to come up with five possible solutions to solve it. Also, of course, if you come across your own life problem, do the same thing. Do not settle for the first or even second obvious solution that you come. Work harder to train your mind to be more creative.

8. React Positively to the Overwhelming Likelihood of Failure

I often see that as soon as a problem becomes difficult, people are ready to give up on it. They will say that this is too difficult. Or, if the situation involves a game or competition, as soon as one team starts to lose, they will become discouraged and feel that there is no way to win.

However, the person with a true success mindset will never stop looking for possibilities to win or accomplish what they truly want to do. A problem that can develop in our mindsets is that when you look for reasons to give up, the next time you face a difficult problem, it becomes easier to give up. You can actually train yourself to become a failure. If you choose to give up every time things get difficult, you will train yourself to give up more easily and more quickly with each new problem you face. Eventually, just the slightest indication of trouble will cause you to throw in the towel. You will fail before you truly even get started.

Rather, we must train ourselves in the opposite direction. The harder things get, the more stubborn you should become, searching for pathways to accomplish your goals. Obviously, there is an actual point where it makes sense to give up, but it depends on the circumstance. If you do not look forward to succeeding at something, then you should probably give up. But more often than not, we give up too early on our goals or dreams.

My favorite way to train this mindset for not giving up is with games. It could be chess, Monopoly, or even video games. It doesn’t matter. I’ve learned that it is fun to win, but I also enjoy having fun when the odds are stacked against me. Even when you think all hope is lost, if you keep pushing forward and going for the win, sometimes you will get it. And it is gratifying to get that win when it seemed impossible. Games are a perfect vehicle to train your mindset because there is no real excuse to give up – you are usually not risking losing money or wasting anyone’s time.

When you can do so, practice continuing to go for the win even when others think it is a lost cause.

As an example, recently, I was playing a speed chess game. The other player was higher rated than me, and he outplayed me completely. Eventually, I got to the point where I realized I couldn't win the game if I played normally. I was down a lot of material (or points).

My solution was to make the worst possible move in the game.

The move was so bad only someone new to the game could make it. (My opponent and I were both in around the top 5% of chess players). I left my Queen vulnerable, which is the most valuable piece. In his mind, he never would have expected me to make this worst possible move, and so he didn’t realize how bad it truly was. He proceeded in the game, making a “normal” move. Then I stole his queen. I made the worst move possible in the game, but a side effect of this was that it would allow me to take his queen for free. Then I proceeded to win a game that should have been impossible for me to win at that point.

Notice that I used some creative thinking here - I don’t think most people consider making the worst possible move as a viable option when trying to win. Giving up assures you that you will lose, so sometimes, in difficult circumstances, it makes sense to try something “so crazy, it just might work.”

Train your mindset in small everyday ways like this. No game is too trivial. No situation is too minor. Take whatever opportunity you can to teach yourself to have a winner’s mindset. Keep going for that win even when the odds seem stacked against you. Trust me when I say that those wins feel the best.

If you liked this post, I also recommend reading my post on Oliver James’, as he is currently on the path to success despite dealing with functional illiteracy and mental health issues. It’s a truly inspirational story.