Why You Need To Find Significance

Hey there, Alexa, and welcome back to Honest Talks, a series where we talk about things that we find intriguing and you might as well. In this video, we're going to talk about probably one of the most important problems that you as an individual have to solve today: significance, or better yet, the lack thereof.

Welcome to Alux. Now, as you might know, one of our favorite podcasts to listen to is the one Tim Ferriss does, where he interviews world-class leaders on how they do things. One recent episode really caught our eye and made us wonder. It was the episode with Seth Godin, the world-renowned marketer, and as he likes to think of himself, a freelancer. One of the topics that he touched on was how much of an impact, positively or negatively, that significance can have on your life.

Seth Godin said that he interviewed 10,000 people about what was the best job they ever had, and he gave them 14 different options on why that job was great, including "I was paid a lot of money" and "I didn't have much work to do." To his surprise, he found one common answer that was the same across the board, regardless of country, industry, or level of education.

Now, before we give you the answer, what was the best job that you ever had? Pause the video and leave your answer in the comments; we're curious to see if we see the same pattern. Now, the most common answer Seth Godin received was this: "At the best job I ever had, I achieved more than I thought I could, I was respected, and I did work I was proud of."

Okay, so let's break these down individually, shall we? There is no person on this Earth that doesn't actually want to work hard or to challenge themselves. Even those who stay inside all day and play video games get hella competitive; they train to get better, they actually challenge themselves to improve. It's an innate feature that we have as humans: the need to adapt and improve, and this need it needs to be satisfied.

If someone ever tells you, "You don't work hard enough," what they really mean is you work in a place where you're unable to do your best work. Now, to be respected means to be seen and heard, and to be allowed to succeed and fail. If your work is purely attached to a metric, then you are a metric yourself, and you're only as respected as the lowest metric.

If you're a salesperson and your only measurement of success is the number of sales you close in a month, then someone who makes more sales will take your place eventually. If you can't feel proud of your work, it's impossible to put any soul into it and make it special. You see, if we break this down, what we really find is the desire to be significant, to know that you're seen and what you do actually matters.

So why is this important? Well, if you look around, the world gets a bit more nihilistic by the day. You can't discern what's real from what isn't that easily anymore. You've got deep fakes and misinformation poisoning your thought process. Corporate greed puts millions of people in a position where they can't provide for their family. Climate change is making parts of the world just straight-up uninhabitable.

The world gets a bit crazier every single day, and with all of this happening, it's fairly common to default to, you know what, what's even the point of all this? Why should I go to work? Why should I do my best? Why should I do anything besides the moment-to-moment impulses? And this is why you see a ton of people saying, "Screw it, I'm going home." They can't find the mental energy to keep going, especially when it's not clear where exactly they're headed, which raises the problem of why feeling significant is so important in today's world.

You see, significance is the feeling you get when you point at something and say, "Look, I made that, and it's great." It's about doing things that matter to you. You see, being pessimistic doesn't give you any benefits at all; it's a sad way to view the world. And it's really a shame because there are a lot of cool things you could do with your time if only you had a different perspective.

Realistically, the best approach will always be to have a positive attitude, to be optimistic about the future, and to find significance in your life. So how do you do that? How can one find significance? Well, first of all, significance comes from change. You need to ask yourself, "What do I want to change, and who does that change benefit most?"

Because look, here's the reality: you, as an individual, you've got absolutely zero power. You can't change at a global level. You think those paper straws are helping anyone? On an individual level, it's all marketing and public opinion, which is why you need to start with yourself, with the one in the mirror. Like MJ said, the first step in finding significance is starting with you and your immediate environment.

If you take a look at your life, you'll surely find a series of things that are not how you'd like them to be, but they are in your total control. Maybe it's how clean your house is, or how you speak to other people, or how you treat those you work with. There will always be something that could be done better.

Now, before we move on with this one, there's another topic we need to talk about. It's all connected, okay? It will make sense at the end. Let's talk about motivation for a minute. People love motivation, right? They rely on it every day, and they look outside to find it. That's why you clean your house when a friend is coming over, or why you start going to the gym right before summer because you saw someone ripped on Instagram, or why you got a suit because someone on LinkedIn wears one.

You see, when you rely on outside factors to motivate yourself, you become conditioned by it. The minute you stop being exposed to those factors, that motivation immediately goes away. Just think back to the early pandemic days. Most people were in lockdown, meaning nobody could see them daily, and most people got kind of fat because, well, nobody could see them anyway. The motivation to stay healthy went away the minute there was no external factor present, meaning they weren't staying fit for themselves but for other people.

Now they don't want to go anywhere because, well, they feel like they need to be fit first, and the cycle continues. You see, as long as you condition yourself from external factors, you're never going to be able to do the things you want for the reasons that you want, which brings us all the way back to significance. As long as you allow yourself to be in an environment where what you do doesn't matter, you're not respected, and you're not proud of what you're doing, you won't be able to find a sense of significance or purpose.

So do yourself a favor: take ownership and accountability of your environment and hold yourself to higher standards. There will only be gains if you do so. Don't wait for someone else to tell you what to do and how to do it, and don't rely on outside factors to motivate you into changing things for the better. You need to motivate yourself.

It's better to be optimistic and a part of the answer rather than a part of the problem. We challenge you, Alexa, to find something that can be done better in your life and make the change happen without anyone telling you to do it. You'll soon find that your life dramatically improves once you adopt this new perspective.

We hope you found this video valuable, Alexa, and we'll see you back here next Saturday with another episode of Honest Talks. In the meantime, check out our app; we fill it with endless insights from people who've already done incredible things, and they're ready to inspire your journey too. Alux.com/app.

[Music] [Music] Thank you. [Music]