The balance of doing/ not doing things that no one asked you to do

To live a big life means to find the perfect, dynamic balance in this strange area. When you are committed to evolving the world around you and being of service, you will see things to do that nobody knows explicitly they want or will ask you to do. Go and do those things. The secret to success, however, is knowing that you probably won’t get appreciated for those things. So it would be best to do them because you want to, not for the accolades.

The flip side of this is the idea of being responsible for spending your energy doing the things that actually make a difference for people. So, knowing what the people in your life and those you aim to serve want is critical. Once you are clear on what they want, you can support them in moving towards where they desire. If they want something, and you’re not helping them get there, it won’t feel like service, and your job is to serve.

It’s our ongoing work to understand how to serve when people don’t know what they want and when they do. Either way, the fulfillment lives in the act of serving itself, not the responses we get.