How to Coach Yourself and Others Happiness Is No Accident | Page 39

This is a great leap forward — the individual is beginning to realize that other people are
important, and that the ways other people see the world are important — but it's not remotely as
powerful an outlook as the next level up, the third level.
At the third level, the central question is not about how I feel, or about how others feel about me,
but about how they feel about themselves. That might seem like a small step forward, but it can't
be overestimated. Think about a sales situation — at the first level, the seller is focused on doing a
good job on her own terms; at the second level, she's focused on making a good impression on the
sales prospect. But at the third level, the salesperson herself might as well be invisible, because she
has no interest in looking good, but only in helping the sales prospect look good in his own eyes,
and reach his own goals.
Or think about that teenager who doesn't want to go to school. The teen wakes up and says "I don't
feel well" at level one. At level two, he's able to hear a parent say "you don't look sick to me." But
at the third level, he's asking about how other people feel and discovers the best possible motive to
get out of bed into the world: "other people are depending on me today." The motive to get up and
out is not about what matters to me, but what matters to others.
In this is some irony, and some magic. Once you focus on others in this way — as a friend, as a
citizen, as a manager, as a colleague — you find that you yourself benefit as much or more than
the others you're trying to help. Focusing on the sales prospect's needs instead of your own, you
eventually reap the benefits of greater sales — more money, more respect, more confidence.
Focusing on getting up out of bed because you understand that you can help others — and what a
transforming positive feeling that statement carries with it: I can help others — you find that you
become healthier and happier. You help yourself as much as you help others, because your life
becomes infused with the purpose of doing good.
My grandfather is a wonderful example of this effect. A self-educated man, he worked most of his
life in jobs that did not satisfy his intellect or his desire to help others, but in his free time he was
devoted to political causes that he thought could improve the lives of many. He was a socialist and
an antiwar activist (though a veteran of World War II himself). Although some might argue that
the specifics of his plan for improving the world were misguided, his p W'6