Do this if you want more respect

It can be hard to admit, but we all yearn to be liked by other people.

We can ‘unattach ourselves from desire’ until we’re blue in the face...

But there will never be a time when we stop craving that pleasant warm glow from a sense of being liked, loved and respected.

For years, I went about this pursuit of being liked in the wrong ways.

I tried to be impressive.

I ran around like an ape on high-grade crack, looking to please others.

I said yes to helping everyone, even if it meant walking all over my dignity.

Several years into these soul-destroying escapades it finally hit me.

If I wanted respect, I needed to create something people will be drawn to like flies to a flame.

As Einstein said, I needed ‘first to become a man of value.’

I needed to take the emphasis off myself and put it towards the skills and external value I could build.

So, over time, I became one of the world’s best digital illustrators with zero design experience, working with Google at the peak of this career in my twenties.

Then, I wrote blogs and books about what I was learning.

People began to gather around what I had to share.

People found me online and asked me to work with them.

I was asked to speak on big stages around the world.

I never once got this attention through people-pleasing. I just worked.

I was willing to disappear for months to hone a skill and do it in a way no one else was doing it.

So here’s my point:

If you want to be liked, respected, needed...

Get really good at something specific that others need. Stop jumping from one thing to the next, pleasing one person to the next.

Be willing to disappear for a while so you get so good you can’t wait to show the world your greatness.

You have all the happiness you need right here where you sit, but if you want to feel needed, as we all do:

Become great.

BTW - I don’t care how old you are. You can change your life in 6 months.

If you’d like a more concrete, step-by-step system for developing a stress-free mind so you become great 10X faster, you’ll love my Untethered Mind course (helping 100s of students).

Best,

Alex