How To Enhance Your Life - Dean Amory

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 personal sacrifices to help
make positive change filled his life with a sense of purpose. I had the strong feeling that well into
his late eighties, he continued to wake up in the morning and get out of bed in order to strike a
blow against war, injustice, and poverty every day. That kept him healthy and engaged with the
world while many others his age slipped out of touch. But my grandfather had a reason to live and
to stay strong: he felt he was needed, and that he could help others.
A woman I know in New Hampshire has a similar story to tell. She calls herself a community
activist, having worked for years to get the local government in her town to provide more services
for young families and their children. She's spearheaded drives to create a free day-care centre, to
offer medical services for small children, and to give parents a safe and comfortable public place to
bring their children when the long New England winter drags on. Sundays, she sets up out front of
the local churches with her folding table, raising money and getting signatures on petitions.
Weekdays, she sets up in front of schools and the one big food market in her small town. Everyone
knows her, and she's got no shortage of critics as well as staunch friends — in small New England
towns, there tend to be plenty of sceptics about providing public services, especially if they require
tax dollars to be spent. But this energetic woman, a mother of two young children, says she loves
her enemies. "Two things that motivate me," she says, "are helping the little boys and girls who
need the basics and don't necessarily get them at home, and proving to those folks who don't think
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