It's Not About You: A Brief Guide to a Meaningful Life

by Tom Rath

Life is not about you. It’s about what you do for others.

The key to creating collective well-being is to start by improving the life of another person, not your own.

every exchange with another person either “filled their bucket or dipped from it.”

the best way

to fill my own bucket was to spend time filling...

Your life has an unknown expiration date. Your efforts and contributions to others do not. The time, energy, and resources you invest in people you care for and your community keep growing forever.

The brilliance of the human species lies in our ability to put collective interests ahead of our own.

We have the opportunity, every day, to contribute to collective efforts and others’ lives. These contributions will live on, well beyond our brief life span here on earth.

We are, to a large degree, the product of what others have contr...

life is shaped by the actions of others, for bett...

Acknowledging that all our stories have an end can be deeply beneficial.

In my own experience, orienting my efforts to where I could make the greatest contributions, both during and beyond my lifetime, helped me to push through major challenges and made life far more meaningful.

Life is about what you put back into the world, not what ...

Let go of what’s beyond your control.

Lord’s Prayer - find God

The one thing we can all guarantee is that our lives will end at some point. It actually helps to embrace that fact.

I have found that time is more valuable when you can see your mortality on the horizon.

Recent research found that kids who battle cancer somehow emerge stronger when compared to peers who have...

When you view your time as finite, you build more life into each day.

Look through the lens of what will outlive you, and you’ll quickly see past self.

What you put back into the world is built one interaction at a time.

You may not get to control how another person initiates your next interaction, but you always get to choose your response.

Even when you’re having a horrible day and someone says something rude to you without reason, you get to decide if you will dig in on the negative tone or try to turn things around. With that choice, you will likely set off a cascading process that will make your day progressively better—or progressively worse.

By choosing not to assume positive intent, they increase their own hostility levels in a way that is likely to carry forward for at least hours, if not days. In contrast, those who choose to assume I did not have any bad intent get to move on through their day as usual, or perhaps even feel good about letting me off the hook.

You always have a choice of how to respond. Start by assuming the other person has positive intent.

strong relationships are the cornerstone of growth and contribution in life.

But I knew that no one would ever care how many episodes of a sitcom I watched or how well I played Madden NFL Football on my game console. What would matter more was the time I spent with my friends and family.

Your greatest contributions are what you put into your closest relationships.

What the researchers essentially found is anytime a smartphone is visible, even if it is not ringing, buzzing, vibrating, or even powered on, it degrades the quality of the conversation for everyone. In the cases where the phone was visible, participants had lower levels of empathetic concern and found the conversations less fulfilling. The people who took their phones out were essentially saying, “This device comes before you and this conversation.”

Intently listening, even to people you have just met, is a remarkable way to create new relationships and deepen existing ones.

At a minimum, when you plan and choose to spend time with a friend, make it count.

Invest your time and attention wisely. They are your most ...

The greatest strength is helping another person to uncover a hidden talent.

wanted to contribute to things that would continue to live on without me.

When you see a rare opportunity, take it. Life is too brief for living with regrets.

he found it odd that we essentially wait until people die to praise and celebrate all their contributions in life and “fill their bucket.”

Tell someone how they have contributed to your life . . . while they are still around to hear it.

Every day he invested in the growth of other people and worked on projects that could have a wider reach and influence.

It was not about him—Don’s actions showed me how helping other people to thrive was a much better strategy.

What matters is that you see how your effort can benefit other lives, now and into the future.

Plant a few seeds today that could grow for years to come.

the most important things we do in a lifetime start small and are almost always directed at others. You don’t need any kind of permission or position to have a positive influence like this . . . you just have to start, today.

My friends and family keep me focused on the daily moments that matter.

You have to find work that you know in your heart is making a positive contribution.

You can’t be anything you want to be, but you can be a whole lot more of who you already are.

Tomorrow is gone in an instant, another month rolls by, and eventually you have missed years, and then decades, of opportunity to make meaningful and substantive contributions.

Knowing who you are—and who you are not—is essential. But it is only a starting point. All the talent, motivation, and hard work in the world will not be valued or remembered if it does not help another human being.

In the end, you won’t get to stay around forever, but your contributions will.

Contribution starts when you see beyond self.

Real growth is the product of following your contributions more than your passions.

The work you do should improve your well-being so you can do more for others.