A Powerful Way to Grow and Evolve

TL; DR: You don’t get better just by exercising or reciting mantras. Become a new person and have an impact on the world.

There’s an important detail in the photo I’m including here.*

This is a photo of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marching in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

But note the man with the long white beard, second from the right.

The man with the beard and glasses is the controversial rabbi and philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel.

About 60 years ago, Heschel made a prediction about an exciting possibility for your future. A fun and glorious possibility.

The chance to set your own schedule and earn as much as you want.

The chance to do work that energizes you.

 A way to help others and make every day a joy and an adventure.

You see, Heschel stepped on a lot of toes by flipping the script on religion. I’m oversimplifying this a, but Heschel believed that you don’t achieve holiness by praying and devoting a lot of time to spiritual practices.

Instead, he taught that human beings grow and evolve and become more godlike by having a positive impact on the world.

This attitude fueled his commitment to social justice and personal growth. Reading about him in my 20s led me on a path of environmental activism, travel, and some unconventional studies.

But there’s a more urgent side to Heschel’s world.

If we don’t all start to learn, grow, and evolve, the world is doomed. We’re caught in a dreadful binary situation.

Either we destroy ourselves in an explosion of war, famine, oppressive governments, and environmental degradation…

Or we rise to a golden age of freedom, prosperity, and happiness.

“The predicament of contemporary man is grave,” Heschel wrote. “We seem to be destined either for a new mutation or for destruction.”

This “new mutation,” is the concept that interests me the most. The outcome isn’t going to be based on what you do, but on what you become.

If you want to travel, become curious about other cultures and committed to lifelong learning.

If you want to have a lucrative business, become a leader and a problem-solver.

If you want loving relationships, become more loving and compassionate.

When you work on yourself, you elevate the entire world.

The reason to have audacious goals and adventures is to break out of your shell and become this better version of yourself.

Tool of the Week: Become a Better Version of Yourself

1. Divide a word doc or a sheet of paper into 3 columns.

2. In the first column, list all the things you want to achieve or experience in your life—your “bucket list.”

3. Rank them in order of importance, and underline or highlight the one you want to accomplish first.

4. “Power up” your goal by brainstorming the ways it would help other people or benefit the world. Write these gifts in the second column. You can also things you could do to help others that would also bring you closer to achieving your top goal.

5. Think about an ideal, heroic person who could and would achieve this goal and make these contributions without doubt or hesitation. What qualities would this person have, or what kind of person would they be? Write words in the third column such as, “Generous,” “a teacher,” “disciplined,” “a warrior,” etc.

6. Review these qualities daily. Say out loud, “I am (generous, a warrior, disciplined, etc.).” Start acting as if these statements are true. If you don’t yet believe they are true, pretend you’re an actor playing the role of this person you want to become.

Making this personal transformation has become a lot more important now than it was in Heschel’s time.

There was no Internet in the 1960s.

Sending a document required postage. It would take days, if not weeks, to be delivered.

In fact, every single phone was attached to a wall. There was usually just one phone shared by the entire family. And if you wanted to contact someone in another city, you had to pay extra.

By the way, you couldn’t just open YouTube and find videos on playing the bass. You had to find a bass player within traveling distance and meet them in person for lessons.

It was tough for both the teacher and the student.

The point is things go wrong a lot faster in modern times. A crass remark by a politician can start a war or make the stock market plunge.

Fires, rumors, and germs all spread a lot faster.

We need to hurry and evolve, because time is running out.

But more to the point, today you have far more ways to learn, grow, teach, make money, or express yourself.

You have access to a universe of opportunities that didn’t exist for most of human history.

All you need to do is start.

The world needs you to grow, to molt, to shed your exoskeleton and become the next-level version of you.

At some point, you’re going to break through a wall of fear and do something that only you can do. In fact, you’ve probably already done this. Maybe more than once.

Somewhere along that journey, you find out what makes you truly unique and exceptional.

That wraps it up for this week.

If you’re enjoying these rants, lessons, and tools, I would love to hear from you.

If you’re not, I would like to hear from you even more.

Reply to this email and tell me what you think, what you’d like to see in the future, or just to drop me a line about your cat.

I don’t always have the time to reply to your message, but I read every one of them.

Jacob