“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Let’s now get into ways you can really make a long-lasting impact, leave your mark, and reach your Mountaintop. While you are thinking about where you want to be three to five years from now and beyond, you also need to be fully in the present moment and embracing the resources you have available NOW.
While there are certainly going to be ups and downs along the way, progress and setbacks, you can learn to funnel unwanted situations into something bigger and better. I use the dysfunction I experienced in the past as a way to help high school and college students around the world. What difficult circumstance have you been through that you can use for added motivation to reach your Mountaintop?
Remember, one of the goals of this book is, in some way, to flip on its head what you’ve heard about success in the past. Reaching your Mountaintop is not about trying to impress and please others. It’s not about worrying what others think. It’s not about fitting into society’s standards. It’s about being your quintessential, authentic self in each and every moment by seeking to serve and help others.
You win by making other people feel good about themselves. You get back at your critics not by engaging them and lowering yourself to their level, but by being kind to them. You win by living such a happy, successful, and service-filled life that your critics are left stunned and speechless. Become so focused on serving others and doing good that you don’t have time for negativity.
Of course, this is ultimately not about winning or losing, or “getting back” at anyone. But when you go for the gold and reach your Mountaintop, there will be some good people and some bad people around you. Some may even be liars and betrayers. Some may not be directly mean to your face, but they may not have your best interests at heart. It’s important to watch out for people like this.
Throughout this book, we’ve discussed some important and powerful tips to achieve what you want. The catch-22 is that when you are reaching your fullest potential and at your best, you are most often serving others. This is not just a figure of speech nor is it something to which we are paying lip service. It means genuinely helping others and keeping the focus on what you can do for them.
One of the key aspects of success is not to be so concerned about what others think, good or bad. Don’t get attached to other people’s opinions. The successful and inspiring man we are about to hear from, John Powers, told me once, “You don’t have to care what other people think.” He is the perfect example of serving others. He’s so busy helping those in need that he doesn’t even have time to worry about what other people think of him. Ironically, people respect and love him for that.
There’s power in serving others. The greatest achievement of all is when you are focused on providing value to others.
I thought I had a lot going on until I met John. I’ve had a tendency sometimes to bite off more than I can chew. And I’ve always had an absurdly involved schedule. But then I met John, my former manager at Acara Partners and good friend – a true champion, man of integrity and character, and role model for us all. He’s one of the most involved people I’ve ever met, and he truly put things into perspective for me!
A Powerful and Meaningful Service Project: Quality Over Quantity
In addition to being a director of communications at Acara, John is a college professor at Quinnipiac who has his Ph.D. He is a leader of a semiannual service endeavor which we’ll hear about in a moment. He travels often and has a wonderful family with whom he spends a lot of time. This man does it all.
Johns leads an important service project to help people who are less fortunate – people with little to no money, food, and/or shelter. He travels down to the Dominican Republic twice a year with a large group of awesome people that include students, volunteers, people from his church, and people from other areas of his life as well. (For example, I went on the service trip in June of 2015, and I knew John through where we used to work together. I had a blast and made some good friends and contacts through the experience while helping others.)
I found it fascinating and incredible how John turned a simple thought of helping others into well over two decades of service to people in the Dominican Republic, with now hundreds of people involved, so I asked him more about how it all got started.
“It all started when I was 23 years old and recently married,” John said. “My wife and I posed a simple yet powerful question to one another: What can we do to help others, other than sending money?”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with sending money to charitable organizations, but they wanted to do something more personal and make a truly meaningful impact. Keeping their eyes and ears open for a chance to do this, they heard of an opportunity from people at their church to travel south to the Dominican Republic. It was serendipitous in the sense that it started as nothing more than an idea and conversation, but John and his wife were serious about taking action to help those in need.
In February of 1990, they went on their first trip to the Dominican Republic. They went there for a week and saw the vast need. They witnessed firsthand the poverty and suffering many of the Dominicans had to go through on a daily basis, and it broke their hearts.
When John and his wife returned home from their first trip, they made an important decision. They could have gone to places like Haiti and Nicaragua, but they decided to commit to this one project in the Dominican Republic. Remember what we talked about as far as focusing in on your one thing?
“Let’s make a BIG difference with this one project,” John said. “And then we can expand from there.”
Let’s now fast forward twenty-six years later, to the year 2016. John now goes every year, multiple times a year, and has been to the Dominican Republic over fifty times. He chose to go back to the same place every year because having an impact means building relationships; it also means seeing what you have worked on over the years and observing the progress.
When I was in the Dominican Republic in June of 2015, I saw that they had built entire buildings. Do you know how much that helps people? An incredible amount! And this is only one small example of the huge impact John and his team have made in this community. When I was down there, I helped build a home for a family that was homeless. I couldn’t have been happier to do it.
If John and his wife went to the Dominican Republic once and left, they would’ve not made as meaningful and deep of an impact as they could have. True service and reaching your Mountaintop is about quality and depth, not about getting something done just for the sake of completion. Know that if you go somewhere once and never again, it’s still wonderful that you made a difference. However, the over-arching point here is how John, his wife, and their team have made a sustained and long-lasting commitment to what they are doing to help others.
For example, starting in 1990, John and his team helped build a hospital from scratch, and it’s now a fully operational facility. Can you imagine living somewhere with no doctors or hospitals? John identified a problem and then filled the need with a solution. When John returns to the Dominican twice each year, he marvels at how far the area has come over the last twenty-five years while he continues to do more work. The one village (Batey 50, in La Romana) is now a model for other villages. This same mindset applies to doing all types of service projects.
“Get specific in where you are helping people and get to know others,” John said. “The beauty of going with a group is that you get to choose where you focus your efforts. You can find your niche and put all of your energy into helping a specific group of people or assisting with a certain project or initiative.”
In Batey 50, there are schools, houses, water filters, medical clinics, and all kinds of buildings and projects with which one may assist. There are now more than 2,000 Americans who go to the Dominican every year. Isn’t it amazing how something so big has come from something so small? That’s the power in reaching your Mountaintop – both serving others and enlisting others in your project by getting them involved. That’s leadership. That’s impact. That’s legacy.
Different Ways to Make a Difference
Further discussing his Dominican service experience, John told me how other people in the Batey 50 village come and help the Americans. These extremely poor and poverty-stricken Dominicans have nothing material to give, but they come over and show their support by giving their time. This led John to share an important realization with us:
If you can’t give money, you can always give time.
“Sometimes just showing up and showing you care by truly listening to people…that’s huge,” John said. “People are always so concerned about the money. And yes, money is important, but the core of service is the human connection. Go volunteer at a soup kitchen, help serve the meal, and actually talk to the people you are serving. Sometimes talking to people is just as powerful as giving them money, if not more so, because they need to know somebody cares.
“Many Dominicans have no civilization, no communication, no means of really anything, and then here comes a bus full of Americans,” John emphasized. “When they see us showing up they go crazy, in a good way, because it gives them hope. They will talk about us to others. They will go home and tell family, friends, and classmates about the initiatives going on in Batey 50. Other people will then get involved as awareness spreads.”
John is a realistic, intelligent, thoughtful man and he knows that everyone won’t be able to do service projects in other countries. But you can still make an impact at home.
“The thing to remember,” John said, “is that the same hopelessness we see in the Dominican Republic exists in our very own towns and cities. Some people feel forgotten,” John continued. “These are people who made mistakes, but they’re human just like us. All you need to do is show that you care.”
Caring about others is crucial here. The challenges and setbacks I had in high school would have been a lot easier if I had felt like someone at my high school actually cared about what I was going through. When you listen to others and encourage them in any setting, you are serving others. What I experienced in my younger years is something I can now laugh about, but the point is that caring about an individual not only makes a difference but can literally save their life.
John has a great head on his shoulders, to say the least. Sadly, so few people on this planet care about genuinely helping others that when you show you care, you stand out. The heart and soul of service is showing others that you care. When you do this, you make them feel like a million bucks, and you pull them out of despair. Imagine how good it would feel to help people each and every day by giving them hope. This is one of the keys to making it to your Mountaintop.
If you are occupied with a hectic and demanding schedule, start small. Smile at someone. Lend a listening ear. Silently send someone a blessing. You don’t have to be recognized by others for your efforts. It’s about putting your inner life before your outer life. Inner power is much stronger than outer recognition.
Reaching your Mountaintop is the exception, not the rule, but if we get this content in enough hands, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.
Community and Perspective
Remember that huge hospital I mentioned John and his team created? He didn’t just create a useful building, though that was monumental unto itself – he also played a role in establishing a powerful and interactive community. People who run the hospital and church in Batey 50 (the village they’ve chosen to help) are absolutely insistent that each Dominican works and helps out. No one gets a free pass.
There’s no welfare in a place like this, so everyone comes and helps. They must rely on one another. If there is a school being built for their kids, then you can bet your bottom dollar that the families are helping push the wheelbarrow. There is no tolerance for laziness, swindling, and greed. They do sympathize with people (there are always exceptions to the rule, like people who have disabilities), but there is absolutely zero tolerance for people trying to take advantage of the system.
With that said, this system works. It creates an atmosphere of total expectations and each person knows without the least shred of doubt they must contribute value to both the specific project and the community overall. Every family must get involved and be a part of the process. They are grateful for the help they receive from John’s group and shower them with gratitude and appreciation.
“Seeing all of this,” I said, “what’s your perspective on life?”
“People just don’t realize what these people in this part of the Dominican are going through,” John said. “It’s easy to come back to the United States and forget all about their hardship. One week you are saving someone’s life and the next week you are mad because Netflix isn’t loading. We joke about first world problems, but there are people with no healthcare and no job opportunities in places like the Dominican Republic. These are hardworking, family-oriented, and really good people who just haven’t been given a fair shake at life.”
The most tragic part of all is that many of these people are trapped in their situation.
“These people can’t move and are trapped,” John said. “They have families, they have no money, and they have nowhere else to go. They have one skill and that’s to cut sugarcane with a machete. That’s why it’s absolutely crucial that we give people opportunities to live, work, and provide for their families.”
And that’s why John does what he does. As a man with an enormous amount of perspective, he can help thousands of people through his service projects. It’s very hard to imagine what some of these Dominicans have to go through on a daily basis, but John and his team are there to help as much as they possibly can.
Remember what we discussed way back at the beginning of the book? When facing your own challenges and situations in life, John suggests you ask:
Is this really a problem?
Look at your current situation from the eyes of what some of the most unfortunate people on this planet are going through. Please know that this is by no means whatsoever putting down your problem or disregarding it – you definitely need to honor what’s wrong, deal with it, and fix the situation (don’t let other people marginalize what you’re going through as you solve your challenges). It’s just a way of applying a situational mindset that allows you to handle the ups and downs of life better without losing your cool or going into the dumps.
I say this with a smile now, knowing all is well, and I apply John’s lessons in my life every day. But a decade ago when I experienced the worst moment of my life after getting cut from my baseball team – what you read in the first chapter – I didn’t know any of these strategies or insights. As small as that was in the grand scheme of things, and as much as I can laugh about it now, baseball was my life, and as a college recruit athlete, it was a devastating blow to unexpectedly not make the team. That’s why I’m so passionate about getting this material into the hands of as many people as possible. I now know strong relationships and perspective can turn a nightmare situation into a positive learning experience. Had I been friends with John when I was seventeen, I’m sure he would have helped me out and put the situation in perspective, but hey – at least he’s helping us out now!
How Do You Treat Others?
Lastly, let me tell you that John is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met – he always treats others with respect. How you treat others is a big part of your legacy; you never know what others are going through.
I’m a warm, kind, and fun-loving guy, but I do get annoyed when other people are disrespectful for no reason. John helped me to remember that it’s all about being the bigger person and treating others with kindness even if they were wrong to do what they did. I’m all for standing up for yourself, but you have to remember that what your emotions may be telling you to do at this moment may not be what is best for you in the long-run. Think your actions through, don’t do anything impulsively, and remember that mean words can come back to bite you. There’s almost never a reason to treat someone else like garbage, even if they’ve been mean to you.
It’s up to you to strike the balance between being the bigger person and asserting yourself in a kind, but firm, way while never letting other people walk all over you. I learned from John, and this might help you as well, that sometimes the best thing you can do is to let something go and move on with your life. It’s not only the mark of professionalism but also the mark of maturity and being a person who lifts others up.
Really examine how you treat others. It’s the mark of your character and who you really are as a person. If you want to be a leader, then let other people save face even when you know they’re wrong. Be like John and be someone who treats others with respect and kindness whenever possible. This took me years to learn, and I’m still working on it, but the truth is you never know what someone else is going through. If you can continue being kind to others, you’ll make other people feel good about themselves and get the last laugh. What’s better than that?
Serving others and encouraging other people – building them up – is a surefire way to success. When you are so focused on helping other people that you don’t even have time to worry about things outside of your control, you’ll know you are well on your way to reaching your Mountaintop each and every day.
Questions for Reflection
- How can you become more involved in your community? Are there soup kitchens, homeless shelters, or other kinds of organizations where you could volunteer your time?
- What are some ways you could shift your mentality to one of giving and service to others?
- How can you use a focus on serving others as a way to better maintain perspective during the trials and tribulations of your life?
John Powers, PhD was featured in Chapter 9 of the award-winning book Reach Your Mountaintop: 10 Keys to Finding the Hidden Opportunity in Your Setbacks, Flipping What You’ve Heard on Its Head, and Achieving Legendary Goals.
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