You’ve all walked down the street and you've all seen someone
begging, and you either have or haven't thrown a few pennies in their cup.
When you do, you feel good, you bought that feeling,
you gave money, you got the feeling of goodwill, you paid for that feeling.
Do you know how we get fulfillment? You can be happy because you did things at work,
you can be proud because you did things at work, you can be excited because you
had a big success at work, but you know how you feel fulfilled at work?
When you do something for someone else. It's the only way we could get that feeling,
it's the only way we get that feeling. You know why the statistics say
that over 90 percent of people don't feel fulfilled by the work they do?
It's not because of the job, it's not because of the pay,
it's not because of the benefits, it's because we don't help each other anymore.
We sit in our cubes and we work. And anything that we turn to anybody
because we need something, we need to get something,
and yet we don't put ourselves out there simply for no other reason than
to help somebody else. You know what generosity is?
Generosity is doing something for someone else, expecting nothing in return,
at no point, ever. Because the whole idea of giving,
you’ve all walked down the street and you've all seen someone
begging, and you either have or haven't thrown a few pennies in their cup,
when you do, you feel good, you bought that feeling,
you gave money, you got the feeling of goodwill, you paid for that feeling.
If you didn't give money, you either feel nothing or you feel bad,
you can't feel good by not giving, you paid for that feeling.
Do you ever watch, “Deadliest catch” on the Discovery Channel?
I was slipping through the channels one night and “Deadliest catch” came on,
and on this episode, they were in a huge storm. Now for those of you who don't
know “Deadliest catch”, they take these crab fishing
boats out in the Bering Sea, which is like terrible
and they put cameras on them and we watch. The reason that's I guess significant is because
these crab fishermen have, I think, one of the top five deadliest jobs in the world.
I don't know what the exact number is, but dozens of fishermen die every year doing this.
So they have cameras only on five or six of the ships,
even though there are many, many ships that go out fishing every season and they
don't really come into proximity with each other because the ocean is huge and
they usually sabotage each other and give each other false information
because they're all competitors, they're all looking to get the crabs and
make sure that they find them that somebody else doesn't,
and yeah, it's business, it's just business, it's ok,
we all do the same thing in our own companies. And in this one episode, this big,
huge storm was so violent that they had to bring all the pots,
which are the big cages that they catch the crabs and they had to bring all the pot back on the boat
and wait out the storm. And just by dumb luck one of the
boats that had cameras on it was in proximity of a boat that didn't
have cameras on it. And so they filmed,
they had secured all their pots on the deck, and so they started filming the other boat.
And they filmed a guy climbing on the outside of the cage,
securing the pots. And all of a sudden a huge wave
hits the side of the boat and the guy is not there anymore.
And the people on the boat with the cameras start screaming,
“Man overboard, man overboard, man overboard”.
And they turned their boat towards where they think he might be.
He's a stranger, they don't know him, they don't know the crew members
of the other boat, and yet they react
and they turn towards him. And they find him in the drink.
And for those of you who don't understand how dangerous this is,
if the water is so cold that if you're in the water for,
I think it's a minute or a minute, 30, hypothermia will set in and you die.
And they come upon him and he's screaming,
“Don't let me die, don't let me die”.
And they pull him on board, not out of the woods yet,
they strip off his clothes because it's wet and cold
and they wrap blankets around him to prevent hypothermia from setting in.
And he survives, and it's overwhelming. And the captain comes down,
and he hugs the stranger, this young man, his competitor.
He hugs this guy as if he's his own son. Everybody is crying.
And you realize what happened here was a human interaction.
And the reason they risk their own lives to help this other person,
even though they spend every other day trying to get ahead and sabotage
is because at the end of the day, they're all crab fishermen
and they know something about each other and they know something about the risk that
they all take to do this.
And when push comes to shove, they will put themselves out there
to help each other for no other reason than they get it,
they're one of the same. I will promise you
that every single member of that crew that day went home with a feeling of fulfillment.
I promise you that every single person in that crew that day
felt more good in their hearts and in their jobs than the richest days they've ever pulled in.
My question is, what are you doing to help the person next to you?
It's not an equation, it's designed to help you feel good.
And Mother Nature has given us this feeling when we do something for someone else
to encourage us to do it, because when we are in groups,
when we are surrounded by people who believe what we believe,
trust emerges and our very survival and progress goes up.