Dan Sullivan - Who do you want to be a hero to?: Answer just one question and clarify who you can always be

Gain unprecedented clarity and direction.

Being a hero is the core mindset that will reveal your true purpose in life, how you best create value for others, and the specific audience you want to be a hero to. Gain the clarity and direction you need with one simple question.

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Not all heroes wear capes. You might not think of yourself as a hero, but every time you create value for others, youre benefiting people and making life easier or better for them in some way.

The question is, Who do you want to be a hero to? By identifying the key audience you want to create value for, you focus yourself on the most crucial people in your life, helping them to grow their capabilitiesand growing your own as well.

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Contents

You recognize that your two greatest kinds of experiences in life are someone being a hero to you and your being a hero to someone else.

In my many conversations with people about the greatest experiences of their professional and personal lives, a recurring theme emerges: They tell me about a time when someone was a hero to them.

These experiences always make them feel incredibly positive about that person, and that positivity is permanent even decades later, the memory of it is vivid.

The other experience that constantly shows up as a great one for people is having the opportunity to be a hero to someone else.

By being a hero, I dont mean that you have to leap off a cliff for somebody. It can be as simple as connecting two people who would have a great business partnership. There are situations that come up where your intention is to help another person just for the purpose of helping themthats what I mean by being a hero.

We do a lot of funny thinking about whats real and what isnt because there often seem to be discrepancies between whats happening inside of ourselves and whats happening outside of ourselves.

So what can you use as a constant outside reference point to check out the reality of who you are, and in such a way that you dont have to give too much thought to it?

Heres the answer: your measurable impact on other peoples growth and achievement. It continually proves the reality of your own unique progress, and thats one attractive part of the idea of growing yourself as a hero to an increasing number of other individuals.

Its measurable quantitatively because their progress is being measured, but its also qualitative because the people youre a hero to give you feedback on how your help was crucial to their growth.

Its all related to specifics: a specific individual, specific progress and results, and the specific capability or set of capabilities you bring to the process.

The best way to determine how you can be a hero to someone is by considering the times that other people have uniquely contributed to your own success in being a more capable and confident individual.

As you increasingly become a hero to other people, you become more keenly aware of how other people are being heroes to you.

It expands in both ways, and the deep appreciation you feel when someone else is a hero to you is what other people feel when youre a hero to them.

But if youre always giving without taking, or youre always taking without giving back, the benefits will run dry. The reality has to increase both inside of yourself and outside of yourselftheyre necessary for each other.

If you think back, youll probably find youre most proud of all the times and situations when your performance and contribution enabled others to grow and achieve in ways that were crucially important for them.

And its never about what you think the other person should do; its about what they really want to do and see as being crucial for themselves.

Just as youre always working toward a future you envision, when youre a hero to someone else, youre operating with their version of the future in mind. Its important to be helpful based on the other persons purpose, and help in a way thats in accordance with their own game plan.

Being a hero is always the purpose that most focuses and multiplies our best energies and skills in any situation.

Its like having a constant true northyouve established the correct direction right from the beginning, and youre not worried about the means because the means will be whatevers necessary to get there.

Theres no way to predict exactly what means will be required, but being a hero to other people can always be the focus of your own development of capability. Thats the direction you can always be going in.

With so many people you could spend your time helping, deciding who it is you want to be a hero to can take away all complexity from the situation by eliminating the alternatives and setting you up to move ahead with a clear goal and purpose.

The question, Who do you want to be a hero to? helps you narrow down and define your purpose in life by identifying your true audience and how you can create value for them.

No matter who we are or where we are, we deeply appreciate everyone whos ever been a hero to us, and every one of those people has the same deep appreciation for every person whos been a hero to them.