This is the sixth and final entry in a series of micro-essays I developed from a talk I gave in 2018. The talk and essays explore foundational truths I’ve learned during the first half of my statistically-expected life.

People will help you without expecting anything in return

You’re probably going to get a lot of help from other people, all throughout your career. And in the strictest sense, you don’t deserve that help.

Anyone who believes that they are solely responsible for 100% of their personal success is delusional. We’ve all benefited from the genetic, cultural, and technological contributions of others. The only scenario in which you’d be justified in claiming that you alone are responsible for your state in life is one in which you were the first being to ever exist and that (after spawning your own existence) you’ve operated in a vacuum ever since (cough, god complex, cough).

The contributions from others that have helped you reach your current state come in two flavors. The first is what I’ll call abstract, macro help. Examples are modern medicine, air travel, and chemistry. You’ve benefited tremendously from the efforts of people you never met and who likely lived long before you and far away from the space you currently occupy. This type of help broadly targets humanity, not any one individual. It should be self-evident that you did nothing to merit this type of assistance.

The second flavor of help is personal. Your parents (probably) nurtured, fed, clothed, and educated you. Your friends (probably) send you well-wishes or even gifts on your birthday. Your significant other (hopefully) tells you how great you are, even on your bad days. Your grandparents might have helped with your college tuition (mine did). This help is directed at you personally and reflects the fact that these people care about you. These interactions are not transactional—there’s no expectation of reciprocation or balanced exchange of value.

It’s worth nothing that we all engage in many transactional interactions every day. But think about how awkward it would be if you tried to tip your mother-in-law for her prompt service at Thanksgiving dinner. Even though people direct the benefit of their actions towards you, those interactions are clearly not all transactional. In other words, lots of people choose to help you without expecting equivalent value in return. Their kindness isn’t due to you—you did nothing to deserve it.

This kindness also exists outside of your circle of family and close friends. People at work, mentors, and even random strangers contribute meaningfully to your success by making introductions, sharing feedback, and exposing you to opportunities. And, in my experience, the most objectively valuable help comes from folks that have nothing to gain by helping. Their effort is selfless and generous. They expect nothing in return, which keeps their motives pure and directed only at your benefit. It seems obvious that focused assistance with no profit motive should result in the greatest lift for your career or your business.

Your individual effort and intelligence clearly impact your level of success, but that success hinges on far more than you can individually control. Issues like dynastic wealth, white privilege, and political corruption highlight the difference that targeted advantages make over time. These are extreme examples, but they should serve to demonstrate how certain people or groups can benefit in extreme ways, independent of their effort or merit.

Our collective self-serving bias makes us all feel like our failures are situational, but that we’re directly responsible for our successes. Understanding this cognitive predisposition will allow you to more accurately understand what has led to your personal successes. And once you let go of the belief that you deserve everything good that happens to you, you can finally grasp the truth: the greatest help you’ll receive typically comes from people who are kind. If you betray that kindness with a deluded sense of entitlement or treat the gift transactionally … well, then you deserve every bad thing that happens to you.

TAKEAWAY: Gratitude represents a more accurate mental model of reality than entitlement. If you ever betray sincere kindness by returning greed or self-interest, you deserve every bad thing that ever happens to you. Be kind, and eliminate unkind people from the sphere that affects you.

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