The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [22]
“We are in a critical state right now. We’ve got maybe ten years to save our oceans. And there are all kinds of problems of that magnitude. However, I believe the future of our world is not going to come from the nonprofits. I think it’s going to come from business—because business is incredibly powerful. I just don’t think that holding bake sales and begging for little handouts by nonprofits is going to act quickly or powerfully enough. Business knows how to get things done. But it has to have a conscience, it has to want to make the world a better place and not just make a profit at any cost. It clearly doesn’t today.”
Anthony Sandberg may not be famous. He may not be a Silicon Valley billionaire. But he is a wealthy man, in every sense of the word. And to achieve this wealth, he never once deferred any meaning, purpose, adventure, or excitement in his life. He has always gone toward meaning, purpose, adventure, and excitement. His life is profoundly meaningful to him and to the many people he teaches and leads.
“Our motto at the school is ‘Inspire Confidence,’” he says. “It’s not ‘Learn to Sail Better.’ It’s about being confident to take that little journey from the shore, and then a little further, and a little further, and all of the sudden, the whole world becomes your playground.”
So this is the “Art of Earning a Living.” It is the art of creating a career path that both provides a high likelihood of financial security and allows you to follow your dreams and make a difference in the world.
To understand what it involves, let’s go back for a moment to the argument between Parents and Daughter at the beginning of the chapter.
The parents and their child are arguing about the relationship between money, financial security, and safety on the one hand and passion, purpose, meaning, and making a difference on the other.
The parents and the daughter—though they are on opposite sides of the argument—are all operating with the same basic presuppositions: Money and financial security are completely separate from living with a sense of purpose and creating a meaningful life. These spheres bear no relationship to each other. The parents are advocating basically a dull, boring life, in which the daughter pursues a career she cares nothing about (and even finds morally repugnant) in exchange for financial security. The daughter is advocating a life of passion, purpose, and meaning, with no thought or regard for how she’s going to pay the bills.
The Art of Earning a Living is the art of finding creative ways of bringing the spheres of money and meaning together and making them overlap significantly.
I call it an art because it’s not always apparent how to best achieve financial stability while at the same time making a difference in a way you care about. Remember, we’re not talking about “work-life balance” here—the “write plays in your spare time as a hobby while you’re a lawyer” philosophy espoused by the parents. We’re talking about creating a path where your work is your life’s purpose is your income is your meaning is the difference you’re making on the planet. Significantly more elusive—yet infinitely more rewarding—than the much-hyped “work-life balance.”
The Art of Earning a Living requires a great deal of self-inquiry into what, exactly, the difference you want to make is, and also a lot of creative, entrepreneurial problem solving to figure out how you could make decent money while making that difference.
You’re going to have to create a solution unique to you and your circumstances. No similar solution will have ever existed before, for a very simple reason: in the whole of human history, no one has yet made the difference you want to make. If they had, the impact you want to make wouldn’t be a “difference” anymore, it would be a sameness! Making a difference, not a “sameness,” means doing things no one has done before, at least, not for the people whose lives you want to impact.
And doing things