How Your Story Can Give Your Life Meaning - Letter to a Friend #20

Howzit friend,
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I believe that a key ingredient to a purposeful and successful life is to integrate who you are into what you do. What does that mean?
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It means that you should strive to do something that only you can do - something you're uniquely suited for given your background, personality, connections, etc. Purpose comes from knowing that if you didn't wake up in the morning, you couldn't be replaced. That you have a duty, something only you can do - the opposite of being a cog in a machine.
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What does that look like?
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If I'm choosing, as I am, between making a product that anyone could make (e.g. a course on how to use Web3 tools) and making a product only I could make (e.g. a course on becoming a man without a father), I should choose the latter every time.
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The key is to find how your story can help others, but the difficult part is being vulnerable enough to share the tough details (ironically, these are what connect most with people).
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A less personal example is choosing to go back to your hometown and fixing the problems that you suffered from growing up rather than taking that "cog in a machine" job on Wall Street. The principle is the same: Do something only you can do.
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I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes on meaning from the master himself, Viktor Frankl: "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
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Until next time,
Ryan

P.S. I'm thinking about stories because I'm listening to a great book called Stories That Stick and reading one called Building a Story Brand. Point is, if you're doing anything entrepreneurial, you need a good story (that's all marketing is). Highly recommend checking both out if you're working on a project.

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