Zig Ziglar often said, “You can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
It’s tricky mindset, this servant attitude. If you give for the sake of giving — to add value to the other person’s life — you will be rewarded. But if you give with that reward in the back of your mind, it doesn’t work. You have to totally and sincerely give with no expectation of reward, but it’s human nature to want to be at least recognized if not compensated.
How do you help other people get what they want because you want to help them, not because you hope to get what you want in return? How do you abandon all expectation of being rewarded and, in doing so, begin to reap the rewards?
“I’m just happy to help,” you say, but do you really mean it? Don’t you, just a teensy bit, hope that the other person says, “No, I insist that you take this compensation?”
Still, when you pull it off — when you really just want to help and manage to do so — it really does feel good, and it feels like getting compensated is unnecessary. Getting a reward almost feels like cheating.
It’s so hard to strike that balance that seeking divine, supernatural assistance is probably the only way to succeed.
