A short YouTube monologue by Brian Johnson reflecting on Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and a conversation with John Mackey (Whole Foods). Johnson argues that happiness and success cannot be directly pursued but instead ‘ensue’ as byproducts when one commits to serving a purpose greater than oneself; he urges listeners to ask what their conscience commands and to dedicate themselves to that cause.
Chapters
Good morning. This is Brian. I am sitting here on a Sunday morning. We're having a nice, lazy start to our day. Hello, Alexandra. What do you got there? Doing some reading? Course in miracles. Very nice. You're on day 16. Fantastic. Great stuff. So we were just having a conversation about how we can serve. And I am deeply inspired by Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning. So this is my binder again, with a hundred philosopher's notes in it. So Man's Search for Meaning. Right, by Viktor Frankl. It's an incredible book. And I just got back from the Conscious Capitalism Conference out in Austin, Texas, and one of my friends and mentors, a guy named John Mackey, who runs Whole Foods, he and I met about three years ago and maybe four now, and spent an hour with him in his house. And we really bonded on one particular thing. This idea grounded in Viktor Frankl's man's search for meaning. That if we want to have happiness in our lives, we need to serve something bigger than ourselves. And if we just look to how we can arrive at a happy place and be happy or be successful, we're going to get lost. And John talked about this in his presentation this week at the Conscious Capitalism Workshop. He said that it's essentially narcissistic if your end goal is happiness. If your goal is happiness and that's all you care about, that's pretty much a narcissistic pursuit. And if we really want happiness, he says the people that tend to be the happiest are those who just go out and give themselves to the world. They dedicate themselves to something bigger than themselves, and happiness kind of ensues out of that. It's a byproduct of committing yourself to something bigger than yourself. Then you find that you're happy. And he was saying that this actually is perfectly parallel to successful businesses, businesses that seek profit for the sake of profit. Tim may get a little bit, but they're not ultimately going to be the most successful and prosperous business in his mind. He runs Whole Foods and advocates that we think about our businesses in the same sense that if you really want to have a profitable business, serve something bigger than profit. I aim to create value in the world, to make a difference in the world, to truly change the world as we do that. We do it competently as business people. We will have profits, but those will be a byproduct of commitment to something bigger than ourselves. So it's a huge concept and conversation. And Alexander and I. Hello, darling. We're talking about it this Morning. And then I literally, two minutes ago, before I turned this on, went and got my folder because I wanted to read this quote because Viktor Frankl captures it so perfectly. So this is the philosopher's note that I just edited that we're getting ready to polish for the coffee table book. I don't think you're going to be able to read that, so I'm just going to pull back and read it myself. But he says this. This is Viktor Frankl in the introduction to his great book, Man's Search for Meaning. He says again and again, I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America, don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. It must ensue. And it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success. You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run. In the long run, I say success will follow precisely because you had forgotten to think about it. That's Viktor Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning. One of my favorite quotes. I actually read that in John's house a few years ago because we were talking about these ideas and it was one of his favorite passages. And I had it written in my journal. I tend to write my favorite quotes. Here we go in my journal, like right here. I have a couple of my favorite quotes in the first page. And this quote was the first quote that I had in my journal and read it to him. We just had one of those soul brother connections from that moment on, and it's just been awesome. But anyway, how can you serve? That's the question I'm meditating on today. What does my conscience command me to do? Is. And how do I kind of get out of that narcissistic trapping of how do I create just pure happiness in my life and refocus it to how do I create as much value as I can in the world? What's my purpose? What am I here to do? And let me let success and happiness ensue from that. So my question for you today is, how can you do that? How do you respond to those questions. What do you feel when you hear those questions? And how do we go out and rock it more today? So here's to our hero's journey and committing ourselves to something bigger than ourselves and letting all the goodness and mojo ensue from that point. Big hug. High five. Wanna say goodbye? Bye. Talk soon. Bye.
