Seth Godin: What Is Significance? (With a Bit of Stoicism)

is significance the result of doing meaningful work with the right people?

So as you've correctly intuited, there's a lot of stoicism in this, and there's also, um, some Viktor Frankl. It's, you can't insist on the conditions, but you can choose your attitude. And if the place where you work does not permit you to find the attitude you need, you should leave. And once you know that that is an option, it is quite likely you will find, even in the job where you are in, the guts to create that opportunity. Um, significance, I came to the conclusion after surveying these 10,000 people, is being treated with respect, accomplishing more than you thought you could, and working with people on projects you were proud of. But in all three examples, what we see is you made a change happen. Meaning involves agency, and agency and significance require that there be some sort of change you can make to someone. And what the people who would like to be surveilling puppet masters want from you is that you don't make any decisions and you don't make any change you can be responsible for. They want you to be a replaceable cog in the machine. And bosses are surprisingly open to shifting that if the people they work for eagerly seek out responsibility, make promises and keep them. It makes the entire operation far more likely to be something that's resilient and ultimately profitable.

Yeah, well, I love the idea of resilience too, because it's the thing that we need most probably in this day and age. And I always knew that you were a cloaked Stoic at heart. Accused you of that many times.

The problem, just since I'm bringing Carlos to Newcastle today, The Stoics need a brand makeover because the word stoicism is just a terrible word.

Exactly right.