Episode 185: Lifes Hurdles, Dreams Unfulfilled

Welcome to the Soul of Innovation podcast. I am Thomas Anglero, and you know, it is impossible, absolutely impossible to know what other people have gone through. So often we see other people from our past, we see new people We join a new job, meet new friends, enter a department store, enter a room, and we quickly make assumptions about people, thinking all sorts of thoughts. That is the way the human mind is wired. And if you are an insecure person, and even if you think you're not insecure, if you do these things, you are insecure. It is A and then B. But do you know, we have no idea what other people have gone through. Let me tell you a story. This past week, went to a reunion, my wife's reunion, 30-year reunion, and meeting people who I met 30 years ago and It reminded me of my reunion many years ago where I met my older classmates. Well, they're older now, and I remember how amazed I was when I was in school with them. I was a kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, poor kid. I don't even know if you call what I had was an education. Fortunate enough to be at a great school with all these kids who've had the best education their entire lives. And I said, in the future, they will grow up to be the presidents of companies. They would go up to be probably the presidents of the United States. And when I met them years later, they were something completely different. This past week at my wife's reunion, the same experience happened. When I met them 30 years ago, they were young, vibrant architects who will take on the world, who will produce the new pantheons and the Roman Coliseums, who will create new structures that will define the planet, the cultures on the planet, the people on the planet. And most of them did not. But this time I was smart enough to ask them, how have you been in a deeper sense? What have you been through? What are you going through right now? It was only maybe one of 50 that really stood on that line, became the architect that the magazines talk about and the movies talk about. But the rest had gone through life and experienced things that there's no way we would know that they're experiencing it. And during that week, there was a whole week function at this reunion, and we toured around looking at beautiful structures. You could see how everyone was a bit broken. There's no way to know what people's lives, what lives, what, what challenges they have, what they've gone through, what perspective they have in their head. I immediately felt sympathy for many of them, many of them who had dreams and aspirations that were bigger than my imagination, but would hit with reality, hit with some limitation, hit with a family sickness, hit with something that held them back and held back their dreams. And do you know how difficult it is to meet with someone that you met many years ago and you like, and they don't They didn't fulfill their dreams. One person, very nice guy, on the very last day he came over to me and told me, "Half of my income goes to my rent." In other words, he said, "Thomas, this trip is everything I could afford. This is nothing more I could do." in my life. I'm going to be paying off bills for months just because I came on this trip. This guy was and is an amazing architect. He has self-doubt, and that self-doubt has held him back from being that amazing architect. He's had lovers who have died. He's had family issues. And life has held them back. There is no way. There is no way we know what other people have been through. There's no way I know what you've been through. There's no way you know what I've been through. I think instead of walking around, and when we enter a room and we think and look at other people go, oh my God, what does this person do? Oh my God. I think when you enter a room— and I'm not trying to be weird or strange, but I think it is true— when you enter a room, enter a room with empathy. Enter a room thinking that not that these people are better than you, but into the room giving them love and saying, I will love all these people because I know they're going through some hardship. They're going through external hardship, internal hardship. They're going through challenges. You're at work and you meet all these bosses, you meet all these people who are frustrated, and the more frustrated and more yelling people do, the more empathy I have for them. One way of saying, what are you going through? What challenges do you have? Why do you behave this way? There was a study done recently on millionaires. What Makes a Millionaire. They interviewed 10,000 millionaires and then they put all the data through an AI and the AI found one commonality among all the millionaires. And the answer, one commonality was luck. They all went through life and had different lives, but luck made them millionaires. Not that they were great students, not that they had great hair, not that they came from money, but luck. This means that we all go through life and we all have challenges. No one's better than anyone else. No one has it easier. It's just a very few people get lucky. But those people who get lucky still have the same challenges we do. As I travel around the world and I meet people, we all have the same issues. We just talk about it in different languages with different expressions, but it's all the same things. The next time you meet someone The next time you greet someone, give them empathy in your mind. Be excited to meet them, but understand they are probably going through something very difficult. Go forth and spread your beauty and your light. Look at people not with sorrow and sadness, but with love and happiness, but with understanding. Understanding that everyone has it difficult. And these times now with the recession booming, or glooming really, layoffs are happening everywhere and increasing. Price is everything and going up. People haven't been distressed in 11 years according to the stock market, because the stock market has gone up for 11 years in a row. But now it's going down. Everything is going down. No one's a Superman anymore or Superwoman. Everything's declining. Insecurity's at an all-time high. What people need from you is you, your strength, your smile, your ability to listen to them, to understand what they've gone through. They need you to ask questions about them and understand them. This is Thomas Anglero thinking really hard about how we could change this planet, and the way we do it is by one person at a time. Take care. Until next time.