Posted on January 10, 2022

"Help people think big."

—Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

During the past year, I’ve been on a quest for knowledge that would help me on my journey to my self improvement: reading books on personal financing or how to learn better; hearing audiobooks about negotiation or the important importance of breathing correctly; and even watching videos from people that just want to share their own knowledge on these things. However, there is always this question at the back of my mind: what’s the point of striving to be better and be more knowledgeable, if I’m not sharing it with people, if I’m keeping such a knowledge to myself?

It’s been a few months since I decided I should do something about it. At first, I would just recommend books to people around me that I knew shared some common interests and would really like the recommendation. Even though this action helped them a lot—even one of them is now a very active user of audiobooks, probably more than me—, I could see it wasn’t enough: it’s easy to help desire turn into action, not so much turning the indifference though.

For a while, I opted for recommending some of my friends and family some of the books that had helped me along the way. Nonetheless, the lack of a clear intention—other than me ensuring they are life-changing—made it an unfulfilled task. That is when I realized that, if I wanted to help them think big, I had to take real actions into the matter that transcended a superfluous suggestion. Thus, I scheduled a meeting with some friends to show them the importance of starting to care about their personal finances as soon as possible. Looking at their expressions I could tell that the meeting had been a success. They are now diligently working for their personal growth on the matter, while I’m figuring out how to give that talk a better structure so I can reach even more people, especially the people close to me. There is no point for me to be on my way to accomplishing my goals, if I cannot help my loved ones achieve theirs.