What does it take to create lasting change in the world? How can you transform your mindset to reach your fullest potential?
In The Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett shares powerful insights about making a meaningful impact through personal growth and strategic thinking. His approach combines practical wisdom with deep psychological understanding, showing how anyone can develop the mindset needed for success.
Keep reading to discover how to make a difference in the world while staying true to your authentic self.
How to Make a Difference in the World
Bartlett’s book contains specific advice for business success, but he also explains how to develop the mindset you need to reach your full potential and make an impact. Here’s Bartlett’s advice for how to make a difference in the world.
Tip #1: Keep Death at the Front of Your Mind
First, Bartlett asserts that you can motivate yourself to live life to the fullest by frequently reflecting on your mortality. Many people avoid thinking about death because they see it as an unpleasant, depressing reality. However, Bartlett asserts that reflecting on death will help you feel more alive. Remind yourself that every hour you spend is one you’ll never get back. You’ll naturally find a new appreciation for the good things in your life. Additionally, you’ll feel more inspired to spend your time and energy on the most meaningful activities that make you the happiest.
Bartlett also argues that, because your time on Earth is limited, your health should be your top priority. Investing time and effort in healthy habits like a nutritious diet, exercise, and sufficient sleep increases your odds of living longer. This gives you more time to spend on meaningful and enjoyable pursuits. Furthermore, maintaining a healthy body and mind will drastically improve your mood, empowering you to accomplish more in practically every other aspect of your life.
(Shortform note: In Outlive, Peter Attia explains that a nutritious diet, exercise, and sufficient sleep all extend your lifespan by helping to improve your metabolic health—your body’s ability to effectively process, store, and use energy from food. The healthy habits Attia recommends keep your body from processing nutrients in unhealthy ways, such as storing them as fat that surrounds important internal organs. In this way, these habits reduce your risk of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and even brain degeneration, all of which are leading causes of death. Avoiding these diseases will also help you maintain your physical capabilities as you age, resulting in more day-to-day happiness and greater productivity.)
| The Need to Maximize Meaning and Happiness Can Make You Anxious Bartlett argues that thinking about death motivates you to optimize your life for meaning and happiness, but approaching this tactic in the wrong way may leave you unhappy. In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts argues that our tendency to fixate on the constant passage of time and death’s approach is the source of all of humanity’s anxiety. This anxiety leads many people to try to maximize the pleasure they feel at every moment they have left—an ultimately futile effort, as the need to constantly feel pleasure creates additional unpleasant anxiety. If thinking about death makes you feel like you need to be doing work that makes you extremely happy and fulfilled at every moment, it may be unhealthy. Feeling like you’re failing to maximize your happiness and fulfillment will make you more anxious and unhappy. If this is the case for you, you may need to practice living in the present. Doing so helps you endure pain and fully appreciate pleasure. |
Tip #2: Focus on Increasing Your Potential Impact on the World
Once you recognize that your time on Earth is limited, how do you get the most out of the time you have?
According to Bartlett, you can maximize the difference you make in the world by building up certain assets in a particular order. First, focus on acquiring knowledge and developing your skills. This will make you increasingly valuable to others, giving you the leverage you need to (over time) forge connections with people willing to help you, accumulate capital, and establish a reputation as someone capable of great things. This reputation will make it easier for you to gain even more connections and capital, empowering you to make a sizable difference in the world.
For example, you might start out as a world-class programmer, then use those skills to connect with other talented technical workers and attract the attention of investors to fund your product ideas. Eventually, you’ll work on enough high-profile projects that all kinds of people will clamor to work with you on any project you think will change the world.
Bartlett warns that attempting to shortcut this process by prioritizing connections, capital, or reputation right away is a recipe for failure. If you lack the necessary knowledge and skills, any lucky breaks in connections, capital, or reputation will be short-lived and unsustainable.
For instance, imagine a musician suddenly gains industry connections, a record deal, and worldwide fame after starring in a viral video. If they lack musical skills and an understanding of what makes a song compelling, they won’t be able to create music that continues resonating with listeners, and they’ll quickly fade back into obscurity.
| Don’t Blindly Follow This Path Bartlett’s roadmap of acquiring knowledge and skills, then leveraging them for connections, capital, and a reputation, could ultimately make your life worse if you follow it blindly. In Happy Sexy Millionaire, Bartlett himself argues that many people chase goals that they don’t really care about. They do so because social media and other cultural pressures have given them a warped idea of the ideal life. Consequently, they feel inadequate, unhappy, and lost—even after they’ve accomplished great things. To avoid this, ignore the external pressures from society and social media, and ask yourself what you value above all else. What would you be willing to sacrifice everything for? Then, let this value guide all your decisions in life. As long as you’re pursuing something you truly care about, you’ll be happy even if you don’t make a world-changing impact. Furthermore, the shortcuts Bartlett warns against in The Diary of a CEO will likely be less tempting if you’re chasing authentic goals—as opposed to seeking connections, capital, and fame just for the sake of having them. In this way, authentic goals may make you more likely to succeed. |
Discover Where Your Skills Are in Demand
Although Bartlett recommends building up valuable knowledge and skills, he also argues that no knowledge or skills are inherently valuable; rather, their worth is determined by the market in which you use them. Thus, you can greatly increase the demand for your expertise (and accelerate your potential impact on the world) by deploying your knowledge and skills in an industry where they’re less common or can generate more value. For example, a talented graphic designer could accelerate their career by specializing in an emerging field like virtual reality user interfaces.
(Shortform note: If you’re planning on changing industries to maximize the demand for your knowledge and skills, it will arguably benefit you more than the average worker to cultivate highly transferable skills that are valuable across many fields. Examples include effective verbal communication and project management. In particular, some experts argue that the ability to learn quickly is the most important transferable skill you can learn because it enables you to better acquire new, in-demand skills throughout your career. To improve this skill, follow the process outlined in The Master Guides: Learn Anything—adopt a learning mindset, optimize your focus, and use your learning toolbox.)
Tip #3: Seek Positive Stress
There’s a lot you have to do if you want to make a difference in the world. Bartlett notes that high-stakes pursuits are inherently stressful. However, he asserts that stress doesn’t have to be bad—on the contrary, it can be motivating, empowering, and even pleasant.
Bartlett argues that, as long as the source of your stress is a meaningful challenge you’ve chosen to pursue, it’s possible to experience it as a positive, energizing force that sharpens your mind and improves your chance of success. To do this, all you need to do is notice that you’re stressed, then remind yourself that it’s part of the meaningful purpose you’ve chosen.
| More Ways to Positively Transform Stress To support these ideas, Bartlett cites the work of psychologist Kelly McGonigal. In her book The Upside of Stress, McGonigal elaborates that the factor that most strongly determines whether stress impacts you positively or negatively is whether you believe you can handle the stressful situation. Thus, you can improve your reaction to stress by acknowledging your many strengths or reminding yourself about times in the past when you overcame similar obstacles. Like Bartlett, McGonigal also argues that your stress response will be healthier if you feel like your stress is a part of something meaningful. Make your stress feel even more meaningful by recognizing the hidden upside to stressful situations. For example, if you start a business and it collapses, you can appreciate the free time you now have on your hands to take a relaxing break and evaluate what you want to do with your life next. |
Tip #4: Strengthen Your Self-Concept
According to Bartlett, one major influence on the way you interpret stress—as well as almost everything else in your life—is your self-concept. This includes your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about who you are and what you’re capable of. An empowering self-concept is essential to build the resilience you need to overcome major challenges.
Unfortunately, negative cultural influences can have a significant negative impact on your self-concept, particularly if you’re a member of a marginalized group. In particular, widely held stereotypical beliefs can infect your self-concept, shaking your confidence and making it easier for setbacks to leave you demoralized.
To combat these negative influences and develop a strong, positive self-concept, Bartlett recommends focusing on taking actions that align with the type of person you want to become. Every choice you make serves as evidence to yourself about who you are and what you’re capable of. The more you act like a strong, resilient person, the more you believe you are one, and the stronger your self-concept becomes. This makes you more confident, which makes it easier to push through obstacles, creating a virtuous cycle in which the small steps you take toward your goals give you the strength you need to take bigger steps.
| How to Raise Children With a Strong Self-Concept In How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish explain how parents can ensure that their children develop empowering self-concepts. The key is to prevent children from internalizing negative stereotypes about themselves—whether they’re the stereotypes that Bartlett warns about or simply labels that someone has called your child, like “shy” or “slow.”To do this, be mindful of the way you think about your kids. Any stereotypes you believe about your kids will reveal themselves in your words and actions, and they’ll adopt your concepts of them as their own. Furthermore, Faber and Mazlish (like Bartlett) recognize that the actions you take significantly shape your self-concept. For this reason, give your children opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities and strengths, particularly in ways that contradict negative stereotypes they’ve been labeled with. For instance, if your child has been stereotyped as being bad at math, encourage them to tutor their younger sibling. |
Exercise: Maximize Your Potential Impact
According to Bartlett, the key to maximizing your impact on the world is to acquire knowledge, skills, connections, capital, and reputation—more or less in that order. Reflect on how you can focus your efforts to progress down this path.
- Imagine it’s 15 years in the future and you’ve built up world-class knowledge and skills, numerous high-profile connections, a great deal of money, and a reputation as someone who can accomplish anything. What meaningful change would you make in the world using those assets, and why?
- What knowledge and skills do you currently possess that could provide the most value to others? What could you do this week to further develop this knowledge and these skills?
- Are there any industries or markets where your current knowledge and skills are in high demand or could generate outsized value? If so, what steps could you take to apply your expertise in those areas?
- After knowledge and skills, which of the remaining three assets (connections, capital, or reputation) should you focus on next to make the most progress toward your goal? Why? What steps could you take to build up this asset?
