How Can We Make the World a Better Place?

A Gentleman who goes by the name, Musik.Vibes, asked, "I'm originally from California and I'm currently living on the East Coast. How can we make the world a better place? How can we make the world a better place for us to live and prosper. There are so many people, over 7 billion of us on earth. It's tough."

We can help make the world a better place in two broad ways:

It is a big world to make a better place. I like to approach this question from the perspective that there are two ways to think about making the world a better place. You can add indirect value to people or you can add direct value. Here's what I mean by that.

We can add indirect value to people.

To add indirect value means to proliferate change to the environment of people generally. That could mean advocating for a change in laws to make things more favorable for people who are struggling or make it easier for people to succeed.

That could also mean working to establish, help, or influence various institutions to either help people that are struggling or help enable people to succeed. These "institutions" could be non-profits, charities, or even government institutions.

We can add direct value to people.

The best and easiest ways we can make the world a better place is by adding direct value to people.

Maybe a year or so ago, I start an experiment. Every time I went into a room, or approached a person or a group of people, I started asking myself, "How can I add value right here, right now?"

It could be anywhere. It could be getting on the subway. It could be walking into a restaurant. It could be visiting your family. Wherever you are, start always trying to add some kind of value to the people around you.

When you start approaching the world this way, you're going to find that your entire world is going to change. I definitely noticed it.

How can we add direct value to people?

Adding value could be as simple as finding a way to put a smile on someone's face. Make someone laugh.

It could be just reaching out and saying hello to a stranger. Especially right now. Many people are lonely as fuck because they're quarantined and isolated.

If you're standing in line at the grocery store and your standing 6 feet apart to practice social distancing, say "Hi" to someone in line.

It's a crazy time we live in. The other night I went for a walk. When people see other people on the sidewalk now, they cross the street. Everybody's dodging each other. We've somewhat forgotten about the art of just saying "hi" to people and adding some random positivity to people's lives.

Start thinking bigger!

Adding direct value to people is something you can progressively snowball. If your social network is small, start small by just adding direct value to the people in your immediate vicinity.

As you make your social network bigger and you have more access to more people and more resources, start asking yourself, "How can I add value to the more connected, more powerful people in the community?"

Think along the lines of finding ways to add value to your local government representative, some of the people on the board of a local charity you care about, or even the owners of some local businesses you like.

When you start adding value to people with more connections and more resources, I'm telling you, your whole life will change for the good in ways you can't even yet imagine. And, you'll both make the world a better place directly and create more power to add indirect value to people in the process.