DailyJim: Do we want people to be less, equally, or more powerful than we are?

Hello everyone, welcome to a special edition of the Daily Gym. This is a Friday, I'm not supposed to do it on Fridays, but it is Friday, January 3rd, 2025. And today I want to talk about do we want people to be less, equally, or more powerful than we are?

So this started from me thinking about giving and when do we give money to people and frankly thinking about.

If people if my funding model is going to be that people are giving money to me am I ever going to be allowed to have wealth or am I just going to be at a subsistence level can I ever have a nice thing without people going oh you have like a really nice car why do you have such a nice car. Or, oh, you spent way too much money on that computer. What are you doing with our money? And so I thought about that and I was like, well, if this is the funding model that I want to do and I still want to have somewhat of a strong life, and if I want to be abnormally strong or abnormally powerful in some ways, not just monetarily, but in other ways, can this funding model work? And so I started to think about it and I realized that a lot of times we'll give money to people when they are less powerful than us. They look less powerful in some ways, right? So it's the stereotypical child on TV who is in Africa who has flies around his face and we want to help lift that person up to bring them to a normal level of power, if we want to say that, and normal for their society, normal for us, whatever, to equal, to have them equal to their peers. So that's one thing. But then I was like, well, but do we ever take people who are equal and lift them up to make them more powerful? And maybe we do when we give money to presidential election campaigns, or when we see somebody in the neighborhood that has an opportunity to go to university or college, and maybe they're the first one to get out.

And so pool it and we give it to this person because they're our chance. They're our leader. We want them to shine. We do this with children maybe, where we want them to have a better life than we did. So maybe better life, more powerful, however you want to frame it. We do it maybe with friends that we really care about. We want to lift them up. We see that they have a talent in a specific area, and we pool our resources to help them achieve and to really get big, whether that's a musician, an artist, a doctor, regardless. When we see somebody who has a passion for something, sometimes we will come together to vicariously enjoy their journey.

And so I just started thinking about it, and I think there's, I think at different parts of our lives, different points of our lives, based on so many different conflicts and environments we're in, we can sometimes want people to be less powerful than us, sometimes equally powerful, or sometimes more powerful. And I think when we want people to be less powerful than us, maybe we see them as currently more powerful than us, or equally powerful to us, and we want to get an advantage. Because in a way, I still, in that perspective, I think we don't believe that we are that powerful. Maybe we have the money, maybe we have the fame, maybe we have the position, but maybe we don't feel the power. And so then we try to kind of knock others down or take things from other people so that they become less powerful. Maybe it's jealousy. Maybe we look at somebody and we see them and they look super powerful and we go, ah, but they don't deserve it. they don't work hard for it. They just have the privilege. That's how they got there. So let me take this from them. So that I have more power. Again, coming back to the person not believing that they have so much power. This is my belief in the moment. Again, I'm just rambling. So then the second one is having people be at equal power to us. We want people to be equal. And so then we will see people who are maybe, they look less fortunate. And we want to lift them up. But lift them up to our level. Or at least to the level of the people around them. We want to make them normal. We don't want them to be abnormally low in power. So we give money to people on the streets. We give money to aid organizations that are working in poverty-stricken areas.

We lend a helping hand to a friend who gets hit really hard and they're down and out. Maybe they have a medical emergency. Maybe they have a death in the family. This is when we help out, not just financially, but we help out when people are abnormally powerless, let's say, and we want to lift them up to our level. But maybe this is also the mechanism that works in a lot of friendships when we're giving gifts or families. When you think about Christmas time or other things, we are giving gifts that are somewhat equal. We don't want to outshine. We don't want to lift the other person up too much. And so maybe there's a spending limit. Maybe it's $25 per gift that you're only allowed to use to spend on the other person to maintain that equality. And there's, you know, if this goes with maybe the give and take book where it says that's more of like a matching perspective of, okay, you've given me this, I want to give you the equivalent so that we stay at the same level.

And I think this is maybe for people, for us who realize if someone becomes too powerful or too different, then we feel uncomfortable, we feel jealous, we feel just distant in general because we can't relate to them maybe. And so we want them to stay at our same level. So if we're playing basketball with somebody and we're about the same level, the games can be quite fun. But if the person gets really, really, really good, then the games aren't as fun for us to play. And so maybe part of it is just trying to maintain that connection and maintain that equality in some way. And then I think the third one is when we actually try to make people more powerful than we are or than what is normal. And this is, again, when we collect money to try to send somebody to college or we collect, we pool our resources to build like a really big house for somebody. Or we, yeah, I'm trying to think of some other examples where we do this. We give a gift that we give a gift just freely. We see something that we think the person would really, really like, and we get it for them. Not thinking, are they going to give us something of equal power or stature or joy, but just because we get the joy in giving it to them. And I think this, or we strive to help people be on another level. Again, this is often with parents and children, to have a better life than I did. But it can also be just towards people that we really care about. And we see potential in them, and we want them to live to their top potential. And we see not only the benefits it can have to them, but we see the benefits it might have to so many others if they get to that level. So we see the musician who's really good, who is just kind of playing bars like everyone else is and going, no, this musician is really good. How do we lift this person up? It's kind of like the scout, the talent scout, who's going around looking for people who are normal, who are just kind of making it and saying, no, no, no, but you're a star. So how do we lift you up? How do we collect resources to get you to that level?

And that's what I'm really excited about. And I think it's really helped me in a way because I have felt so maybe guilty and ashamed of asking people for money because often I think the idea is we ask for money when we are less powerful, we have less money, we have less position in society. And we also ask people for money to lift us up to normal. And a lot of people maybe rightly have been like, but dude, you can just get a normal job, so why are you asking for money? And I think what I've really wanted to ask for and the perspective I've come from is I know that I'm like equally powerful or whatnot I want to get really powerful not because of me but like I want to really become really open really loving uh really um well known in some ways or just have like connections have conversations with really uh quote-unquote big people or people who have big stages because I want to share these messages. I want to show people that it's possible to be really open, really loving, and have the skills to never give up on people and to just show people what that looks like. And in other words, I don't want to be normally loving. I want to be abnormally loving. I want to be on another plateau, on another level, and show people what's and to get there. I need help, but it's not help, again, to pick me up from the bottom and bring me to the middle. It's help taking me from the middle and bring me to the top. Again, not from an ego perspective, I don't like that phrase, but like not from a, you know, it's going to help me. Yes, it'll help me in some ways. I'll be much happier. I'll be much more alive. And so there's the benefit of how it'll impact me, but also the benefit of how that might spill to other people. What if I could be in that position? What if I could have more power than most people and use some of the love that I have? There's an example. I know I'm over time, but Mackenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, has given away I don't know how many billions of dollars. And one of her perspectives is that she has, that's one of the main resources that she has to give to people to help them. Other people have other resources, but that's one of the main ones she has. And so she's giving it. And she's giving, like I looked at one organization that my friend actually started years ago. And I think in one year she doubled their budget. I think they were taking in $10 million in donations and she gave them $12 million in one year. And so that's not making them an average organization that's doubling their capacity that is giving them a lot of power and there are examples of this happening out there and I'm so excited to come at it from this perspective because I think it helps me relax and go listen I'm not trying to be normal I'm trying to be abnormal I'm trying to do emotional leadership I'm trying to show people an example that is so far out there you know Bruce Lee tried to show people what really really really good martial arts look like so it inspired people i'm trying to do the same and for me to do that i need support i need help to get to that level.

So yeah i just feel really grateful for this i hope you appreciate this one it's too long i'm going to end and talk to you on monday bye.