Exercise the muscle of thinking for yourself

When I was in high school, we were three best friends: Germán, Daniel and me.

One day, I was tutoring a student -my first ever teaching job in topics such as math and coding at the second floor of our family home- when my mom interrupted me to say that there was an urgent phone call from Germán.

-When you finish work -Germán said- pick me up at my house immediately ... We're going out to dinner at the fancy restaurant.. and I'm paying.

-Are you kidding?

-No, I’m serious -he replied.

This didn't make sense. First: my mother would never have interrupted a class just so Germán could invite me to dinner. Second: Germán worked as a barman in that fancy restaurant and Third: he certainly didn't have the kind of money to invite me and other friends to eat there.

-What have you done, won the Lotto? – I joked

-Sure did… the 4-million-dollar jackpot!

You should have seen the three of us arrive as customers at the fancy restaurant where Germán normally worked as an employee, ordering the most expensive dishes and the finest champagne bottles. It was quite a spectacle.

So, having seen this happen up close, from that day on, not a single week of my life went by without me purchasing a lottery ticket. The truth is, long before Germán's parents won the lottery, I had already dreamed of earning a small fortune to retire early.

My grandfather had dreamed his whole life of retiring early and had managed to do so in his sixties. My grandfather’s dream passed to my father who after much effort also managed to do so in his sixties. 

For me the message was clear: Work hard so you can stop as soon as possible… But stop to do what? What was it that I dreamed of doing after winning the lottery?

That wasn’t so clear. I guess I’d spend my days relaxing on the beach, learning to play the guitar, singing or perhaps even writing a book.

Time went by and, after graduating from University of Buenos Aires, I moved to the USA and soon after I started working at Microsoft Corporation. I loved computer science, and even more so being able to do it while working in an innovative tech company. So just in case my lottery plan took longer than expected, I decided to hedge my bets and work hard in the tech industry, to be able to retire in my forties! Lottery win or early retirement, whichever happened first, the objective was crystal clear: Not needing to work.

During the next 15 years I worked on emblematic software products like Messenger, Outlook, Windows and my beloved Xbox.

But, as my chances of achieving my goal of early retirement improved, I also began to feel a void growing inside me: Was I really living the life I wanted to live?

Over the years I had been blessed with many mentors who helped me to think. One of them, Eric was a Microsoft executive who had retired with the aim of sailing around the world in his boat. But, in his case, I was not so interested in knowing what he had done to achieve this. My main interest in talking to him was to understand why he had decided to return to work at Microsoft without needing to!

Eric told me: I came back because I realized that I wanted to have a positive impact on the world. To be part of something bigger than me. And that is much easier to achieve when you are part of a team and have a great platform from which to do so.

Eric's response forced me to think outside my box: maybe not everything was about early retirement after all… At first glance it may seem that the best thing that can happen to us in life is simply not having financial needs. But we probably think that way because we never had enough money to realize that when economic problems are over, other challenges start appearing. Eric knew this because he had been there.

By not thinking -and feeling- for myself, I had spent 15 years of my life working hard to achieve something that wasn’t necessarily my what am I here -on Earth- for. It was someone else’s. After all, early retirement seems like a good enough plan for anybody, right?

And even though I enjoyed my work over those 15 years, not living my own what am I here for meant I was not paying attention to some of my deepest passions.

Yes, I recommend that you read as many books as you can, but then think and feel on your own. Yes, I encourage you to find a lot of good mentors and listen carefully to all the people you respect, but then think and feel on your own. Because in the end,

In fact, the meeting with Eric left me with a new powerful question: How would I live my life today if I knew that winning the lottery doesn’t mean living happily ever after?

The truth is that, knowing this, it made much more sense to be happy along the journey. And for me, that meant pursuing more of my passions before retirement: learning to play the guitar, singing and starting to write my book before turning 40.

So, that′s how I discovered a new what am I here for that felt more of my own: I am here to share my sense of wonder and help people be happier and more productive by bringing their whole selves to work.

Not only did I understand that I didn't need to retire to live my passion, but I discovered that working as a team with my organization I can reach many more people with my inspiration.

Written by Diego Rejtman and Guillermo Echevarria

Would you like to know if I stopped playing the lottery? The answer is: not yet. What has changed is what I intend to do with the prize money: I will use it to inspire millions - myself included - to live lives full of meaning.

Exercise

To start exercising the thinking for yourself muscle now I encourage you to ask yourself the following question: What is important to me and why?

Once you have pondered this question for a while, I suggest you make it even more specific by asking yourself: What are the 3 values that I’d like to guide my professional behavior?

Defining the values that move us is the key to building a personal lighthouse that guides us when thinking and feeling our decisions. The clearer you are about what is important to you, the more difficult it will be to deviate from your personal what am I here for.