Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life by Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus Page A

feels great, but contribution can feel even better. That’s because you’ll often do more for the people you love than you will do for yourself. The reason you’re willing to do more for the people you love is that humans have an intrinsic need to contribute beyond themselves. It’s one of the most basic instincts that humans possess.
     
    Ways to Contribute
    A nice thing about contributing to other people is that there are countless ways to do so. And there isn’t a right or wrong way to contribute. All contribution is positive contribution. Thus, it is important to learn how to best contribute to the people around you.
    Later in this chapter, we’ll discuss how the two of us contribute charitably to local organizations as well as through the free content on our website, but it’s important to note that donating your time to these types of activities is not the only way to contribute to other people. Instead, you can find tiny ways to contribute to people in many of your current activities.
    In our past corporate lives, we both led large groups of people for a major corporation. In doing so, we both discovered that the most rewarding part of our workday always revolved around these times of coaching and mentoring. In other words, we felt the most fulfilled whenever we were adding value to other people’s lives. Thus, whether you’re donating your time to a charity or you’re finding new ways to contribute to the primary relationships in your life, you are doing one thing: adding value.
     
    Adding Value
    How does this task add value? This is a question we used to ask ourselves every day in our corporate jobs. More than anything else, this one question helped us succeed. We also asked our employees the same question: How did you add value today? And now we still ask this question of ourselves each day.
    At its core, this question allows you to identify how you’re contributing. If you don’t have a good answer, then another question is appropriate: How could I add value to this situation? or How could I better add value? By asking these questions you begin to understand how to use your limited time to better contribute to the people around you.
    For example, have you ever witnessed an inspiring short speech or monologue that made you want to take immediate action? Similarly, have you gone through a semester-long college or high school class that added the same amount of value to your life? If you’re like most people, the answer is yes to both of these questions. But if you had the opportunity to add immense value to someone’s life in one hour, doesn’t that make more sense than stretching it out over weeks or months? Of course it does.
    While this might seem like a drastic example, the point is to make the most of your interactions. If you’re constantly asking yourself How am I adding value? you’ll start getting some great answers. When you think in terms of adding value, you’ll start to notice that everything you do starts adding value in various ways. That’s because over time you’ll begin to weed out anything that doesn’t add value to your own life or to other people’s lives.
     
    How We Contribute
    We’ve found plenty of ways to contribute to people in our local community (in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio), as well as to people in 151 countries all over the world (via our website). 
    For example, locally, we’ve donated our time to Habitat for Humanity, local soup kitchens, and various other charitable organizations. We’ve helped paint schools, raise money, clean up the streets, paint fire hydrants and parks, and helped the community in various other ways. 
    Furthermore, we’ve been fortunate enough to attract over 100,000 monthly readers from 151 countries to our website, where our desire is to help people live more meaningful lives with less stuff.
    Thus, there are at least two ways you can contribute to others:
     
     
Local Organizations : You can contribute to local organizations who