Everybody on that road wanted the same thing.

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1158 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. And this message is dedicated to Ronald Harriman. You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.

Here’s the upgrade:

You think you need to focus on what you want, but upgraded thinking focuses on helping others get what they want.

Here’s the story:

A young man is standing on the side of a road in Europe, trying to hitchhike. This is Chuck Feeney. It’s 1957, years before he becomes one of the richest men alive and gives nearly every dollar of it away. But right now he’s just a broke 26 year old holding a sign.

And so is everybody else. Hitchhiking was popular at the time. Look down the road. Every hitchhiker is holding a piece of cardboard with a city written on it. Paris. Nice. Marseille. Every one of them advertising the same thing to drivers passing by: I want you to take me here. They’re a line of identical thumbs.

So Feeney changes his sign. He stops advertising his destination and starts advertising his value to the driver. His new offer is simple: “Ride with me and you get something: an English conversation.”

Now he’s not one of a hundred. He’s the only one making that trade. A French driver might want to practice English. It didn’t matter that plenty of people could speak English. Feeney made the benefit obvious and easy to say yes to. He had no trouble getting a lift.

He asked a different question. Everybody else asked, “How do I get where I’m going?” Feeney asked, “What can I offer that makes picking me up a benefit to the driver?”

He never stopped asking it. That same question is the one that built his fortune three years later when he founded Duty Free Shoppers Group. Instead of asking “What can I sell?” he asked, “Who has a need nobody’s serving?” He bought a nearly-dead duty-free company everyone had written off, and turned it into a giant. Same facts everyone else saw. Different question.

Because it’s hard to see what you’re not looking for, and easy to see what you are.

The better story to tell yourself is, “Stop broadcasting where I’m going and start broadcasting what I bring.” You don’t have to be rare to be chosen. You have to be useful. Don’t only ask, “What do I want?” Ask, “What can I offer that makes what I want easy for someone else to give me?” Change the question, and the same road you’ve been standing on turns into a ride.

Tell me a story of usefulness to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text with your offer.