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Decisions, Decisions: Do I Want to Serve Myself or Serve Others?

Hello world! This is Mike Andes, a 68-year-old retired truck driver, who has spent a lifetime (since I was about four years old) trying to figure out what life is all about. For most of my life I served myself, pursuing fun and accumulating stuff. That took me down a path that took me over a cliff, so to speak, causing me to hit rock-bottom, which caused me to ask, “Maybe I need to look at myself, and see if there are improvements I can make.” That was in 1994 (I was 39) when my wife told me we were “definitely getting a divorce.” Four years later I walked into a 12-step program, and the growth finally began. Why did it take so long? I’m not too smart.

After 25 years of working on myself, I am ready to report my findings:

Life is not about serving yourself; life is about being in-service to others.

This is far from being intuitive, it doesn’t even make sense for most people, people who have never experienced the joy of helping someone who needs help. It might make more sense after reading about my experience:

Starting in the year 2000, when my second wife (Margaret) and I were first married, we taught Sunday school. We did that for about ten years. After we had been doing this for several years, people we knew would comment to us how they were amazed at our willingness to sacrifice our time every week for the kids, and we were amazed by their comments because we didn’t feel like it was a sacrifice. We replied that we always felt like we got more out of our volunteering than we gave. The kids were a blessing to us!

With the feeling of being blessed by our service, we volunteered for more. (So you can say that there was an element of selfishness in our motivation to serve, but the main reason was love for others.) We volunteered for Habitat for Humanity builds and fundraising for Habitat, and we worked on our church’s annual gala which was a big dinner and silent auction fundraiser, and we were even in charge of the gala for two years, expanding it with the addition of a live auction. In every one of these experiences we felt blessed beyond what we gave.

In 2006 we took Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU). That really rocked our world! We decided to teach FPU and did so about a dozen times. In 2009, Margaret and I took a class from Dave Ramsey in financial counseling. For eight years we were volunteer financial counselors at a homeless shelter that works at educating the residents to become self-sufficient—that they do not have to repeat the mistakes that they have made or that they were taught.

You do not have to remain where you are and who you are.

You have the power to choose who you want to be, and to become that person.

This was the experience beyond all the other of our service experiences up until then, as we witnessed people turn their lives around by their own choosing and by the force of their own will and effort. There is nothing more gratifying in our experience than to see someone “get it”, to see the light come on in their eyes when they realize that they have power over their own life. No longer are they victims of circumstance, but now they are empowered to determine their own destiny. This goes way, way beyond a person simply surviving on their own. It even goes way beyond being a self-directed and productive member of society. It is profoundly spiritual.

It is all about Personal Responsibility and the Freedom that accompanies it.

Without responsibility we are slaves!

The quest to help people come to this understanding has become the focus of our lives. We have seen “the light come on” for people while we lead FPU classes, and while counseling homeless people. Of course, we have also been disappointed as well, but we never give up on people, we just realize that they’re not ready yet. But the joy of the successes has far outweighed the disappointments. We want to keep expanding our involvement in helping others discover their own personal empowerment…and find joy and meaning in life!

An important element in the choice of being in-service to others is your motivation. Your motivation must be one of love for your fellowman, expecting nothing in return. If your motivation is one of expecting reward or praise, you will have a poor outcome. I don’t know why this is so, it just seems like it is part of the way it works—a hidden law under a hidden law.

This is where we put our Truths into action; this is where the rubber meets the road. If we really want to know Truth, then we must apply it to our lives and live it daily. The blessings we have felt over the past twenty-three years have proven to us that this is the only way to live! We invite you to give it a try. It’s a great life!