#82 - Value, Effort, Impact: How to Maximize Life’s Rewards with the Law of Compensation

In today's episode, we are getting into the seventh law of the universe: the law of compensation. In this episode you can expect to walk away with an expanded definition of compensation, learn key drivers that will determine how much you are compensated, and walk away with three simple strategies to put this law to work in your favor in your own life.  

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Transcript

Hello Everyone! Welcome to The Game of Life Podcast; I am Alexandria Burek and I am your host.

Thank you for picking my show; you will find this show is a blend of personal stories and life lessons covering a wide range of topics that are designed to help you live life, a little better everyday; my goal in sharing these personal stories, wins, whatever it may be is always to inspire you–my life is so radically different now even I am a bit amazed at the transformation that's taken place over the last 3 years. With that, no better time to get into it than the present. 

In today's episode, we are getting into the seventh law of the universe: the law of compensation. In this episode you can expect to walk away with an expanded definition of compensation, learn the three key drivers that will determine how much you are compensated, and walk away with three key strategies to put this law to work in your favor in your own life.  

Admittedly I missed a couple of episodes here, and I am happy to be back. Hopefully in the absence of new episodes the last two weeks you guys had a chance to go back and listen to some of the earlier episodes you may have missed. My goal this week, is to get caught up by producing both makeup episodes and resume the normal posting schedule thursday. With that letttttttttts get into it.

A LOT has happened in the last couple of weeks and I am SO excited to share some personal updates. 

Personal Update:

My goal with the personal update is to put my money where my mouth is and lead by example. I’ll share three personal wins, weave in some gratitude, hit you with a new original thought and drop in the song of the week (link will be in the show notes). 

Wins: 

First, I successfully made it to St. Petersburg. I drove with my dogs and my cats, 23 hours straight stopping for gas and to go to the bathroom. What an experience that was. To my own astonishment I did it on 5 hours sleep, with nothing more than a couple cups of coffee, a lot of water and some snacks. I stopped at a gas station overrun by a colony of cats. My bike became dislodges and no one seemed to feel compelled to notify me that my bike was dragging on the ground. I learned how to use ratchet straps–which was way easier than I thought it would be. I survived multiple stops in Atlanta–no offense, but I HATE Atlanta–even the nice parts sketch me out hence the multiple stops. So What a win it is to have made it safely.            

Second, I made time to pickup my journal after 4 months. Journaling is very important to me for a lot of reasons. Namely it helps me process my experiences, good and bad, it serves as a reminder when I look back about all the things I have overcome.          

Third, I am getting back to my healthy routines. In the chaos of moving and balancing my job, getting my place ready for airbnb, doing the consulting work, and all the other things, I really seemed to have fallen off. The Win is getting back to it–but just as much, the fact that my “backslide” was so much shorter than in the past.    

Gratitude: I am so grateful that my family opened their home to me in the interim period when my house was listed and I had nowhere to go with my pets. They welcomed me (us) in. We shared great memories and conversations. I introduced my aunt to Nate Bargetzi–one of my favorite comedians. Just my mom and I went out on the boat–if you know me, you know I love some good one on one time. My dad and I were in true form and had some late night convos, sharing beers and views on the world. While it was difficult to move back even for a short time, I am SO thankful for those special moments I got to share with them.        

Original Thought: An eagle cannot ask a chicken how to hunt. I came up with this recently. Broadly speaking, you cannot ask advice from people who have not done what you want to do. More specifically, if you feel like you are born to do more than people around you–with ABSOLUTELY NO disrespect to them–you cannot ask for their advice. It is outside of their realm of understanding, their instincts, their skillset. A chicken pecks around for food on the ground, so the chicken would tell the eagle to do that, but an eagle is literally not built to do that and would not be hunting to its full potential if it hunted like a chicken.

The 7th Law of the Universe: Law of Compensation 

The Law of compensation states that your rewards in life are in direct proportion to your actions. Specifically the value, effort, and impact of your actions. Your reward can come to you in many forms: spiritual, emotional, and or financial. When we hear the law of compensation, it would be easy to assume it is solely about money and nothing else, but that's not true. You may be rewarded in so many ways beyond just money; maybe for you it’s respect in your company or your community, maybe it’s the beautiful relationships you have in your life, your good health or the growth you’ve experienced.  

Given that value, effort, or impact are key drivers of the law of compensation, I think it is important to pause and go a level deeper to understand them.  

First Value. Value is the what of your contribution—how much are your actions WORTH to the people that receive them or to yourself?

Next Effort. Effort is the how of your actions—the sweat, persistence, and dedication you put in. How hard are you willing to work? What are you willing to do to get what you want? How long will you work at something before getting the compensation? You can work tirelessly at the wrong things, and you will be rewarded with nothing; effort directed at the wrong target will not yield results; guard your efforts. 

Finally, Impact. Impact is the who and how much—the greater the positive change you create or the more people you serve, the larger the rewards. The more you confront, and heal, and grow, the greater the personal transformation. Impact ties value and effort together, amplifying their effect.

There are 5 key principles to the law of compensation: Value-Based Rewards, Effort and Intention, Reciprocity, Long-Term Perspective, and Universal application. I am going to give a brief overview of what these principles are and how we can apply them to our own lives to get what we want.  

Value-Based Rewards: This principle simply suggests that the bigger problems you solve, or the more healing you do, or the greater impact you have on your community, the greater you will be compensated financially, or with peace of mind, or with recognition and respect in your community. The takeaway here, is to solve the difficult problems; the more difficult the problem the more you will be compensated. 

Effort and Intention: This principle explains that consistency beats intensity every time. I read something in preparation for this episode that overtime, our efforts compound to create more of an impact–this makes sense. Think about it. If you save some amount of money everyday, $5 for example, not a large sum of money, not some impressive sum, but after year 1 you would have accumulated $1,869, by the 5th year now you have $10,345, and by year 20 that becomes $62,741. Compare that to someone who makes a single deposit of $10,000 once, in 20 years, assuming the same compound interest, that person will end up with only $27,182. The person who does a 5 minute weights workout and a walk every day, is going to beat out the person who goes to the gym 1x a week every time, because of the compound effect. 

Reciprocity: The principle of reciprocity asserts that we should give generously to receive abundantly. We can give time, kindness, or whatever resources we have available to create a cycle of receiving. The key here is your intentions. Are you giving for the sake of receiving? That is transactional and will not work. Give for the love of giving, not with the goal of receiving. 

Long-Term Perspective: This principle prepares us to be patient. To work towards something for a period of time before we expect to start seeing results. In my mind I think about working out, or building wealth, or a business. These things operate on a delay; you do the work today, make the sacrifice today, and get paid later. I made a decision in the last couple of years personally to seek as much delayed gratification as possible; instant gratification like cleaning is necessary (unless you hire someone) or buying something you want is nice, but it does not move you towards your long term goals, the ones you will look back on from your death bed saying, thank god I did that. It's my experience that the things that move you towards your long term big big goals, don’t seem to be making any impact, but they are.  

Universal Application: The law of compensation is directly related to every aspect of life: family life, career, spirituality, money, health, relationships, growth, etc. The way you could think about this is each day you are given 24 coins representing the 24 hours of the day, each day you choose where to put your coins. If you think about it that way, you can look at your choices and see how your actions are creating your current experience. I believe life is balanced on the Macro not the Micro. SO. Maybe you're like me and 15 of your coins went to work and career, 6 or 7 went to health each day, and the remainder went to fun / relationships. Now I am readjusting my distributions. 

We see multiple examples of this law throughout the bible, philosophy, and business. The bible says in Galatians 6:7, “A man reaps what he sows,” and in Buddhism, good deeds lead to positive outcomes, and as we covered in a previous episode on the podcast, Ralph Waldo Emerson formalized the idea that every action has a balancing consequence in life, and Entrepreneurs who create value are rewarded with wealth, access, and influence proportional to the impact of their solutions. Based on these independent concepts, spanning the bible, buddhist principles, philosophy and business, I rest my case that the law of compensation is widely recognized and is working for or against you whether you know it or not. 

So. How do we put the law of compensation to work for ourselves and the world? There are many ways to create a tailwind with the principles of this law. I have three suggestions; some of these I currently do, some I am working on, others I need to start. When you think about this for yourself, write out what is most important to you. Is it family or career? Is it fun or accomplishment? Is it leisure or excitement? By no means am I suggesting these are either or’s it is more of a starting point. I know what my values are. I know what I want. 

The first way we can increase our odds of living an intentional, meaningful life, while placing effort so we can be richly compensated is to use Oliver Burkeman’s 3-3-3 method. Each day make a list of 9 things everyday–3 things you need do in each of the following categories–High-Value Endeavors (quite literally the most important things you are working on in your life and your day); Maintenance Items (think cleaning, emails, oil change, meal prepping, paying bills, etc–these are things that don’t support your High-Value Endeavors but need to be done); and Vitality Items (workouts, journaling, stretching, meditation, ect–these are the things you need to do to support and care for your body, mind, and soul).    

Second is getting in the habit of giving. This is nothing new to me or to my recommendations on this show: get in the habit of giving. Every month I’ve built in the habit of donating to certain organizations. I plan in the next month or so to increase my donations, but regardless, for the last year or more, I have donated every month to a minimum of two charities. I offer mentorship to people I work with. I love freely. I listen and offer support when people in my circle need it. Give as much of yourself as you possibly can. Find a way to be in the habit of giving. Giving your time, your money, your support–and ensure your intentions are good. You will be rewarded. 

Third is to solve problems for the masses. We talked about this when Bob Burg was on the show and when I covered his book, the Go Giver, in another episode. The example Bob uses, is one of a teacher; when she served only the students in her class, a small number of people, she was not compensated more than average, because she was not serving more people or doing anything ABOVE average. Once she left and took her curriculum private, she started serving thousands of students. Then she was abundantly rewarded. Beyond solving problems for the masses, lets also look back on the other key drivers of this example. Her impact and her effort. She went from impacting a small portion of people despite the effort she put in, to impacting and improving the lives of thousands of students simultaneously, and then finally, after years of effort, action, and impact, she was richly rewarded. Think about the problems you solve everyday, and think about how you can solve them at scale.  

Closeout

You guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope this new definition of compensation expanded the gratitude you have for your life, I hope learning about this opens up new opportunities for you to grow yourself, serve your communities, and solve big problems so you can be richley rewarded. 

As always, Thank you so much for spending this time with me—I hope it’s making your day, and maybe your life, a little better. I’d love your thoughts on what I shared today—leave a comment, shoot me a text via the fanmail link in the show notes, either way I would love to hear what’s sticking with you! If you loved this, or even just liked it, please share the show and or give it a 5 star rating! 

Get out in the world. Do good. Be good. Byeeeee.