The Three Levels of Thinking

The Power of Purpose
by Peter S. Temes, Ph.D

The Power of Purpose begins with a simple but remarkable statement: "The more you focus on helping others, the more you will succeed in reaching your own goals." Peter S. Temes builds on this fundamental insight to share a simple plan for living with the truest and most enduring kind of happiness.

At the heart of The Power of Purpose are the "three levels of thinking." At the first level, we ask, Who am I? and What do I want? At the second level, we ask, Who do other people think I am? How do I look to them? But the real magic happens when we hit the third level, forgetting about ourselves and asking the questions that lend a powerful sense of purpose to our lives: How do others look to themselves? How can I help others become the people they want to be?

To help us along the way, Temes, who teaches humanities at Columbia University, draws on the wisdom of great thinkers including Aristotle, Søren Kierkegaard, and Abraham Lincoln; the life lessons of great achievers ranging from Mother Teresa to Michael Jordan; and home truths he's gathered from his parents, his grandparents, and his three children. From all these sources and from his own life of great personal accomplishment, Temes identifies the essential knowledge that brings people happiness and success. He cites Aristotle's notion that happiness is not a psychological state but a moral one, resulting from doing good in the world. Temes also believes in the pivotal importance of trust and team-building in every area of life, from the family to the workplace to the street corner.

The Power of Purpose is a map for finding the confidence and power, the opportunities and occasions, and — most important — the techniques and strategies for centering your relationships and work on helping others. It is a book with a point of view: the clearest path to your own success and happiness lies in helping others get to where they want to go.

Chapter 1

Make the leap from asking, "who am I, and what do I want?" to asking that most powerful question of all — "how do others see themselves, and how can I help them feel stronger and more successful?"

Games are played in all kinds of places — sports stadiums, backyards, offices, classrooms, kitchens, and dining rooms. But games are won in only one place — in the mind of the winning player. That's why Michael Jordan was consistently better than the tallest player in the National Basketball Association every year he played — having better physical tools to work with was not enough to beat a player like Jordan, thinking at a higher level. That's why some salespeople consistently sell more — of the same stuff to the same people — than the rest of their colleagues. That's why David slew Goliath, and that's why your personal path for your success begins right between your ears.

Here's the fact: how we think is the key to how we live. It's the key to your happiness, the key to your personal goodness, and the key to your success.

East Versus West in the Pursuit of Happiness

One useful model of observation on how people think comes in the classic description of the difference between Eastern thinking and Western thinking. Begin with the observation that unhappiness is the product of unmet desires. Eastern thinking says, change your desires to match what you already have, and you will become happy. Western thinking says, change the world to fit your desires, and you will be happy. If you are unhappy because you live in a tiny house and want a bigger home, the traditional Eastern view would be to change your desire so that you want no more than you already have. The Western view would be to go out and build a bigger house, at almost any cost.

There's some wisdom in this model, but the world we live in today is no longer easily divided between East and West; each tradition has drawn on the other for decades now, and the habits and patterns of thinking of each have blended together in important ways. And in my experience, the most successful people have always combined elements of both traditions in their thinking — they embrace the ambition and outward focus of the West as well as the patience and humility of the East.

We all know people who are filled with the Western ambition to go out and change the world. Many succeed, at least now and then, by pushing against the forces of the world and reshaping them. But just about all of them also fail now and then — because they come face-to-face with people, ideas, or parts of the physical world that are simply too strong to be moved. And we all know people who are filled with Eastern patience and humility, ready to reshape their own desires to fill the world. At times, this approach to life is powerfully rewarding, with the ups and downs of the external world softened by a philosophical detachment from external things. But how many opportunities to make positive change in the world slip by, how many chances to have a real impact on the world are missed, because of this detachment?

But imagine the man or woman who looks at the world and understands, this is when I should push, here is the opportunity to reshape the world in some small way, and knows too when to say, here is when I must step back, here is when my desire has to yield to patience. The real power lies in being able to see both visions — both the ambition of the West and the humility and patience of the East — and being able to employ each when it best suits the challenge at hand.

Beyond East and West to the Three Levels of Thinking

For the world we live in today, the best model of human thinking I've come across is built of three levels or stages,1 and it draws from the best of both the East and the West.

At the first level, the most important question for understanding the world and taking action is How do I feel? or How do I look to myself? Picture a teenager waking up in the morning and saying to his parent, I'm not going to school because I don't feel well. Or the worker leaving a note on her desk right after lunch — Gone home, not feeling well. That's level one. How you feel about yourself is almost all you care about.

One level higher, the teen turns to his parent and asks, Do I look as bad as I feel? Or the worker decides not just to leave work, but to go talk with a colleague and say, Wow, I'm not feeling well. In reply, the parent may say, You look fine to me. Or the colleague may say, You should sit down and let me have a look at you. This is the second level, where you progress from asking How do I feel? or How do I look to myself? to How do others feel about me? or How do I look to others? This is a great leap forward — the individual is beginning to realize that other people are important, and that the ways other people see the world are important — but it's not remotely as powerful an outlook as the next level up, the third level.

At the third level, the central question is not about how I feel, or about how others feel about me, but about how they feel about themselves. That might seem like a small step forward, but it can't be overestimated. Think about a sales situation — at the first level, the seller is focused on doing a good job on her own terms; at the second level, she's focused on making a good impression on the sales prospect. But at the third level, the salesperson herself might as well be invisible, because she has no interest in looking good, but only in helping the sales prospect look good in his own eyes, and reach his own goals.

Or think about that teenager who doesn't want to go to school. The teen wakes up and says "I don't feel well" at level one. At level two, he's able to hear a parent say "you don't look sick to me." But at the third level, he's asking about how other people feel and discovers the best possible motive to get out of bed into the world: "other people are depending on me today." The motive to get up and out is not about what matters to me, but what matters to others.

In this is some irony, and some magic. Once you focus on others in this way — as a friend, as a citizen, as a manager, as a colleague — you find that you yourself benefit as much or more than the others you're trying to help. Focusing on the sales prospect's needs instead of your own, you eventually reap the benefits of greater sales — more money, more respect, more confidence. Focusing on getting up out of bed because you understand that you can help others — and what a transforming positive feeling that statement carries with it: I can help others — you find that you become healthier and happier. You help yourself as much as you help others, because your life becomes infused with the purpose of doing good.

Copyright © 2006 by Peter S. Temes. Excerpted by permission of Harmony, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Dr.Peter S. Temes holds an undergraduate degree in English and Philosophy from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and an MFA in writing and an MA, MPHIL and PHD in literature from Columbia University. He has published four books; the most recent is The Just War: An American Reflection on the Morality of War. He publishes regularly in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, and elsewhere. Peter lives in New Hampshire and Connecticut with the journalist Judy Temes and their three children, Katie, Leah and Joseph.