Ever Wonder If You're Wasting Your Gifts?

Have you ever considered that your talents aren't truly yours to waste? That refusing to develop your gifts might actually be an injustice to the world?

Drawing from Ryan Holiday's profound book "Right Thing Right Now," we journey through the transformative story of Buckminster Fuller—a man who, on the brink of suicide, received a life-altering message: "You do not belong to you, you belong to the universe." This single moment changed not just his life but potentially millions of others who benefited from his subsequent innovations and contributions.

The Biblical Parable of Talents takes on new meaning when we realize it's not about money but about what we do with our inherent gifts. Some invest and multiply their talents, while others—out of fear or complacency—bury them in the ground. Florence Nightingale spent sixteen years paralyzed by fear and family expectations before finally breaking free to revolutionize medical practices and save countless lives. Her story reminds us that the world suffers tangible losses when we hide our potential.

And, as a special bonus, I want to give you FREE access to my signature course, Slay Your Year (usually $997)! All you have to do is:

• Leave a review of this podcast.
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Let it Be Easy with Susie Moore.
Okay, my friends, story time.
This is from Ryan Holiday'slatest book.
I love it.
It's called Right Thing RightNow Justice in an Unjust World.

(00:23):
I love this book.
I actually got the what's itcalled the advanced reader copy
last year before the book cameout.
So this book has some typos init, the one that I'm reading
from which I actually reallylike.
It's wonderful to see theauthor in their earliest stages
working things out.
But I'm going to read you myfavorite, my favorite chapter

(00:44):
from this book.
Now, if you have the bookbecause mine is an uncorrected
advance, your pages might bedifferent.
On me it's.
For me it's page 84.
But whether or not you readthis book, whether or not you
care, don't you worry, I'm goingto read you my favorite chapter
right here.
Okay, it's page 84.
And the chapter, at least inthis copy.

(01:05):
It actually don't even havechapter numbers, but it's in
part one.
Okay, here it is.
My friends, realize yourpotential.
On a frigid night in Chicago in1927, the architect and inventor
Buckminster Fuller decided toend it.
He was a failure.
He had been kicked out ofHarvard.

(01:26):
He had buried a child.
His drinking problem was asecret shame.
It was time, he thought, toswim out as far as he could into
Lake Michigan and drown.
Yet as he prepared to die, heheard a voice.
A voice that said in effect,how dare you who do you think
you are to abandon theresponsibilities of life to your

(01:47):
children, to the world?
You do not have the right toeliminate yourself.
The voice said you do notbelong to you, you belong to the
universe.
The significance of you willforever remain obscure to you,
but you may assume that you'refulfilling your significance if
you apply yourself to convertingall your experience to the

(02:07):
highest advantage of others.
You and all men are here forthe sake of other men.
Oh, I love that.
He carried this thought withhim back from the ledge and
indeed for the rest of his life.
The work he did, the inventionshe created, the children he
raised were an attempt tofulfill that obligation that he
wasn't here on this planet forhimself, but to be good and do

(02:30):
good for others.
It's almost too perfect that thestory in the Bible about three
servants each left with anamount of money by their master
is known as the parable of thetalents.
One servant, skilled and able,investing, turned five talents,
talents a very large sum intoten.
The second servant, more slowlythan the first, was eventually

(02:50):
able to do the same.
The third, overwhelmed by thewhole proposition or not
interested in participating,simply buried his in the ground
for safekeeping.
The true moral of the story isabout what we do with the
talents we've been given, whatwe make of ourselves and the
opportunities before us.
Some grow, some hide, somereach their potential, some

(03:15):
don't.
And this, oh this is good.
My friends, listen, this is amatter of justice.
Just as the servants owed it totheir master to make a return
on the money he'd entrusted themwith, just as Buckminster
Fuller owed it to whoever gavehim life to do something with it
, we owe it to our master, tothe world, to make the most of

(03:37):
the skills and attributes thatwe have.
Without people who do this,where would we be?
There'd be no progress, nogreatness, no art, no innovation
, no bravery on the battlefield,no social change.
Florence Nightingale was bornwith all that potential.
She had an education, she hadwealth, she had access.

(03:57):
But for many years, for manyyears 16 in fact she was like
that third servant.
She hid underground.
She let her parents and herfear of what they would think,
paralyze her.
She averted her eyes from herdestiny, could not find it
within herself to answer thecall.
The world was worse off becauseof that, just as it is worse

(04:18):
off when any person settles orcowers.
But with time and encouragement, she did venture out.
She broke her shackles, findingthat the ties that bound her
were but straw, and the processbroke through centuries of bad
medical practices, saving thelives of millions of soldiers.
Yet each of us ignores this callin our own way, if not outright

(04:41):
, then in the way that JimmyCarter did, a man whose life was
shaped by his early reading ofthe parable of the talents as
much as it was by theintervention of Admiral Rickover
, who asked him so pointedly whyhe hadn't always given his best
.
When we don't do our best, whenwe hold something back, we are
cheating ourselves.
Hold something back, we arecheating ourselves.

(05:06):
We are cheating our gifts.
We are cheating the potentialbeneficiaries of us reaching our
potential, to whom much isgiven.
The lesson from the parablegoes much is expected.
I'm going to keep reading, okay, because this is good.
There's a couple more pages,but I don't want to stop, even
though we're a little over whatour regular time is today.
That doesn't mean money andsuccess necessarily.

(05:28):
I can very well understand howyou feel.
That would be anything lessthan the greatest in your line,
and the greatest in your linewould be failure.
Uncle Will wrote to WalkerParsi.
In that letter I used to thinkthe same way about poetry.
He explained, but now I do notregret having written it,
although what I wrote does notrank with the greatest and may
be forgotten.

(05:48):
If I had thought this would beits fate, I would not have
written, but now I'm glad I did.
It was the best I could give,and if it's not the best
somebody else could give, that'snot my concern.
Do your best, become what youcan be.
You owe the world that much.
It makes a difference, even ifothers are indifferent.

(06:10):
People who realize theirpotential employ other people.
They inspire other people.
They open the doors for others.
They discover and make thingsof use for others.
They create markets for people.
They have a platform they canuse to speak to people.
The decision to participate inthis system.
For yourself and other people,this is a moral choice.
If you don't agree, thenconsider the alternative A

(06:34):
system that crushes theincentives to fulfill anyone's
potential, a world where peopledon't participate, they don't
care, they don't try.
How many breakthroughs don'thappen?
How much change doesn't happen?
How much suffering is there?
Whoever could make two ears ofcorn or two blades of grass upon
a spot of ground where only onegrew before, wrote Jonathan

(06:56):
Swift, would deserve better ofmankind and do more essential
service to his country than thewhole race of politicians put
together.
Yet the same holds true for anykind of leader the one who
makes an agreement when no onesaw a possibility, the one who
restores faith instead of breaksit, who fully realizes the
potential of their office ortheir powers.

(07:18):
This is a person who isbringing a small amount of
justice into an unjust world.
And in fact, one of the mostbasic principles of economics is
the law of comparativeadvantage.
If one of us is better atgrowing corn and the other at
growing grass and a third at theart of politics, then we best
serve the world by seeing tothat specialty, by doing what

(07:41):
other people want us to or thinkwe should do, or by lacking to
that specialty.
By doing what other people wantus to or think we should do, or
by lacking the discipline tokeep the main thing, the main
thing we are costing the worldsomething.
Angela Merkel was a verytalented scientist, but with
time she came to realize thattalented scientists were more
common than talented politicians.
Like Merkel, like Nightingale,you have unique gifts and

(08:08):
advantages.
Like President Carter, you havewithin you a level of
performance and commitment thatis deeper than what you have so
far given.
What will you do with this?
What will you make of it?
Oscar Wilde believed that eachhuman being was a prophecy, that
we had a destiny.
Oh, I know this too, oscar.
Our job, he said, was tofulfill it.
As he writes in the picture ofDorian Gray, the aim of life is

(08:30):
self-development, to realizeone's nature perfectly.
That is what each of us is herefor.
Yet too many people, he wrote,like that third servant, were
afraid of themselves, afraid ofthe task they had been given.
What will you become?
Will you become what you'remeant to be?
Will you go where you are mostneeded?

(08:51):
That is the question.
To fail to answer it becauseyou're afraid is a betrayal of
your own gifts.
It's shortchanging the world,especially when we consider that
it's possible to have an evenmore ambitious goal than just
realizing our potential, becausethat word implies that each
person only has a finite amount.
What if it's possible to doeven more?

(09:13):
We should try to realize thethings that nobody thought were
possible, that nobody would haveexpected of us More than doing
our best, we should strive tobecome our best, to vibe with
the best.
A man's reach should exceed hisgrasp.
Certainly that reaching, thatstretching, is what gets us
closer to heaven.
But down here, still on earth,what you don't want, what people

(09:36):
should never find themselvesneeding to say about you, is the
most damnable indictment thereis.
They could have been more, theycould have done more.
They wasted their gifts Untiltomorrow, my friends, so much

(09:56):
love and ease.
Hey, friend, I've got somethingreally cool for you.
I want to give you free accessto my signature course called
Slay your Year, which typicallysells for $997.
You can check it out, all thedetails, at slayyouryearcom.
All you have to do to getaccess is leave me a review.

(10:17):
Leave a review of this podcaston Apple Podcasts, take a
snapshot of it and send it toinfo at suzy-morecom.
That's info at suzy-morecom,and we'll get you set up with
access.