As you wake up with the sun in the morning, and you feel the energy rising, how will you guide your energy to create more joy and abundance in your life today? It’s a simple, sweet, and soulful way to feel more in control of your life, by simply choosing to express yourself in the best way possible, in every chance you get.
Have you ever noticed how often we equate success with more? Whether that’s more products, more profits, more activities or more accomplishments, we buy into the belief that we have to do more to have more to be more. And that will sum up to success. And then along comes The Great Resignation. Where employees are signaling that the “more” that’s being offered — even more pay, more perks, and more PTO — isn’t summing up to success for them. We visited with leaders who are redefining what success means now. Their answers might surprise you.
As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Nick Thorsch.
Nick Thorsch has spent his career in search of a meaningful harmonious blend of work that is purposeful, passionate, and profitable. After having worked at Intel, Microsoft, an Inc 5000 solar company and a $675M AI/ML company, while seeing the world around us go up in flames or smothered by snowstorms, he knew something was missing in the market. An organization was needed to be built to solve climate change at the speed and scale we need, to unite and empower environmentally-friendly Ecopreneurs around our world, so he started Share2Seed.org.
Thank you for making time to visit with us about the topic of our time. Our readers would like to get to know you a bit better. Can you please tell us about one or two life experiences that most shaped who you are today?
Thank you for allowing me to share. The earliest life experience I recall being relevant to what motivated me emotionally to pursue the path I’m on today, is from when I was a child watching TV. I remember seeing a commercial about elephants being shot, with a sad sounding narrator’s voice, that made me cry. Why? I didn’t decide to cry, I had no prior emotional connection to elephants, yet I cried uncontrollably. My mom came into the living room to console me, and ask me what happened. I told her what I saw, and she suggested I write a letter. I was also intuitive enough to know that writing a letter wasn’t going to solve that problem — it wasn’t going to stop the hunters with guns. Not knowing what else to do, and knowing my mom didn’t know either, yet still feeling incredibly bothered, I vowed to hunt down why and solve this problem in my lifetime.
I would have to wait, for literally decades, to decide to solve the problem I promised myself I’d solve as a child. As I learned, it’s complicated, deep-rooted, and incredibly intricate. Yet, the root of it is money. A concept foreign to a child. I saw money as a child as an utter distraction from what matters to everyone: loving one another harmoniously. Those mean hunters were absolutely contrary to my heart’s core desire, and obviously also contrary to the desire of animals to also enjoy living their lives in harmony without fear of being shot at. People all around the world justify unexpected actions for righteous reasons, such as “it’s for the good of my family” or “I need to eat”. But what do harmless animals eat, like the elephant, rhino or giraffe? They eat plants. And they grow big and strong! So, why the heck are we eating animal meat? That perplexed me too. Thanks to Google coming along in my generation, I could query every little curiosity I had and learn about different diets that my family and school system never showed me was possible, like the vegetarian diet.
Then I connected the dots. Hunters shoot animals, for money, to feed their family, and sell animal parts, for other people to eat too. So if everyone ate a plant-based diet instead, we’d have more harmony, right? So, then how do we make it easier for the hunter and the animal parts buyers to choose to eat plants instead? And instead of the loggers clearing land for 1 billion cows to graze, why not plant fruit trees for people to eat from instead?
It makes sense, that if people had the hunger, nutritional and financial incentive to make it easier to choose to eat fruit instead of meat, then that would help solve the problem, right? I watch my neighbor pick ripe orange tangerines off his tree, which helps boost his immune system, and he’s healthy at an old age. I, too, got an orange tree planted in my backyard a year ago, and it’s now producing beautiful fruits. If we scaled up fruit trees, down to a local level, it would certainly be easier, cheaper, and better for everyone and our environment. That’s one of the primary goals of my brand new organization that I’m dedicating my life to, Share2Seed.org.
We all have myths and misconceptions about success. What are some myths or misconceptions that you used to believe?
Lots of successful people have shared stories of their prior misconceptions about success. What we see on covers of magazines, are confident looking wealthy people.
My mom said, money doesn’t grow on trees. Yet they’d buy anything they wanted: a house with a white-picket fence, a Porsche, a Mercedes, house expansion, and for me, stuffed animals, books, science toys, a computer, comic books and video games.
Teachers, professors and mentors, basically any power authority, also showed me mixed messages of success. Was it about being obedient to or mirroring their wayward ways? Or was it about being true to my nature, and choosing whether or not to be obedient? So I went in search of the truth.
How has your definition of success changed?
What success really means, as a human being and to really achieve it, is to care about people, the greater good you’re providing, and being surrounded by the right people who also care about going above and beyond too. Who we are as a character and soul, deep down. Are we true to our nature, see the spirit in each other, and connect to our deepest and brightest light? Do we help empower each other and lift each other up? How many smiles have we brought to our faces? That’s a true and meaningful art form in today’s world.
The pandemic, in many ways, was a time of collective self-reflection. What changes do you believe we need to make as a society to access success post pandemic?
The pandemic produced panic in people in unexpected ways. In our outer world, pollution dropped when people were stuck at home, then came back with a roar as people were let out. Post-pandemic, we need to find ways to restore our humanity, unity, and harmony with our environment. That’s why I created an organization to empower everyone to become an Ecopreneur, Share2Seed.org.
What do you see as the unexpected positives in the pandemic? We would love to hear a few of your stories or examples.
One major positive was that it was a wake up call to humanity in a number of ways.
Financially: Are our savings and investments significant enough to buffer downturns? They significantly shot up creating the stock market rise.
Emotionally: Who can we trust? The President and team? News sources? Each other? We realized our choices needed to resonate with us, be well-informed, and well-selected, as our survival counts on it. Hopefully we can transfer this deep sense for our survival towards saving our home planet, too.
Environmentally: We saw pollution plunge, nature started to restore, then pollution came back with a roar. What we learned is, truly if we turn off the tap of fossil fuels, prevent the burning of our forests, and allow Mother Nature to heal, she will. Just like our bodies naturally heal too. So we know the path, but too often we forget it with the next day’s news. The U.S. has just 2% of households with solar and EVs, and is now growing at an ever faster pace, as shown by Tesla being one of the world’s most valuable companies now. What’s it going to take for the other 98% to wake up and do the right thing for themselves and us all too?
We’re all looking for answers about how to be successful now. Could you please share “5 Ways To Redefine Success Now?” (Please share a story or example for each.)
Five ways to redefine success now:
Your deep-down values and beliefs: What are they? How can you get crystal clear on them? Are they aligned with your goals? Are they working fruitfully and joyfully for you? We’ve become so scrambled and scattered, which has led to “The Great Resignation”. People are longing for meaning, alignment with their core values and beliefs, and a deeper sense of purpose and passion with the world. We realized life is short, so make it sweet, and make it count. What shifts should you make to feel more successful with your one life?
Your commitments and habits: What we continuously do, we become. We all know some New Year’s goals, like to lose weight, result in temporary gym memberships. I’m not guilt-tripping you into committing to sweating it out at the gym either. For example, I made deep commitment to create a new habit in a deep-soulful connection with beautiful nature, sunrises and sunsets, to harmonize my heart, mind and soul to earth’s harmonious ways, instead of artificial lights, computer screens, and TVs, because what we focus on, we become. What a brilliant and beautiful way to re-adjust ourselves back into harmony with nature!
How do you feel when you lay down to sleep at night? If you were to reflect back on your day, what went well? What do you wish went better? As you project to your next day ahead, what will you do to feel even better? Grow at even just 1% per day, and you’ll achieve significant growth in a week, a month, then a year, and your life.
As you wake up with the sun in the morning, and you feel the energy rising, how will you guide your energy to create more joy and abundance in your life today? It’s a simple, sweet, and soulful way to feel more in control of your life, by simply choosing to express yourself in the best way possible, in every chance you get.
How do the relationships in your life feel? How can you make strides to improve them? Build new or better relationships? Our relationships define our life. Two quotes come to mind: “The Golden Rule, treat others as we want to be treated.” How can you be more true to that? “Your network is your net worth.” We become who we hang around. Who do you want to become going forward? Who do you want to hang around? How will you make that happen?
How would our lives improve if we changed our definition of success?
If we think of success solely in monetary terms, and tie our self-worth to our net-worth, there’s only room for one person at the top, so it creates the potential for everyone else to feel less-than.
Yet we know people who are happy in all sorts of situations.
Success therefore is an oversubscribed term, and heart-flowing happiness is success that’s achievable by anyone at any time.
What’s the biggest obstacle that stands in the way of our redefined success? And what advice would you offer about overcoming those obstacles?
By changing how you feel about yourself, perceive yourself, our situation, and our power to choose happier ways. One fun way is described in the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. Imagine you have a board of directors looking over your life, giving you guidance and advice. Spiritual people may also imagine our higher self, angels or a religious figure. Whatever resonates and works best for you. What would the best of the best guide you to do better, to create a great outcome or become an even better version of yourself? Follow whatever deep down feels true, noble, and pure, that’ll make you and others feel lighter and happier, and your positive energy will work it’s magic.
Within everything, it resonates positively with genuine feelings of love and light. I’ve experienced it countless times. Unexpected magic seems to occur instantly out of intuition, and people are astounded, wondering how did that happen? Success in life is literally the magical, invisible Holy Spirit available inside of us all, that creates our outside world.
Where do you go to look for inspiration and information about how to redefine success?
Inner Intuition, nature, and examining what’s successful now in our external world. By aligning our inner world with our outer world, success becomes a simple path of intention from point A to B.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He, she or they might just see this if we tag them.
Elon Musk is making the most innovation happen right now in the most important areas, to accelerate the adoption of clean energy. Yet still only 2% of the market owns an EV or solar. For as hard, as fast, and as long as he’s been at it, and to be as happy as he is, is quite a successful accomplishment. I’d love to discuss ways in which we can accelerate adoption with the other 98% of the market, and buy us more time to solve such hard problems, with simple solutions to turn the tide with climate-warming, disaster-causing, carbon dioxide emissions.
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