What Google's New Parent, Alphabet, Is Teaching Us About Self-Actualization

When I speak with most founders about their life goals, their responses often sound the same to me: "Build something, sell it, get rich, invest, and give back," these founders will say. But this “means-­to-an-end" mentality has never sat right with me.

It trivializes the hard work we’re doing today. I'd rather look at life goals through Abraham Maslow'sHierarchy of Needs. Central to the Hierarchy are the concepts of "self­-actualization" and “self­-transcendence."Backwhen I first encountered these concepts, at university, they sounded like pseudoscientific New Age nonsense to me. And onereasonmay have been that, at the time,Isawno examples of what self­-actualization looked like.

I read nocase studies highlightinghow someone might achieve such a state. 58003

In fact, along with the rest of my college classmates, I was dumbfounded to even imagine what life might look like with complete physiological security, fulfillment from family and friends, impregnable self-­esteemand the ability to eventually fulfill one's full potential. Yet, now, nine years later, Ihavecome to believe that the most traversed path to self­-actualization entails:

1) Creating enduring value, and building a generational business in the process

2) Achieving liquidity on that original piece of work

3) Investing in people and organizations, and maybe starting another company (or five).

4) Becoming a philanthropist and joining the board of a non­profit.

Consider someonelike peter Thiel. After selling paypal, he began to build a dazzling investment portfolio that included Facebook. Eventually, he committed himself to accelerating the trajectory of young people, changing the world through his Thiel Fellowship.

The next person in line, who benefited the most from paypal’s liquidity, isElon Musk, another great example. His life’s work and passion have so far culminated with his being CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and chairman of SolarCity.

Jeff Bezos built a generational business by dropping a cool $250 millionto acquire The Washington post -- in a bid to wield more influence on America’s national narrative.

Now, while these men are all great entrepreneurs, they still leave the impression that to achieve self­-actualization, we must leave behind a fragmented body of work, each piece serving as a means ­to ­an­ end. I used to believethis was the only path, until Alphabet.

Alphabet, of course, is the umbrella of separate companies, Google being the largest, that the search engine's founders, Larry page and Sergey Brin, announced this summer. Along with Google, Alphabet's companies focus on projects "afield" of Google's Internet focus -- from robots and artificial intelligence to media immortality. The projects include a Life Sciences teamfocusing on a glucose contacts lens, and a longevity exploration team, at Calico. Alphabet's core business, AdWords, subsidizes the other initiatives.

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Rather than imposing the limitation of viewing Google as a means ­to ­an ­end, they have leveraged its success to build a broader platform that helps them achieve self­-actualization.For (what I regard as) the first time ever, we have a living example of what an alternative path to self­-actualization looks like. To my knowledge, we’ve never seen a founder’s lifetime output embodied in a singular vehicle that brings to fruition his or her vision of the future across multiple domains.

A bet on Alphabet is a bet on the progressive future that its leadership is working to create. While the company's restructuring creates greater organizational transparency and liquidity, this centralized pision of work also encourages subsidiaries to operate in such a way that its employees can reach their inpidualfull potential more quickly.

58003 In helping others to achieve self­-actualization, page, Brinand Alphabet chairmanEric Schmidtare transcending personal growth, and pushing into the realm of self­-transcendence.

Consciousness and intention are critical in all things. And these goals hit close toto home: That's why my team and I actively discuss our life goals and intention with one another. 为什么？ Because we believe that our employees must beaware of, and respect, the aspirations of their peers, whatever they might be.

Ultimately, I’ve come to learn that most of the discomfort I’ve felt with what I earlier referred to asa “means-to-­an-­end" mentality has been self­-imposed. When it comes to life goals, there’s no need to trivialize the work we’re doing today. Instead, these efforts may be the very thing which allow us to move forward to achieve our wildest dreams.