I bet that at some point in your life you've just done something that was good because

it was good and that was it and you didn't think about anything else.

You were just in the moment and there was something in front of you and something needed

to be done and you did it.

My guess is that there has also been a time or two in your life where there were a thousand

opportunities to do good things in front of you.

You only got so many hours in the day though.

I'm so you looked at a situation and you thought, ah, I'm going to pick that one and you

did a thing that was genuinely good and genuinely helpful but also there was some self-serving

reason that you picked that one and not the other 999 opportunities.

You could have done all the other stuff and that would have been great but this one

good thing that was just as good for the recipient as any of the other things would have

been.

Also, was strategic or valuable for the other things you were trying to accomplish?

I think this is a pretty normal thought process that all people go through.

I think this is kind of the root of how business negotiation, business dealings work and I

don't think just because there's some strategy to doing good things that that undermines good

things or vice versa and I also think total altruism exists.

If you can relate to that slightly understandably mixed motive kind of scenario that we all

face from time to time, then I think you're going to be able to relate to Cyrus the Great.

This fantastically powerful Persian king in the 500s BC who we've been talking about.

He worked his butt off and made a ton of good decisions to conquer the ancient world and

...