Your Work Is Your Life

Wisdom Nuggets: "Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies."
                                                                                                                      - Albert Camus

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The sign in the store window read: NO HELP WANTED. As two men passed by, one said to the other, "You should apply - you'd be great."

Cynthia Spence in Homemade, May, 1989 wrote "One researcher has estimated that 50-80% of working Americans are in a job that does not match their abilities and is therefore unfulfilling. That may well be the force behind the statistic that the average worker will change careers two or three times before retirement." If you work 8 to 9 hours daily then 37.5% of your life is spent on that job. And you had better love what you are doing or else your life is already a living hell. Your entire life is calibrated in TIME. When therefore you give 37.5% of your day to a job you are giving it 37.5 % of your life. Every morning as you dress to go to work don't be fooled, this is not a dress rehearsal, this is your life going and nobody but you has the awesome power to make it a living hell or a blissful heaven.

My almighty slogan in my training programs for cooperate executives is, "Either you do what you love or love what you do. Or simply quit!"

I discovered something from my Physical Exercise classes. I hate jogging but I enjoy long quick walks. I dread aerobics but I need it so I do it to be alive. The only exercise that comes natural to me is swimming. For some reasons, I never miss an opportunity to swim, whether I'm home or abroad, but I find myself always forgetting that I have an aerobic class. Because I enjoy swimming, the fun in it has taken away the work in it. Let me recommend the same principle for your job.

Notice when Adam got a job in Eden, he was happy. Eden means pleasure or delight.  Everyone was made to work in their various Edens, i.e. the job that gives the utmost pleasure and delight. It takes the work out of it and occupies you with the fun in it. Interestingly, the most successful people the world over know this is the first principle of success.

Albert Camus said "Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies." And finally  Khalil Gibran posted "Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy."

Love What You Do?

Wisdom nuggets: Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

                                                                                                            - Confucius

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About six years ago, I was speaking at a luncheon held in the civic auditorium of a city in Oklahoma. I settled myself at my place at the head table. I picked up my fork and noticed that two rose-petaled radishes adorned my salad plate. The radish is an edible root vegetable of the Brassicaceae family, which was domesticated in Europe, in pre-Roman times. They are grown and consumed throughout the world. Someone had taken the time to pretty up two radishes, just for me. Then I noticed that each salad at the head table had two neatly curled radishes. I turned to the lady sitting to my right. "I'm impressed by the radishes" I said.
 "You're impressed by what?" she asked.
"The radishes" I said. "Look, each salad plate at our table has curled radishes."
"Yes," she said, exercising a questioning smile. "They're pretty."
"They're more than pretty," I said. "Someone took special care to do these" "Don't they all have them?" she asked, gazing out at the tables.
I looked and was astonished. Each salad plate was adorned with two curled radishes! "They are curled! That took a lot of time!" "I'm not on the planning committee, but Gertrude is," she replied. She turned to get the attention of Gertrude, three chairs down. "Mrs. George wants to ask you something about the radishes," she whispered.
"The what?" Gertrude mouthed
 "The RA- DI-SHES!" "Is there something wrong with your radishes?" she asked. "No. They are fine. I just thought it was nice to have them all curled."
"Oh, Marietta does those."
 "All of them?" I knew the head count in the room and was astonished. "That's almost eight hundred radishes!"
"Yes, but Marietta wants to do it. Would you like to meet her? She's in the kitchen." So Gertrude and I went into the kitchen, and there we met Marietta, the lady of the radishes.
"Gertrude tells me you curled all those radishes. They're lovely. Each salad looks so...festive."
"I don't mind doing it. It just takes time," Marietta replied.

 I didn't know what more to say so I left.  Later, I spoke, and there was an encouraging response. Afterward, ladies scurried past me with murmured greetings, and a few lingered to speak of God in their lives. When we finished, it was raining heavily so we hurried across the parking lot to the car. Through the rain, I could see a lady, carrying a large polka-dot umbrella that had collapsed on one side waiting by our car. It was Marietta! She was smiling as though we had found her on a sunny day in an especially delightful garden.

 "I had to see you. I heard your speech. It was good!" she said. "I have to go home now." I slipped inside the car. Marietta crouched down close to the window and called to me, "Just remember this. You keep telling people about Jesus, and I'll keep curling the radishes." The rain and my tears splattered the picture of her face as we started to back out of the driveway. Ah, dear Marietta, I haven't forgotten. We are to do our jobs in the love of him who does all things well. LOVE WHAT YOU DO
-Jeanette Clift George, Travel Tips From A Reluctant Traveler, 1987.

Do You Work For A Living?

Wisdom Nuggets: "To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth." - Pearl S. Buck  

I organise training retreats for business executives from various organizations  During these trainings, I often ask trainees this puzzling question: "Why do you work in this organization?" , I always get the same feedback from all of them. Whether they are oil company workers, bankers, civil servants or teachers:
"For a living!" they often reply.

My reply often is, "No job can ever give you a living. Why? Because living is different from existing. No salary can give it to you. So instead of working to earn a living, "Work to earn a giving." Even more interesting was when I facilitated a retreat for Union executives of the most valuable company in the world, Exxon Mobil. I said to them, "No amount of money can pay for your true worth and value. In short the whole world's wealth cannot pay for it."

As the sage once said, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and loose  his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Since no job is worth your value, you must, therefore, work to be a blessing knowing that you have been blessed (with that job) that you might be a blessing.".

 The sad truth is that people who work for a living scarcely live. They either end up broke or at the best they live Just Over Broke (JOB).

When the company founded by Andrew Carnegie was taken over by the U.S. Steel Corporation in 1901 it acquired as one of its obligations a contract to pay the top Carnegie executive, Charles M. Schwab, the then unheard of minimum sum of $1,000,000. J.P. Morgan of U.S. Steel was in confused about it. The highest salary on record was then $100,000. He met with Schwab, showed him the contract and hesitatingly asked what could be done about it. "This," said Schwab, as he took the contract and tore it up.  That contract had paid Schwab $1,300,000 the year before. "I didn't care what salary they paid me," Schwab later told a Forbes magazine interviewer. "I was not animated by money motives. I believed in what I was trying to do and I wanted to see it brought about. I cancelled that contract without a moment's hesitation. Why do I work? I work for just the pleasure I find in work, the satisfaction there is in developing things, in creating. Also, the associations business begets. The person who does not work for the love of work, but only for money, is not likely to make money nor to find much fun in life."

And Elbert Hubbard concludes "We work to become, not to acquire."

How To Win Over Your Boss

Wisdom nuggets:   "To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labour, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."

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If you're into bumper-sticker philosophy, you've probably seen the axiom, "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go." For a vast portion of the workforce, that's the best reason they can muster for going to the job each day. According to one poll, only 43 percent of American office workers are satisfied with their jobs. In Japan, the figure dips to 17 percent. In the first century, Christian proletariats had even less reason to be enthusiastic about their work. But Paul gave them a way to grasp a glimpse of glory amid the grind. He wanted them to "adorn the doctrine of God," that is, to show the beauty of their faith in God by how they work.

The truth is nothing endears your boss like your attitude to your work. Chances are you may never find the courage to ever talk to your boss about progress but you have a great opportunity to communicate same by your work ethics.

"Subordinates must always obey their bosses and do their best to please them. They must not talk back or steal, but must show themselves to be entirely trustworthy and good. Then they will make the teaching about the Almighty attractive in every way."

We saw this when Joseph saved the economy of Egypt and fed the whole world in the famine. Pharaoh, his boss, was so impressed that he asked "who is your father? "Your boss will only be interested in your father when your attitude to work speaks well of him. It was Mother Teresa who said "There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to the Most High and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible."

In September 5, 1994, I read this beautiful passage and saved it ever since. It read: A significant and often overlooked way that we serve Our Maker is in our everyday tasks. Martin Luther understood this when he wrote, "The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays - not because she may sing a hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors. The shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.


If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

                                                                                                                    - Bill Gates

THE GIFT OF WORK (4)

Wisdom Nugget: "All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty"

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"It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man" - Benjamin Franklin

The story is told of a man by the name of Mr Kingsley who had  a son named Brian, who was a handsome young man. There was no one more handsome than Brian in Israel. He stood a head taller than any other man in Israe. One day Kingsley's cars got lost. So he said to his son Brian, "Take one of the staff and go look for the cars." Brian went to look for the cars. He walked through the hills of Ephraim and through the area around Shalisha. But Brian and the servant could not find Kingsley's cars. So they went to the area around Shaalim, but the cars were not there either. Then Brian traveled through the land of Benjamin, but he and the servant still could not find the cars. Finally, Brian and the servant came to the town named Zuph. Saul said to his servant, "Let's go back. My father will stop worrying about the cars and start worrying about us." But the servant answered, "A man of God is in this town. People respect him. Everything he says comes true, so let's go into town. Maybe the man of God will tell us where we should go next." The day before, the Lord had told Bishop McCain , "At this time tomorrow I will send a man to you. He will be from the tribe of Benjamin. You must anoint him and make him the new leader over my people Israel. This man will save my people from the Philistines. I have seen my people suffering, and I have heard their cries for help." When McCain saw Brian, the Lord said to McCain , "This is the man I told you about. He will rule my people." Brian went up to a man near the gate to ask directions. This man just happened to be McCain. Brian said, "Excuse me. Could you tell me where the seer's house is?" McCain  answered, "I am the seer. Go on up ahead of me to the place for worship. You and your servant will eat with me today. I will let you go home tomorrow morning. I will answer all your questions. And don't worry about the cars that you lost three days ago. They have been found.

Now, there is something that everyone in Israel is looking for and that something is you and your family." Imagine that Mr Kingsley is Kish, Brian is Saul, McCain is Prophet Samuel and the missing cars are donkeys. It's amazing how a simple obedience to a father's instruction ended up in the enthronement of Saul as king over Israel. He went out in search of his father's donkeys  at a time when Israel was in search of a king and its amazing how he ended being found. If he did not go out in search of those donkeys he would never have been found. More so he could have given up the search at the hills of Ephraim or at Shalisha or at Shaalim or at the land of Benjamin but they persisted until they got to Zuph.

They remained determined to bring result back to their boss. And at Zuph they decided to see the Priest only to discover that this whole delay, long wait and seeming  fruitless journey through five cities searching for donkeys was all a set up to bless Saul. In Samuel's words: "Now, there is something that everyone in Israel is looking for and that something is you and your family." Because he was faithful in what was another man's, He eventually got his own.

Mario Andretti wrote: "Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek".