Do what you love, and you’ll never work another day in your life.
I spoke about this recently in a facebook live – and it is iften attributed to Mark Twain who probably got it from Confucius!
I really was thinking about this from my own point of view. I love what I do! And what I do is help business owners have a business they love, that works for them to help them get what they want from life.
You may have heard it before – you might have had a parent or aged aunt or a teacher say it to you when you were younger. But the chances are – as a youngster – you didn’t really get it.
Most of us work for someone else at some point in our lives. Some are teenage entrepreneurs but I challenge most of you to tell me that you have never had a job you hated?
It may have been a Saturday / holiday job? (It should be noted that people often do love these – so we must never assume that people hate Saturday jobs!).
It might have been a job that started well and ended badly. I had a job I loved and then the management structure changed – and I ended up resigning. There’s a whole other story there – but it usually involves a bottle of wine!
If you are currently employed then you may or may not be in a job you love? If you don’t love it then what do you want to do about it? I refer back to last week when I talked about dreams for the future – when you get to December 2022 do you still want to be doing that job?
However – to the topic. If you do truly love what you do – does it feel like “Work”? What is work anyway?
Is it the opposite of “Play”? I talked about Play last year – and discussed if it were the opposite of work!
If you enjoy doing something it is not necessarily play! And the opposite is true – think of people putting them through physical pain – my goodness it hurt but I had the biggest smile on my face!
What does all this really mean! It’s work if it “feels” like work I guess – but I want to hear what YOU think?
If you are employed and your job doesn’t bring you joy can you walk away – there is much talk of The Great Resignation post pandemic – but I think it is largely a myth! However, there IS a lot of evidence that younger people are less inclined than older people to stick at a job they hate. There can be all sorts of good reasons why that is the case – company culture being one of them.
Your Business, Your Choice
If you are now self-employed (and probably with no staff, as that does bring challenges) – do you LOVE what you do day in day out?
I know – there will be times it sucks. And there will be things you don’t really enjoy doing – such as bookkeeping and admin. But there are ways of avoiding those! Outsourcing the stuff you hate, or aren’t good at – makes life a lot easier and you a lot happier!
If the pandemic taught us anything it was what’s important in life – and slaving away over a hot laptop when you could be “playing” should be avoided.
And if you are enslaved to your business – you’re not a business owner – you own a “job”!
One of my mantras is to “help business owners have a business that works for them” – there is a dual meaning in that – it can mean that it just works – seamlessly, or it can mean that the business is the “employee” that works for the business owner – take your own meaning from it.
So – if you don’t love what you do – what are you going to do about it?
Maybe you want to set up your own business? It can be very rewarding but also incredibly hard “Work” (there’s that word again) – but – you can still feel that you are not working!
Find your passion in life and follow it – or at least make plans to do so. Sometimes we have to continue in employment in order to pay the bills – but you can have an exit strategy – to get you to the position where you can resign.
And if you have your own business but you aren’t loving it – what are you going to do about that?
Get in touch if you’d like to chat about how I can help.