“Never love your work, it won’t love you back.” This and many other advice about hating and, eventually, leaving your work to pursue the things that “you love to do” might, just might, be true. But, “inanimate” objects are not capable of loving. They have no emotions. So, if your work won’t love you back, would your “own business” do?
Most people would think being an employee is being a loser. Why? Imagine this. You wake-up in the morning and drag your self to the shower, get dressed, grab your breakfast and drive through the traffic of the city. You hurried through each and every corner which seems to be moving too slow even if it is called “the rush hour.” You run like you’re in a marathon just to beat the clock at nine. You are actually a slave of time. You are already exhausted even before your day starts. You go to your desk and sit for hours to do what someone else tells you to do. What has to be done and how to do it are dictated by other people.
At the end of the day, you are too tired that you just want to sit and relax in front of the TV eating some junk food to comfort you. When people ask you how your day was, you have nothing new to share. Nothing’s worth sharing. There’s no excitement at all. Dull and same old routine. Then you started asking yourself the questions that “will turn your life around.” Is this all there is to life? And you think about all the possibilities of another life. So you start hating your job for robbing you off the greater opportunities on the other side. If not only for the paycheck that pays the bills, you wouldn’t be holding on to your job. Liberty is gone forever once you started working. You sacrifice a lot of time, effort, opportunities, and even relationships just to put food on the table while making other people rich. If only the people you serve would learn to appreciate you, that would have been a little better. But more often than not, they are also busy doing their jobs they forget about the other people working with and for them.
Then you will see other people being “successful” in their lives and in their finances because they do not have to carry the yoke that other people put upon their backs. They are “free” to do the things they want to do. Entrepreneurs. Businessmen. The ones who are the boss of themselves. Then you start wondering if you should join them in their quest for work and life balance. You are sick of your job and of what you do. You want to jump right in to be part of the bandwagon. But, what fits John does not necessarily fits Joe.
So before you make that decision, take a little time to reconsider your options and think if it is the right thing for you to do. Yes, you’ve heard about the people who succeeded in business; but, what about those who failed? The rewards of being your own boss are great, but even greater are the sacrifices. You only hear about the joys, the glamour, the fame and the good stuff. What about all the failures, the hardships, the sacrifices, the sleepless nights, the efforts, the money and the time spent before one becomes successful? Just like seeing a movie, you only see the final product, but you haven’t seen all the hours spent by the people behind the camera.
Perhaps, it is not the fact that you are employed that causes you to hate your job and your life. Maybe, it is the way you look at it. It’s true, your job will never love you back. But the people you work with will. And if go to work everyday, ranting and whining and telling other people how you hate your work or being a “slave” of someone else, imagine the impression you create to the people you deal with. These people are with you for the most part of the waking hours of their lives. If you are in their shoes and all you hear from someone else is all their complaints day in and day out, you would rather be somewhere else. But if you start “loving your work” imagine the effects it can have in you.
1. You won’t feel that you are wasting your time making other people rich, although in truth you are, when you start to see yourself doing your job for your own benefit and the extra money you contribute to the rich man’s coffer is just incidental. Employees stay in their work not because of promotion or money or their bosses but because of the opportunity to learn new things everyday.
2. You won’t hate dressing up, commuting and working every day. If you care to take a closer look, you get exhausted not by the physical activities that you do but by the thoughts you put into your mind. If you can be tired first in your mind, they you can be refreshed first in your mind as well.
3. When people see you as a person who appreciates life and the opportunities it offers, instead of a “king of all complaints,” they will tend to love to spend more time hanging around with you. And wouldn’t it be nice to have that effect on other people who most probably are also feeling dissatisfied with their jobs?
You don’t have to love your work for the work itself. But you should love the opportunity that having a work can offer.
I’ve been an employee even before I graduated college. I learned that it is not the job, not your co-employee, not your boss or not even the government that can change your outlook with what you do – it all depends on you.
LEAP! 