A friend of mine recently lost in her bid to be elected for public office. Last week an opportunity for me to contribute to a segment on a national talk show fell through. Last month I had another publisher ‘pass’ on the book I’m working on.
The fact is that whenever we take on lofty goals, there is risk we will not achieve them. Too often though when our efforts fail to produce we have worked hard toward, we focus on the failure. We think about what we missed out on doing or getting. People speak about their “wasted effort” implying that because they did not achieve the goal they set out toward – whether it be the business contract they had worked so hard to secure or the promotion that went to someone else despite their hours of overtime – that their effort was of no value.
But that is not true.
You do yourself a disservice when you approach hard work begrudgingly. There is little in life more rewarding than working hard at work worth doing, regardless of whether you always produce the result you want.
Working hard toward a goal or vision that inspires us, regardless of the outcome, always holds intrinsic value. What matters far more than what we get from our hard work and effort, is who we get to become from it. Caren echoed this sentiment last night with a group of supporters gathered in my home. She shared her gratitude for the rewarding experience of simply running for office and her appreciation for the opportunity to meet so many people, of all political persuasions and across all walks of life. Yes she worked hard. Very hard. Door-knocking on 20,000 doors hard. But she also drew enormous pleasure from the hard work, and shared the quote by Theodore Roosevelt which has inspired this post: “Far and away the best prize life has to offer is working hard at work worth doing.” [Read more…]