In July of 2015, my wife, son and I tearfully said goodbye to friends, family, and most of all, my daughter. My wife, son and I made a trek from the Hoosier Heartland of Pendleton, Indiana to the Sonoran Desert and Scottsdale, Arizona. It was our first big move for my family. Neither my wife nor I lived more than one hundred miles from our birthplaces. Why on earth would we do such a thing? There was one big reason why we did this.
On this Monday, I have one thing to say: Your work matters! Now I could stop right there, but this would be the shortest blog post I’ve ever done. We can’t have that, can we? So here it goes!
You may think your work doesn’t matter because you are in a business that is struggling. But your work does matter! You never know how that business would be doing if you weren’t there. If you keep holding on, you may discover a way to bring that business new clients. You may discover a new product or service that revitalizes your industry. Don’t give up. Your work matters!
There are some surprises that aren’t pleasant. Then there are surprises that make you want to jump for joy. That’s serendipity. It’s one of those words that sounds like its meaning. It’s a happy surprise or joyous discovery. Who wouldn’t want that kind of surprise?
Zig Ziglar always had a way of distilling so much into one sound bite! This quote got my mind racing. Have I learned from defeats? Have I learned the right lessons? Nobody likes defeat. It’s especially hard when we gave it all we could and we still come up short.
I just saw this video on motivation in the Twenty-first century. Daniel Pink makes a case that motivation with carrots and sticks only works if you are doing repetitive tasks with no creative problem solving involved. Instead, if you want an employee to be engaged and motivated to do creative problem solving, these factors are better motivators:
When I watched this, it brought reminded me why I thought the cliché of a starving artist is so much a part of society.