How Things You Don’t Enjoy Can Add Up to What You Love

Someone asked me the other day if I liked being a parent. Of course I love being a parent! Changing diapers, cleaning throw-up, breaking up sibling fights, rushing to practice. It’s amazing, a gift, right?! The “wonderful” list of things we have to do as parents goes on and on. But despite all the negatives, somehow when you add it all up, it’s an overwhelmingly positive experience. 

 The same thing can be said of my job. I 100% love mine. I just can’t think of many things I have to do on a daily basis that I love. My job, like parenting, follows the rule that says, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. Here’s what I mean.

1. Reading Contracts – Before starting defi, I could count the number of contracts I had to review on my fingers and toes. It had been a nice life! Just to start defi, I doubled that number. I almost quit before we opened the doors. Now it feels like a solid quarter of my time is spent reviewing legal documents. It’s not fun, but here’s the good news. We have an amazing attorney, who when I just can’t take it anymore, jumps in and saves me. Don’t tell any lawyer jokes around me because I can’t live without mine. Plus, the majority of the time that I’m reviewing contracts it’s for a great reason – new business or a new partnership, something that will ultimately make me smile after I get through the beating.
2. Sales – I am not sure why people are surprised to find out I’m horribly shy. Nothing, literally nothing, is as uncomfortable to me as talking to people I don’t know. Nothing.  And yet the largest part of my job is helping lenders decide if our product is right for them.  Helping them see how something radically different than what they are used to isn’t scary.
3. Conferences – This is like sales on steroids for me. Standing in a booth, making eye contact and forcing people to talk to me? Make it stop! Everyone seems so at ease walking around at conferences, like it’s nothing to walk around and randomly make conversation with people. I’m at ease looking at my phone, or the floor, or even better, just sitting down in a chair and working. That’s what I love. 
4. Writing – The first position I should have hired was someone to write for me. I have lots of ideas, lots of things I would love to get across. But the task of sitting down and writing and trying to make it into something coherent is a task I tend to move from my to do list each day and say, “Whoops, I didn’t have time.” It may be my only area of procrastination.
5. Accounting – I love numbers and budgets and being careful with money, but man I hate accounting. I don’t care which line the number goes in. Was it positive or negative, that’s all I care about. I was a Finance major, so I took all the Accounting classes. I probably never got lower than a 95 on an accounting test, but I just can’t see it like other people can. It’s so much easier to envision things in decision trees than income statements.
6. Rah Rah – I whole-heartedly believe nothing is more important than our team and the people we work with. I also love my family and my kids immensely, but remembering to tell people how awesome they are daily, or even annually – so difficult. Actually doing it – so uncomfortable. People who know me well, know I care, people who don’t might think I’m cold. Not enough of my day is spent here, but it should be. It should be a larger component of my job. Great, now I feel guilty.

There you go. My week is filled with lots of things I don’t like. And yet, I’m at peace every day and wouldn’t choose to do anything differently. Maybe the key to happiness is filling it with a bunch of individual things you don’t like?  Probably not, but I do think the key is focusing your life – the good and the bad tasks around your “why”. “Why” I do what I do is what makes “changing diapers” all day long worthwhile. It’s so easy to get lost in the minutia of your job. The trick and often-harder thing to do is to remember the big picture. So take a minute every day as you are stepping out of bed to remind yourself why you put up with it all those “dirty diapers.” -1 + -1 + -1 can equal a perfect positive 10.