Work Place Success Part 1 - "Love What You Do & Do What You Love"

Whatever it is you do for a living or plan to do with your career, make sure you love it with all your heart. 

It is has been my experience throughout my career to date, that falling in love with the work that you do is potentially less dangerous than falling in love, with the man or women of your dreams. 

Having searched my own heart, it told me soon enough what type of work it is that I loved to do and wanted to pursue.  However, in order to find this love, I spent many hours asking the right questions, and seeking the right answers.  For many; sadly, the answers are never found.  Those that ask and find this love for their work however, will find themselves becoming motivated and focussed all of the time and your energies will turn to securing that type of work.  Your love for your work will drive you towards success and it will ensure that you are performing effectively.

When you love the work that you do your bosses and indeed your customers will love you for it too.  To make any progress in your role in the business within which you work; its important that you fall in love with the work that you do, day in day out.   

If you love the buzz and adrenaline that comes with doing business deals work in mergers and acquisitions or Sales, if you love building interfaces and making software's become a programmer, if love computers in general, become an expert in Information Technology, if you love sharing knowledge with others in unique and obscure ways, becomes a teacher, trainer or professional consultant. 

Throughout my career; spanning a little over two decades, I have yet to find a person who is exceptional at what they do, who does not love what they do; I have asked this question to my friends, family members, even my local hairdresser and one afternoon whilst travelling, a businessman at a coffee shop.  Try it, it makes for fascinating conversation, it can be quite humbling as well, when you listen to the stories of others and how they fell in love with their work. 

A few years ago an acquaintance of mine told me of a London based street cleaner, who won an award for services to the community. ‘This woman truly loved what she did.  She loved her job so much in fact, that she aspired to have the cleanest streets in London’. 

I recall reading an article several years ago of a high class hotel porter in London, who had this desire to help passers by, either giving them directions or providing hotel guests with the football scores for the days previous fixtures.  Additional information also included the weather for the day, and the best places to shop and visit. 

In his commencement address to students of Stanford University on the 12th June 2005 co-founder and CEO of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs stated ‘You’ve got to love the work that you do’ and Steve certainly did all throughout his career until his passing on October 5th 2011. 

It is my opinion that there is nothing worse than finding someone, who works in the city, that hates or even despises what they do, you’ve probably experienced these kinds of people at some point in your life, these are the people that sit around and ignore the customers – have no interest in the product and spend a great deal of their time complaining. 

I can assure you that if your own aim and focus in life is to earn money then you won't get too far. To make any kind of progress in this world and indeed your work, you’ve got to go beyond money; wages, salary or fee’s and fall in love with the business you are in.  That means loving to serve customers (internally or externally), loving the products that you are making or selling and loving to expand and grow mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, dedicating time and energy on these activities. 

Loving your work does not come with a price.  In fact there is no correlation between salary and the amount of love that you feel or give to your work.  In fact a number of researchers have proven that this greater and higher desire, this yearning to earn more money often turns in to avarice.  It was the late Kahil Gibran (the Lebanese-American Artist, Poet and Writer who wrote the film 'The Prophet') who said ‘Love is work made visible’.  Personally, I couldn’t agree more with this statement. 

In my experience it is far more satisfying to earn ￡60,000.00 doing work that you love, than ￡300,000 doing work that you despise or tolerate, not that I have ever earned ￡300,000 you understand. 

My point is this, that quite often we are fooled into thinking that the extra money will bring us happiness, but truth be told, it won’t.  At least, it will never bring you the happiness that can be attained when you truly love your work. 

To Your Growth Success and Contribution

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Mark Jones is a passionate learning and development professional, blogger, webinar consultant, systems trainer, online educator and accelerated learning specialist.  If you would like to discuss this article in more detail, please call +44 (0) 7711 928883 or email: [email protected]