Remember, work, well-done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man.
— George S. Clason
Our attitude to work goes a long way to determine what we become in life, and I bring you the best advice you'd receive this week from the pages of George Clason's book, The Richest Man in Babylon; make work your best friend.
Whatever work you are positioned to do is work that you can do, or you learn through the process of doing. This is correct for every work and everything you encounter as you move through the journey of life.
You are right where you are in this present moment because you have at the very least, some form of capacity to handle what life throws at you in this moment where you are.
I liken it to the ancient saying from the Holy book, "You will not be given more than you can handle." By this, we know that what we encounter, we either have the ability to work through it, or at least learn to work through it.
You will not be given more than you can handle.
Since that is established, the transforming factor, the factor that separates men into stages and levels then, is how we interprete the work we have been positioned to do. How we interpret work determines how we behave around it, what our attitude to it is, what we do with it, and what we become through it.
This is why the advice in this newsletter is to make work your best friend.
Bestfriends can be hard, they can be sour, they can hurt us, they can be painful, they can even be dangerous sometimes, but they are our best friends because we love them, and we are able to kindly take all the hardness and pain and sourness and even danger because of the love we have for them.
We stick with them because we know they have our best interests at heart and we will go through the valley of shadow of death and come out on the other side together if we don't give up.
Work can be the same too, if only we interpret it as one. Work done well in pain and hardship, through the lens of love and affection brings peace, happiness, joy, rejoicing, and success. When you love work, you do it extremely well, and you will be glad you get to do it.
How we interpret work determines how we behave around it, what our attitude to it is, what we do with it, and what we become through it.
We treat work like a necessary evil that we have to do to succeed, when instead, we should treat it like the lover we get to service. We treat it as a means to an end when it's all the more easier if we treat it like the end itself; tend to it, be affected by it, be transformed through it, and let it be the fruit in itself.
This is a hack, in case you still haven't figured it out. Your attitude and interpretation of work largely determines the hardness or harshness or easiness of it.
When you treat work as something you have to do even though you don't want to do it, it becomes a extremely hard sport you can't wait to be done with. You'd have learned close to nothing through the process because you weren't even in the moment, in the present. You just wanted to get it done.
However, when you treat work like a best friend, savoring every moment in awe, noticing how you're expanding and enlarging, learning and developing, you'd capture everything there is to learn, the work becomes easier, because you're working for the work itself.
Not only will it help you appreciate the end product more, it will also make the end product come out even more excellently, because you put your heart into the process.
Productivity in our work, development through our career, and growth in our personal lives as people come kindly when we change the lens through which we see work. We can make it our best friend and be glad we get to work, not grumble because we have to work.
Of work, the Luckiest Man in Babylon, Sharru Nada said, "Some men hate it. They make it their enemy. Better to treat it like a friend, make thyself like it. Don't mind because it is hard. If thou thinkest about what a good house thou build, then who cares if the beams are heavy and it is far from the well to carry the water for the plaster. Remember, work, well-done, does good to the man who does it. It makes him a better man."
As we work from this point on in our lives, let's work with this mindset, that we succeed because of work, not in spite of it. Won't we be better off loving and befriending that which is directly responsible for the success we want to make of ourselves in life?
Make work your best friend.
To your growth,
Abiola Okunsanya,
Handzinspired. ✨
Thanks for sharing this insightful post, sir. 👏🏾
Hmm...."How we interpret work determine how we behave around it". This is very very true
Thank you for sharing sir