W.I.N. Wednesday: Lessons From Life's Most Powerful Question - Do what you love, or love what you do?
I have previously shared wisdom from Seth Godin, one of my favourite bloggers. Here is another gem from Godin:
Instead of, "do what you love," perhaps the more effective mantra for the entrepreneur, the linchpin and maker of change might be, "love what you do."
If we can fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters, it makes it far more likely we're going to do important work.
I am all for doing what you love. What concerns me are the number of people I see who appear to hate what they do. Many of them spend a lot of time wishing they could find a job "doing what they love". If they embraced Godin's advice they may find they already have that 'dream job'.
Doing what you love is great but, it is also a lot of work. One of the biggest myths we have been fed is, "If you do what you love you will never have to work another day in your life." That may be true if you want to be mediocre at what you love doing. If however, you want to be excellent at what you love (so you can have the greatest impact on those you serve) it is a lot of work. There are days you will be frustrated, days you don't seem to love it any more, and days you want to do something different. On those days it is important to embrace the 'love what you do' philosophy.
There will be many more days however, where you are exhausted at the end of the day, but have a huge smile on your face because you know, "Today I made a difference."
What I love doing is teaching. When I am on the stage or in the classroom I am often 'in the zone'. I also have the opportunity to teach through my three blogs (W.I.N., Excellence in Training and am i that man?), articles I write for various platforms and through the am I that man? Podcast we will be launching this fall. The actual teaching part however, makes up a small percentage of how I spend my time many weeks. I spend a lot of time studying more effective ways to communicate and teach, researching new material for blog posts and presentations, responding to requests and questions, developing new presentations, fine tuning current presentations, editing my writing, rewriting posts and articles, editing podcasts, learning how to use and better use technology, reading a variety of books and articles to enhance my knowledge, spark my imagination and get new ideas for training, and listening to podcasts to learn about business, life and training. I also spend a considerable amount of time travelling to and from teaching engagements (flying over 100,000 mile per year and sometimes travelling two days to deliver a 1 to 4 hour presentation), setting up and tearing down at events, and a variety of other logistical aspects that are part of being a professional speaker and trainer. I also have responsibilities to ILEETA for whom I proudly serve as the Deputy Executive Director. On top of all that I am a husband, father, son, and brother.
What's Important Now? - Follow the sage advice from Seth Godin and "fall in love with serving people, creating value, solving problems, building valuable connections and doing work that matters". When you do you may just end up doing what you love. At the very least you will do important work and make a difference in people's lives.
Take care.
Brian Willis
Committed to the pursuit of excellence through Life's Most Powerful Question - What's Important Now?
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