How Daily Work Leads To Greatness
by Paula Morand
There is a lot of literature written to encourage people to find quick ways to reach their goals in life. It makes it sound like stories from past generations when pretty girls or handsome guys sipping soda at their Woolworth store fountains were suddenly “discovered” by film agents and turned into stars.
We all dream of becoming an overnight success.
That dream continues to be fueled by extraordinary promises of overnight success if you visualize the right concept, attend the right party, or promote yourself a certain way.
The reality of life doesn’t really mirror that.
For most of us, success only follows the gathering of knowledge and skills and the execution of a lot of hard work in the process. Then, suddenly, in the middle of your fascination of doing your daily work, someone calls you an “expert” and you realize that you have reached a new level of accomplishment.
It also means being respectful to carrying out your daily work the best that you can every day. It would be very sad in life if all the hours we allocate to our work were considered wasted or viewed as lesser hours than the hours we spent not working.
If you study the work and life of famous and accomplished people you admire, you will discover that all of them devised their own rules of life’s work as a sort of series of conditions that had to be met before they knew they could reach the pinnacle of their success.
For Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, the authors behind the marvelous anthology series of Chicken Soup for the Soul, they did not just put their first effort on the market and assume it would be an overnight success.
Instead they promised each other that they would do five things each day to promote that book. Canfield said these actions sound simple now (there were things like “send a copy to five celebrities,” or “send a copy to five book reviewers”) but this dedicated, daily work did the trick and after one solid year, the book got onto the bestseller list.
Each time my own company takes on a new mega-project, there seems to be just endless hours of work and a lot of planning, worry, and list making.
And every day, I look over my list, and I ensure that it contains at least five actions that, if I do them thoroughly and with insight and creativity, will take me closer to my goal. I check every day at 2 p.m. to see if the five actions are done: if they are not, I stop what I am doing and finish them. I want them to get the high-energy me, not the drained-at-the-end-of-the-day me.
There is a nobility and strength of work well executed that we sometimes forget to honor as a society. We measure days by dollars earned, as opposed to how we moved closer to our own success. Sadly, many people work day by day without any idea of what their goal really is or how what they are doing is moving them closer to it.
That doesn’t mean that you have to love what you do, but you do have to have a fire ignited inside you and know where what you do is taking you. You may be doing a job because you need to earn funds to get study the subject that really fascinates you. That doesn’t mean you still can’t do five things that take you closer to gaining expertise in that subject.
The point is that daily work can lead to greatness, and we should not undermine its importance to the process. Each time you do a task or check a fact you are becoming surer and more knowledgeable about a subject. You are on your way to being an expert.
There is a joy to the process and you will never experience that joy if you are just gritting your teeth to get through your daily work so you can dream about your pending success.
Paula Morand is a leadership building, revenue boosting, strategy expanding keynote speaker, author and visionary. This dreaming big and being bold leadership expert and brand strategist brings her vibrant energy, humor and wisdom to ignite individuals, organizations and communities to lead change, growth and impact in a more bold fashion.
24 years, 27,000 clients, 34 countries, 15 books, former radio personality, 11x award winning entrepreneur and humorous emcee.
Check out Paula’s bestselling books on Amazon: “Bold Courage: How Owning Your Awesome Changes Everything”, “Dreaming BIG and Being BOLD: Inspiring stories from Trailblazers, Visionaries and Change Makers” book series; and her newest release “Bold Vision: A Leader’s Playbook for Managing Growth”.
For speaking inquiries email bookings@paulamorand.com or call toll-free 1-888-502-6317.