BE YOUR BRILLIANT BEST... WHATEVER YOU DO!

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

I have always wondered why so many people at work are so miserable and clearly don't enjoy what they do. If their working lives are not inspiring, their working relationships are so negative and destructive and they are not being engaged or used effectively at work why on earth do they do it!  Surely life is too short and too important to be working somewhere that you don't find stimulating, rewarding and challenging and where you don't feel valued... especially if you work out the percentage of your life that you spend at work! The challenge is to create working cultures so that people simply love what they do... whatever they do! Remember what Martin Luther King said “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

(By the way, the percentage that you spend at work is around 25% of your lifetime if you are interested. Research I was reading also suggested that we spend 20% at our leisure during the week, 28% taking weekends during the year, 12% of the time we are on holiday and we spend a staggering 20% of our time asleep in bed!)