Worldwide Success

A week has 168 hours.  If you sleep eight hours a day, that leaves 112 hours per week of active time in your life.  If you work about 50 hours a week, that is almost half of the active time you have available to you.  This is a very significant portion of your life that your spend working.  So the question you must ask is why do you do it?  One obvious answer is that you need to provide for yourself and your family.  But there has to be more to work than just making money.  Many billionaires, like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett, spend a significant amount of their time working, probably more than most people.  And yet, they don’t need any money.  This article will explore the reasons why we work, and how work is such a fundamental part of success.

Before we go any further let’s first define what work is.  For the purposes of this discussion, work is all human activity that requires effort, whether intellectual or physical, for the purpose of generating a result, such as a product, a service, or anything else that is of value.  Notice that I did not mention compensation.  Whether your work generates money or not is irrelevant to this discussion.  Work can be anything from being a volunteer, to being a high powered executive, and anything in between.  It includes full-time moms (which by the way, is a lot of work), self-employment, entrepreneurship, all the professions, and the arts and sports when not done just for recreational purposes.  The human activities that can be classified as work are too many to list here.

Work Gives You a Sense of Purpose

Many people go through their working life thinking about retirement.  They think about the day when they will just be able to sit back, relax and take it easy.  It sounds wonderful when you are in the midst of a stressful and demanding work situation.  But when the day arrives when you finally get to retirement an interesting phenomenon happens to many people.  They enjoy the first few months of their new found freedom and stress-free living, but after a while they start losing their sense of purpose.  After sitting around long enough, they start to miss the battles that at the time seemed so exhausting, but in retrospect were an intrinsic part of who they were.  Their work gave them a sense of accomplishment that they now miss, and they start to feel worthless.

Some people are able to snap out of this feeling by volunteering, working on their hobbies, or helping others in many different ways.  But some never recover.  They feel that they are no longer needed and that they have nothing left to contribute.  At this stage, their health typically starts deteriorating in a downward spiral and life is cut short of what it could have been.

People that manage retirement the best are the ones who truly never retire.  They just redefine the work that they do and the purpose of their work.  Monetary compensation may no longer be part of the work experience, but the work never stops.  Work gives them a sense of purpose, a sense of contribution that is essential to a fulfilling life.

Work is a Means to Develop Character

In many lines of work, you have to deal with people and their personalities, egos, beliefs, cultures, politics, habits, and all of the struggles and joys that make up the human existence.  You also face conflicts and hard choices.  Sometimes you even have to deal with difficult ethical issues.  As you gain experience and mature in your work, you develop character.  You learn how to deal with different types of people and different situations.

Work also requires effort and discipline.  So even if you don’t deal with people, you still grow and mature in you work.  Developing positive work habits and ethics is part of your character development journey.

Work Allows You to Put Your Talents to Good Use

Everyone has unique talents and gifts.  Some are obvious to you.  Others become apparent as you start applying them in your work activities.  Work allows you to discover your strengths and weaknesses.  And discovering and using your talents can be a very satisfying and rewarding experience.

Without work your talents stay dormant and do not find a way to flourish.  It is a waste of your gifts that could otherwise have been put to good use.

Work is Honorable

When you do a good job you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.  Being able to work and serve, in whatever capacity, is an honorable activity.  For Christians, work is a way to honor God and live our faith.

Some people go through life resenting and avoiding work.  Work was not meant to be dreadful and uninspiring.  Work was meant to be fulfilling.  Work was meant to be a form of self-expression.  So instead of going through life avoiding work, embrace it.  Instead of doing the minimum to just get by, do your very best at work everyday.  If you build something, do it with pride.  If you serve someone, be glad to help.  By having a positive attitude towards work, your life will be a lot more rewarding.

The moment you realize and accept the fact that work should never end, you will start looking at your current work with different lenses.  It will no longer be something that you do temporarily for the purpose of reaching the end goal of retiring.  It will turn into part of your existence, part of who you are and what you do.  And the moment you reach this pivot point, you will want to make the most out of every moment you spend at work, and do the very best job you can possibly do.

I have heard of many interpretations of what success is.  But I am yet to see a successful person that does not do any type of work.  Work is the very essence of what success is all about. 

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