Episode Transcript

What’s up everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants.

Well, guys, today I want to talk about work, and I want to talk about why you’re doing the work you are, and why we do the work we do in the heart and the reasonings behind performing the work. And I think this is very important.

One of the reasons why I’m bringing this up is I had a conversation with my wife earlier this week, and it’s actually what sparked this thought, and I think it’s very important to talk about so normally, there’s two reasons why people do work. One is to look good in front of others and to keep them happy, right? I want to look good, and I want to show off in front of others and do all these other things. The other reason why people do work is simply this, I want to do what is best for myself, and I want to love myself. And if I do that, I will actually provide value for others, and I’ll be able to give and those are the two different heart positions behind work normally.

When you are doing work to keep people happy, it does not work. It breaks 100% of the time. It breaks so often it’s not funny because you’re violating a principle. You are not in charge of other people’s emotions. Yes, you can do things that affect them and hurt them, but at the end of the day, it’s still my decision to get angry and mad, and it’s still my decision to forgive and let go or move on. It doesn’t matter what anybody does to me. Those are my decisions, and when people do work to try and take those decisions from me. It doesn’t work, because you can’t take those decisions unless I gave them away. But even then, that’s still my decision to do something with it.

So the point that I’m trying to make is this, you can’t violate agency, and you can’t violate that, and it’s important to see that when you’re are doing client work, and if you’re only doing the work to keep them happy, it’s going to break and fail long term, because you actually can’t keep them happy. And oftentimes clients come to you and hire you or purchase your product, not so you can make them happy, but so that they have a product or service that is reliable, that solves their issue. And so they want trust. They want something that’s founded and reliable, not something that just makes them happy.

And yes, there’s outcomes based on using certain products. There’s outcomes based on interacting with things, but if you look at all the Coca Cola ads, drink Coca Cola, you’ll be happy, your family will be happy. That’s not a guaranteed outcome. Those are decisions. However, it can be like that if you have Coca Cola at family gatherings, and y’all love to get together and there’s happiness and Coke’s part of that memory. However, that advertisements not always true and doesn’t always apply to everything.

So I’m saying that because if you are in the business of keeping people happy, you are going to go out of business. You will not stay in business very long, because your job isn’t to keep people happy, your job’s to deliver on promises. And how do you deliver promises? How do you keep your word? You become the type of person who keeps their word. You become disciplined. You have a plan. You do all the small work that nobody sees. And when you’re doing work to love yourself, nobody sees you do it. Everybody always sees like, oh, I climbed to the top of Mount Everest, awesome. What about all the three years of training it took so you don’t die in the death zone on Mount Everest, so you can actually scale and climb the mountain. Nobody ever sees the three years of work. They only see the summit. And the summit is where a lot of people try and live, and they stay on that summit to keep people happy, and it doesn’t work.

I found personally, that when you let go of that everything in life changes. My marriage is based off this. With my wife, we talk about this a lot how our marriage is. There’s vision behind it, right? It’s not just, Hey, let’s just keep each other happy, and we’re married to keep each other happy. That’s miserable. Most people that you meet along life, and you can probably think of some in your life that all they want you to do is keep them happy and do these things. It’s a miserable relationship versus, wow, we’re producing something together. We’re accomplishing something in life. We are, we are actually building something together. And then, because we are, other people can partake in that. And then there’s enjoyment in that, there’s unity in that, there’s actual friendship in that.

CS Lewis said that you actually can’t have real friendship unless you are actually working towards a common goal and a vision. And he said that that’s his definition of friendship. And I agree with that. And most friendships are normally based off common goals. Sometimes that common goal is cool. We’re gonna play video games. It’s not a good goal, but that’s the goal. And so you find friendship there.

But the point of all of this, and that I’m trying to say, is this, do not do work to keep people happy. You won’t be around very long doing the same work instead do what is best and really be a person who is productive for themselves first, to do all the work that is not seen and be disciplined in that area. And you will find that you are very successful in a lot of areas of life.

Anyways, guys, I’m out of time, so I’ll catch you later. Peace.