“An old-timer I knew used to tell his students: ‘Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.’” -Arthur Szathmary

This is a nice sentiment, but, quite frankly, impractical. Think about it. If everyone did what they loved, everyone would be a quarterback in the NFL or a chart-topping musician or famous actor, etc. No one would be mowing grass, serving food, slinging hash, or answering calls in a service center.

Of course, someone will come along and say they love mowing grass, serving food, slinging hash, or answering calls …and that’s great. Good for you. You are one of the lucky few who gets the luxury of having found what you love to do.

But that luxury, yes it’s a luxury, is not available to a vast majority. They, as I said, would more likely want to be a high-paid athlete, musician, or TV/movie personality. But here they are in practical land with bills to pay and mouths to feed and no prospect of riches and celebrity standing at their door. These are the people trudging off to a job they hate, or at best, tolerate.

So, to them, I say, “How about we turn the tables from hate to love?”

Many years ago, I read a story about Dr. Stephen Covey. He had just finished delivering a talk on relationships when a man approached him with a serious problem. The man said he didn’t feel any love for his wife anymore and was afraid their marriage was over. Covey responded by saying that love is not a feeling, it is a verb. Love is something you do. Covey’s advice was, “Love her.” The man reiterated that he didn’t love his wife, the feeling was not there. Covey again responded that love is a verb. Love takes effort. He repeated his advice to love her. He told the man to sacrifice for her, listen to her, empathize with, appreciate, and affirm her.

So, if we convert that to our work, if you can’t do what you love, begin loving what you do. But how?

“Expose yourself to the best things that humans have done. And then try to bring those things into what you are doing.” -Steve Jobs

“The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.” -Thomas Merton

The answer is here. Loving your work begins by bringing your best, or your knowledge of what best would look like, to whatever you do. By continually striving for the best your work can be and doing it so that you would be proud for an angel to descend from heaven and experience it, the goal of love becomes more real.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that we should all do our work like Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music. He was clear that all work, no matter how valued or glamorous, is worthy of doing well. Hence, we should do whatever we do in such a way that the angels in heaven will pause and take notice. I couldn’t agree more. This is how we make any job better. This is how we begin to love what we do.

Lesson: As Stephen Covey suggested, if you want to love your job, don’t wait; begin now by doing the work of loving your job. And you do that by pursuing excellence in every interaction and every task on every shift, every day. As Tom Peters says, “If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?”

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