As The Saying Goes, “How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything.”
Your work quality should bring you great joy every time you do your job. There’s a little secret that will let you love work and draw happiness from every task you do.
Competition against others only gives you satisfaction when they lose, and you beat them. It’s such a sad, poor way to live life. Yet competition against yourself brings you joy every time you use it.
I love making my bed to world-class work quality in the morning. It makes me happy. That’s because the job satisfaction is entirely in my control. Whether you leave your bed looking like a tornado hit it, or you leave it like a 5-star showroom display, is completely up to you and you alone. I leave my bed made up to 5-star world-class work quality every day because it makes me proud. And being proud of my work brings me satisfaction and happiness.
It’s a happiness practice my mum taught me. I didn’t know at the time that she was giving me one of the big secrets to a happy life. I just watched her make her bed and when I grew up and the time came to make my bed I simply did what she did. Mum was meticulous. She learnt how to make-up a world class bed during the two years in the 1950’s she spent as a maid in a Swiss hotel. She was born and lived in the Italian Alps where it was common to cross the border and work in Switzerland. By meeting her bed making standards, which were those of a world class Swiss hotel, I also did world class work quality. I’ve come to appreciate, and am so grateful, that her standards were so high.
Every morning, without thinking about it, I make-up my bed to a world class work quality standard. I step back and look at my workmanship and I am happy. I start each day joyful and satisfied because I can make-up a bed to world class standards. In fact, anything less than world class work quality saddens me.
Getting to World Class Work Quality
As the saying goes, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s true. Mum’s standards permeated and influenced everything I have done. “What is world class work quality?” is the question that immediately comes to mind in every job I do. That’s the standard I want to deliver because I know it’ll bring me joy and happiness when I produce it. It also brings joy as I strive to become one of the best. The climb up to world class performance is a challenge in itself. But every improvement gives pleasure in knowing you are getting better and better.
Good, better, best—that’s the path to happiness in all the work that you do. And it’s completely in your control.
When you compete against others you hand over your happiness to them. What happens to them becomes the biggest factor to your own satisfaction. Competition against others takes the control of your happiness away from you. You start hoping they will fail so you can be gladdened by their loss. Your success is not satisfying until someone else loses. It’s a sure formula for causing unhappiness throughout your life. And you do it to yourself, all by yourself, when ever you compete against another.
My mum got it right. The only person you can compete against and bring happiness every time you do so is you. You’ll always have satisfaction and joy when you aim to do your work to world class performance standards and you strive to better your past efforts at each opportunity.
Thanks so very much mum for being great at making your bed. I wish I’d understood when you were alive what a wonderful gift it was that you gave to me.
Mike Sondalini
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