Tag Archives: love

You Cannot Master

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“Though you can love what you do not master, you cannot master what you do not love.”

—Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher and Social Critic

Photo from makesafetyfun.com

Photo from makesafetyfun.com

Generally, the people who experience the greatest success and fulfillment in their professional lives demonstrated three key factors:

  1. They are enthusiastic and passionate about their work. Many would engage in whatever it is they do even if the monetary rewards were more modest.
  2. Because they love what they do, they commit massive amounts of time to the practice, and eventual mastery, of the skills involved.
  3. The final piece that accompanies this love and mastery is often the value ascribed to it by the meritocracy in which we live, and the rewards we often receive. How much is it worth in dollars and cents?

EXERCISE:

How and in what ways can doing more of what you love lead you toward a life of greater mastery and success? Consider reading one or more of these books, which speak in one form or another, to the spirit of today’s quote:

What to Do When it’s Your Turn by Seth Godin
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Happier  by Tal Ben-Shahar
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Ruben

“Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand.”

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“Love is a fruit in season at all times and within reach of every hand.”

—Mother Teresa, Catholic saint and Nobel peace prize winner

Image from Flickr by Skyseeker

I do the majority of the food shopping in my family. When I was a young boy, my mom would often take us to the supermarket where we would get a little coaching on how to pick the best produce – including the ripest and sweetest fruits, in season, of course.

Today’s mega-markets have all types of fruits in all seasons due to the advent of worldwide distribution channels. In many ways, these varieties seem a bit less tasty due to the processing required to have them make their considerable journeys.

Love, as Mother Teresa suggests, is the choicest fruit and is always at hand in every season. We don’t even need to go to the market to fill our lives and homes with its sweetness and abundance.

Exercise:

Love not only makes the world go round but also makes the ride worthwhile. How can and will you sweeten your life and the lives of others today, and throughout every season?

“Our job is the excuse through which we get to love people.”

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“Our job is the excuse through which we get to love people.”

– Panache Desai, author of You are Enough

What percent of your life do you spend engaged in work? For the sake of today’s quote, I’m going to define work as our vocation, or the way we earn a living.

For the person working Monday through Friday, a minimum of 8 hours a day (who does that these days?) work represents approximately one fourth of our life. If the song lyrics from the Beatles tune are true, and all you need is love, or the old song love makes the world go round, then perhaps Desai is really on to something.

Exercise:

How can you view your daily work efforts as an act of love, contribution and generosity, instead of something to get through on the way to your weekend?

#103: “When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”

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– John Ruskin, artist and art critic

We have all heard the quote, “When you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” A by-product of this mixture of love and work is mastery, due to the amount of practice we experience over time.

Think about famous artists, top athletes, and great entertainers as examples of this synergistic combination.

Exercise:

What are your greatest skills, where you lose yourself in love?

It would be wonderful if these included your vocation. They may be hobbies or similar avocations – and hopefully, they can include building extraordinary relationships, in all areas of life.

What masterpieces have you built to this point and what future works of art are on the way?

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#79: “Love the giver more than the gift.”

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– Brigham Young

I read the book The Five Love Languages many years ago, to enhance my relationship with my wife. I often recommend it to my coaching clients, to help them better understand their partners. The gist of the book is that we have different ways of showing love to one another. We almost always choose to show love in the same way that we like to receive it.

By tuning into one another’s offerings of love, we can embrace these gifts in the way they are intended – instead of missing the message because we’re simply not speaking the same love language.

Exercise:

How could you fully love the givers in your life by fully embracing every gift they have to offer, in their language?

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#36: “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed…”

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“…Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”

– Denis Waitley, motivational speaker

Similar to the quote “the best things in life are not things,” this statement points to the idea that happiness, to a large extent, is an inside job. The work of building extraordinary relationships with others, our creator (or higher power), and ourselves is well worth pursuing.

The depth and full richness of the words love, grace and gratitude seems to be infinite and enduring, whereas the real world is finite and limited.

Exercise:

What efforts, practices, and habits, can you pursue and expand to enhance your happiness and your spiritual experience of living?

Quotes are posted on The Quotable Coach a week after being sent out by email. To get the latest quotes straight to your inbox, pop your email address in the sidebar to the right.