The Magic of Living Below Your Means

I'm reading the book Linchpin by Seth Godin. Seth Godin is well known in marketing & business circles, and you can find his blog here....

The basic premise of the book (or at least what I'm getting out of it) is that if we view what we do as art, instead of mind numbing work we'll be inspired to do what we do with passion & creativity; producing far more than before. Furthermore, if we view what we do as art, we typically would happily do it for free if we can. We get more joy out seeing our art enjoyed by others than we get out of getting paid for it.

For the sake of time, I am over simplify the book, but I wanted to give you a little background before sharing the following quote from the book:

"One of the reasons people give for not giving gifts is that they can't afford it. Gifts don't have to cost money, but they always cost time and effort. If you're in a panic about money, those two things are hard to find. The reason these people believe they can't afford it, though, is that they've so bought into consumer culture that they're in debt or have monthly bills that make no sense at all.
When you cut your expenses to the bone, you have a surplus. The surplus allows you to be generous, which mysteriously turns around and makes your surplus even bigger."

I've read it several times over... I've typed it out... But I'm still working to get my mind wrapped around the full meaning of it. But it kinda reminds me of what it says in James 4:2-3: You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.  And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.

What do you think... Would you do what you do; whether it's answering phones, turning a wrench, typing in numbers or serving others for free if you could?

Worth it?

From Seth Godin:

Worth it?

That's a question you hear a lot. "Was it worth it?"
Not certain what either "it" refers to, but generally we're saying, "was the destination worth the journey? Was the effort worth the reward?"
The thing about effort is that effort is its own reward if you allow it to be.
So the answer can always be "yes" if you let it.

After you've done your best

From Seth Godin:

After you've done your best

(and it didn't work)
...then what do you do?
Slamming your six iron into the ground, yelling at yourself, cursing out your staff, second-guessing, berating bystanders—there are plenty of ways we demonstrate our frustration that our best didn't work this time.
But is it helpful?
Learning from a failure is critical. Connecting effort with failure at an emotional level is crippling. After all, we've already agreed you did your best.
Early in our careers, we're encouraged to avoid failure, and one way we do that is by building up a set of emotions around failure, emotions we try to avoid, and emotions that we associate with the effort of people who fail. It turns out that this is precisely the opposite of the approach of people who end up succeeding.
If you believe that righteous effort leads to the shame of personal failure, you'll seek to avoid righteous effort.
Successful people analytically figure out what didn't work and redefine what their best work will be in the future. And then they get back to work.
Let the guys at ESPN do the racket throwing.