A long time ago I worked as a technician in a tire factory. It was a new factory, with state-of-the-art machines that automated most of the tire-building process, and it was our job to initially build them and get them running. There were a few issues, not the least of which that all the schematics and instructions weren’t really in English, so it took a lot of work. A lot of hard work and doing things over and over to test them. A lot of things broke. A lot of things had to be fixed only to break again. And in the final moments of one of those times I remember telling a person “I’ve put my heart and soul into this thing, and it still doesn’t work.”
That phrase stuck with me through the years. Not just in my head, but other people would bring it up and kind of laugh in a nice enough way. There’s the guy, Mr. Heart and Soul.
It’s something I remember now, and looking back, understand that part of myself better. Then I used to tell good friends I only can put 100% into a few things, because 100% can only stretch so far. I mean, I could only put 100% into my job, and maybe 100% into something else, and then the math just stopped working. It didn’t add up – it’s impossible to put 100% into five different things, right? Isn’t that 20% into each?
Now, though, I know different. It is possible to put everything you are into everything you do. Into everything you are. Into everything you dream of doing. For me, it’s not only possible, but it’s the way I live.
I wake up putting 100% into getting up. 100% into the gym. 100% into meditation.100% into writing. 100% into my job, into every interaction I have throughout the day, into getting better at everything, into learning new things. I make sure everything I do means something, if not to someone else, at least to me. I keep putting everything I have into what I’m doing until I collapse somewhere on the couch and call it a day.
And sure, then I turn on the television. Maybe surf a bit. Usually read a book while I’m doing it. I usually feel a little guilty at this point, and there’s a part of me that wants to get rid of the couch relaxing and television surfing, but at least I feel good about the day I put in up until that point. If I’m exhausted, at least it’s an exhaustion earned.
I’ll never understand people who don’t do the same. Who don’t do everything with a real sense of purpose. I see them every morning, at 4:30 am in the gym, sitting on machines, moseying around, putting in very little effort. I want to ask them all, “Why get up this early and do this, if you’re not going to really do it?”
I can’t understand people who don’t attack everything they do with every fiber of their being. Everything. Or at least make the attempt to. To me it’s a grow or die thing.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe people are comfortable with the slow deaths of their lives. With collecting a paycheck and going home. Brushing through the lives of the people around them: family, friends, neighbors. Tossing back a few beers or a glass of wine before rinsing and repeating the next day. People who live their lives without really meaning them.
Be Present. Have Purpose. Use Drive. Do the thing you are doing to the best of your abilities. Use everything you have every waking moment of awareness. Put your heart and soul into everything that you do, all that you are, and all that you dream to be.
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