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- Labor Day: Your Why and Your How
Work changes when you think about “how” and “why” you do over “what” you do.
Labor gets a bad rap. Unfortunately, many people complain or even dislike their work, which is incredibly sad because it’s estimated that the average person spends approximately 90,000 hours working in their lifetime, or roughly one-third of their waking life.
Clearly, work is one of the single most significant investments of our time.
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, as a way to protect workers and honor the contributions and achievements of American workers. However, instead of just using it as a day off or as a marker for the end of summer, it should serve as a reminder to flip the mental switch.
Instead of thinking of work as something you have to do, look at it as something you get to do.
Every Monday morning, I pull out of my neighborhood at 7:00 AM and see a man, whom we will call Michael, mowing the grass at the park across the street. Most people would think, “What a bad way to start every week.”
However, if Michael considers the purpose behind his work and how he approaches it, everything changes.
Want proof? Drive by the same park 8 hours later, and you will see hundreds of young athletes competing, building relationships, and getting exercise. Thanks to Michael’s work and labor, young athletes and families get to experience the joy or heartbreak of a sports game.
But don’t stop at why your work matters. Also, remember how you do it matters as well. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. had this unbelievable quote when speaking to a group of students:
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
What King understood, and what you and I need to be reminded of, is that work is not about what you do, but how you do it. Doing your work with excellence, regardless of how people appreciate it.
On this Labor Day, remember why you work and let it shine through in your work. Because purpose gives meaning to your work and excellence gives it dignity.
Purpose gives work meaning, excellence gives it dignity.
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Use Your Gifts,
John Eades
Creator, The Leadership Lens & The Optimistic Outlook
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