Out of all the advice my father has ever given, the one he repeats the most and has stuck with him his whole life was something his 4th grade teacher once told him: “John, whatever you do in life, do it well.” It reminds me of something MLK Jr once said:
“If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.’ If you can’t be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.
“Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.
If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail.
If you can’t be a sun, be a star.
For it isn’t by size that you win or fail.
Be the best of whatever you are.”
Her words weren’t as elegant but just as, if not more, effective. It was powerful enough to reach a 10 year old boy. Powerful enough for him to remember it 45 years later when he can’t remember a conversation he had 10 minutes before. Every time I hear him say it I take pause and really think what it means and how much that attitude has affected my life.
I have noticed a lot of people in our generation have a tendency to only do what is asked of them, put in the minimum effort, and over just don’t give 100% most of the time. I don’t blame some people for this. If you work a dead end job with no room for growth or you are taking a class just to get the credits but have no need for the information, taking the path of least resistance is probably the way I would go. But then I remember that advice and how we never know when and where opportunity will come-a-knocking. You never know who’s watching and you never know when a small action will dictate someone’s entire opinion of you. When I was working at CVS we moved into a newly built store. While preparing the new building for the big move, one of the people helping with the move who was quasi-above me in rank asked me to clean the bathroom. Now I had worked there for more than 3 years and was a shift manager at this point. I was in charge of a multi-million dollar store 3-4 nights a week. When he asked my first reaction was anger and the feeling that it was below me but I got to work and wiped down everything in there. After I was done the person who asked me to clean it came over with my boss to tell me I did a good job (big freakin whoop) and started to talk about how usually when he asks people even lower on the totem pole than I at his store, they always bitch and complain about it. He thanked me for just getting it done without complaining because it just need to be done. It didn’t do anything for me career-wise or get me a raise but it reminded me that sometimes things just need to be done regardless of whether you want to do it or not. In those situations its in your best interest to do it and do it well and be done with it. I’ll bet you I could have gotten a glowing letter of recommendation from him about my work ethic and positive attitude just from keeping my mouth shut and spending 5 minutes in a bathroom with some paper towels and some Lysol. Again, not that big a deal but I look back on it anytime I think about slacking off at work and half ass-ing a task. 9 out of 10 times it wouldn’t make a difference but that 1 time may pop up at any time.
Now this doesn’t just apply to employment. It’s also a good way to look at your relationships. If someone is worth your time and effort, they are worth your best effort . I am 100% guilty of not following my own advice butI promise I try and work on it. When you are hanging out with someone, you shouldn’t spend the whole time on your phone talking/texting to other people. Get back to people at your earliest convinance if you can’t talk to them when they call or text you. If you’re going to be late, let the person you are meeting know. It’s not just polite, it shows you are thinking about that person and care about not wasting their time enough to put for some effort. We shouldn’t strive to be perfect people but we should strive to do our best.
One of the things I learned from my father and myself being laid off is that no matter how hard you work and how loyal you are to a company, they will drop you without a second thought if they need to. The second thing I learned was that the harder you worked with a job, the easier it is to find a job. Regardless of the state of the economy, if you are willing to put in the effort, you can find an opportunity. The same goes for friends. You can be the perfect friend to someone and still have your friendship fall apart but if you don’t let that change how you treat people, you won’t have any issues with finding people who are worth being around. So cut out all that half-assed BS and give everything your all. I promise you that it will pay off, whether its obvious to you or not.
