DON’T Do What You Love (If You Want to Succeed)

We’ve all heard the sayings: “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work another day in your life”, “Follow your bliss”, and other feel-good catchphrases that convince us that all we need to do is find our passion and the doors to success will swing wide.

That’s total bullcheese.

Don’t get me wrong – knowing your true calling and following it with relentless enthusiasm is absolutely a key to achieving great success. But it is not THE ONLY KEY. If you really want to be, do and have more in your life right now, you’ll need to buckle up and consistently do those things that you not only do not love, but that you downright loathe.

To achieve your goals both professionally and personally, you will likely need to incorporate some of these odious tasks into your daily life:

· Getting up earlier than you really want to

· Eating foods that don’t taste as good as the naughty stuff

· Moving your body when you’d rather crawl into (or stay in) bed

· Opting for a glass of water instead of another glass of wine

· Learning to organize your work and home spaces (and keep them organized!)

· Calling on prospects and customers that make your stomach do flip-flops

· Carving out time for paperwork and other administrivia

· Foregoing a fun social event in favor of completing that critical project

· Having difficult coaching conversations with your poor performing team members

· Turning off your computer and cracking open a value-rich book instead

· Saying hello to a stranger as opposed to fading into the background

· Saving rather than spending

I often remind my audiences of the need to embrace these uncomfortable practices on their path to success. Here’s a quick video that I recorded on this subject right before I delivered a keynote at a leadership function:

So, the next time you find yourself fretting about the gap between where you are and where you want to be, get out of the comfortable womb of your passion and ask yourself the tough question: What unpleasant but important task should I be doing right now?

And then stop everything you are doing and plow courageously through the muck.

You’ll be glad you did.

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Theresa Rose is a business motivational speaker, award-winning author and expert on mindful productivity who helps organizations and their teams have more time, get more done, earn more money and have more fun. For more information, visit TheresaRose.com.

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