Work(Hard and Good)

When you launch a new blog, start a new business, or accept a new job, you might be tempted to work long hours and throw yourself into your work.

What you think might only be a month of hard work turns into more months and sometimes years. Your hard work becomes a pattern. You forget that there is a difference between hard work and good work.

Instead of compromising your health and relationships, start slowly. Don’t worry about how busy you are, but what you are really accomplishing.

• Answering email all hours of the night instead of having dinner and time with your family is not good work.
• Generating busy work by creating collateral or buying things that you don’t need is not good work.
• Trying to connect with as many people as possible is not good work.

Instead, focus on quality connections that develop into long term relationships. Work with what you have, and only check and respond to email 2 or 3 times a day during business hours.

You will be happier, and healthier. That is good work.

Best,

Chris Dutton

One of those hol-I-Days…..

There’s another holiday lurking  around the corner- Valentine’s Day.  We’ve programed ourselves to give and receive gifts on this and many other holidays to show our love for one another.

We’ve even been told that gift-giving is one of our “love languages.” This idea is utterly ridiculous, and yet we treat it as gospel: I love you—see, here’s this expensive shiny thing I bought you.

Gift-giving is a vapid, pernicious cultural imperative in our society, and we’ve bought it (literally) hook, line, and sinker. We’ve become consumers of love.

The grotesque idea that we can somehow commodify love is nauseating. We often give gifts to show our love because we are troubled by real love. Buying diamonds is not evidence of everlasting devotion. Commitment, trust, understanding—these are indications of devotion.

Gift-giving is by definition transactional. But love is not a transaction. Love is transcendent—it transcends language and material possessions and can be shown only by our thoughts, actions, and intentions.

To love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

This doesn’t mean there’s something necessarily wrong with buying a gift for someone, though I believe giving an experience over a material object is a better route to go. But don’t fool yourself by associating that gift with love—love does not work that way.

Love your way

I would like to dedicate this to my Inner circle of people I love with all my heart.

“Because, that’s the thing about love, really. No one will love you how you want to be loved, they’ll love you in the only ways they know how. Life throws everyone down drastically different paths so how can we expect everyone to love in the same way? The person you’ll spend your lifetime with will love you in their way and you’ll love in yours, and maybe you’ll meet in the middle and it’ll last. None of us know what we’re doing, you see, we’re just fumbling for matches in the dark. If you’re lucky, you might eventually just strike the right one.”

Pass this along to that special someone and tell them how much you love them.