What Gets You Up In The Morning?

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but I cannot imagine doing something that I wasn’t passionate about, and I am eternally grateful that I found my passion, and now, I get to work in the business that I love every day. Is that even considered work?

Let’s face it, there are millions of people out there right now, in jobs that they hate, but they don’t know how to get out, don’t know what their passion is, or, they are just simply paralyzed by fear and overwhelming financial commitments.

I have some appreciation for the masses who have not found their passion. I didn’t know what mine was, until I fell into it. I was quite happy working in construction, as an apprentice electrician at the time. I worked with some very nice people, I worked only 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with weekends and holidays off (boy, can’t imagine that anymore). All in all, not a bad gig, and unlike those people I referred to, I was happy.

Now, that said, I was also only 18 years old at the time, and had been working full time since I was 16, but it’s not like I had 10 years into the job. Who knows, maybe 5 or 10 years down the road I would have grown to hate it? I’ll never know, but I do know that when I started in my first hotel job, I never looked back. I felt like I had stepped out into the sunshine for the first time, I was hooked.

I’d have to admit, and especially so you don’t read this and think I’ve lost it, there have definitely been some tough, tough days along the road, and there have been times when my passion has been tested, more days than I care to remember.

But that’s the thing, even when I look back, and I think about some of those times, or someone recalls a circumstance and asks me if I regret what happened, my response is automatic, like a reflex, because I value every situation, every challenging day, because it helped to shape me into a better, wiser, more experienced leader, and I am better for the challenges that have been laid at my feet along the pathway through a successful career to date.

It’s like when you see those bumper stickers that say things like ”a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work” or things like that, only for me it’s always been that even a bad day at work is better than anything, period.

I treat every day like it’s the first day, and the last day, wrapped up together, no regrets, leave it all on the field. Give 150% every day and you can’t help but feel good, you can look yourself in the mirror and say; “I gave it my all.”