Giving your best

There are two good reasons to do your best.

Firstly, when you give one hundred percent, you are happier. Remember back to when you were at school. Remember what it felt like walking to school, on those days when you had done all of your homework – and done your best. Didn’t you feel just a bit more enthusiastic?

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been out of school for fifty years, the “homework principle” still applies. Your teachers told you to work hard, your parents told you to work hard, bosses tell you to work hard – but you don’t work to please parents and teachers and to keep your boss of your back. You do it for you.

Secondly, the universe has a way of punishing laziness and arrogance. Enough things will go wrong in your life – and work – without your giving a half-hearted effort. When we get casual, things start to collapse. Ask the boxer who underestimate his opponent. Ask the businessman who underestimate his competition. There’s a word to describe giving it your best shot every time – it’s called professionalism.

Have you ever noticed how some taxi drivers make a trip a pleasure, and some make it a pain? Same repetitious job. So where’s the difference? Happy cabbies have a different philosophy. Fred says: “But good cabbies give good service because they’re cheerful.” No! They’re cheerful because they give good service.

People who enjoy their work wake up saying: “Today, I am going to be more effective and more caring than I was yesterday.” They don’t always hit the bull’s eye, but it’s their aim.

I recently spoke at a conference in Singapore with Mr. Zig Ziglar. Zig has been speaking professionally for over twenty-years years and he is internationally regarded as a man at the very top of his field. His busy schedule and sizeable speaking fees are testament to this.

Before his speech I said to him: “Zig, you must have given this talk a thousand times. How long did you prepare for today’s presentation?” He said: “Three hours.”

Despite his success, Zig takes no chances and no short cuts. He is committed to his craft and dedicated to constant improvement. To call Zig “talented” would be to underestimate the man, because it takes so much more than talent to stay at the top.