RESOLVE TO BE HAPPY IN YOUR WORK!
by Ivan Burnell

Are you doing what you want to do? Are you doing it the way you want to do it? Here is an interesting story. Sam grew up in the mid-west. He did well in school and decided to become a dentist. He became successful and eventually made enough money to pay off his school loans, he got married and was living the classic dream life. But something was bothering him. He was not happy. He found himself thinking about a happier time in life where he lived with his grandmother and would help her make bread for the family. They made the bread from an old family recipe without any preservatives or commercial yeast and baked it in a wood-fired brick oven.

His wife began to notice that he had lost his enthusiasm for his profession and asked him, "Are you doing what you want to do?" After much discussion and deliberation, he realized that he wanted to bake bread the old fashioned way, wood-fired brick oven and all. He sold his share in the dental practice and set up a small bakery with his wife.

I have always said that if you are doing what you want to do, you will throw yourself into it and you cannot help but become successful. And that is exactly what happened to Sam. So much so, that people were pushing him to expand his operation because he had grown to the limit of his personal capacity. He was urged to hire more people, get bigger ovens and start using commercial products so that he and his wife would not have to do all the work. Sam thought long and hard about expanding and he remembered that his dream was to bake bread, not to build a big bread company. He was doing what he wanted to do the way he wanted to do it, and he loved it. He is still running a small very successful business.

In contrast, there is the story of Jerry who inherited a very popular family restaurant that his parents had developed over many years. People came from great distances to the restaurant because of the quality of the food and the personal service attention from the management and staff and the reasonable prices. There were often lines of people waiting to get in. Now Jerry had grown up in the business and he liked the money that it brought in, but he did not care for the work involved. So he decide that if he increased the size of the restaurant, it would increase his profits and he would be happy.

So he tripled the size of the restaurant and a strange thing happened. Now there were no lines waiting to get in. But to compensate for the cost of expanding, menus prices increased. The locals (his bread and butter) started staying away. The new staff that he hired couldn't give the same service, and he rarely went out to greet and visit with the patrons. Jerry was not doing what he really wanted to do, so he did not have the energy to make it work. Quite naturally, the business failed!

The moral is, do what you really want to do regardless of the money and you will become successful in your business.

About the Author

Ivan Burnell is the president and founder of International Personal Development and IPD Publishing. For over 20 years he has been teaching people, businesses, and organizations how to achieve and succeed to degrees that most never thought they could achieve. His unique, interactive style of instructing has helped millions of people lead happier, healthier, wealthier, and more productive lives.

He has written three books, ‘Power of Positive Doing', ‘Say YES to Life', and the recently released ‘Road to a Happier Marriage'. He also has a tape series called ‘The YES Factor' and a variety of single subject tapes.

Contact the Author
Ivan Burnell
Consultant ~ Speaker ~ Author
International Personal Development
P.O. Box 277 Center Ossipee, New Hampshire 03814-0277, USA
Phone: 1-603-539-4795 Fax.: 1-603-539-5417
E-mail: ivan@yesfactor.com
Website: http://www.yesfactor.com