Every now and then there’s a person in my office sharing a very popular local nugget:
- You can never underpay a proper slacker, if you know what I mean…
This time it was a middle-aged lady, a newsstand seller who hated anyone buying the expensive staff she couldn’t afford. Her existence wasn’t directly threatened, but she did worry about it. She didn’t have enough money, and it troubled her. Consciously or not, she defined her situation along these lines: my life is all right, and the wealthy are positively dishonest and morally corrupt.
She was deeply discouraged, sluggish at work, and feeling hopeless, which, unfortunately, can also happen to people far wealthier than she was. I asked her:
- Do you earn your pay check for them, or off of them?
She was completely taken aback. A window of opportunity opened for me to help her put things back into perspective. The silence gave birth to a chance of healing.
Stand up and look into the mirror
There are people who make less money than you do, but not all of them are angry about it. There are also people who make more than you do, and it’s still not enough, but some are not angry about it either. If you want to make progress in life, the first thing we need is spiritual peace.
Everyone has a life to live, and there’s a new lesson to learn every day. Every morning we have an opportunity to choose.
We can choose to live in an illusion. Believe me, it’s the harder way. The illusion can be a disguise for reality. Only you can twist the natural flow of living, wasting enormous energy on that. Very precious energy, at that. You can make the wrong choices that can turn your life into an uncompromising blur, and pay dearly for the mistake.
If we choose the truth, it will be easy for us to recognise true life lessons when we see them. The lessons might be hard, but we’ll never get one beyond our level, and we’ll be perfectly capable of dealing with all of them! Let’s take today’s challenge calmly and bravely – the easiest way to resolve it will emerge.
You may be feeling as if your bicycle’s standing still while others are flying by like the wind? And then you choose to pedal down? It makes no sense at all! Have a strong look at your feet, and put the pedal to the metal!
Envy is an obstacle
It’s not that something’s wrong with you, but you are absolutely wrong searching for the “injustice” elsewhere. Progress is a process, depending solely on you. You want to get ahead? Or up? Climb, then!
There are the stairs to climb – in your profession, spiritual growth, and love – the stairs of life. Every step is an important lesson. You must go on, never skipping a step. In fact, every step is equal. Every step means progress. Give it your all at every step, and you’ll make progress quickly and easily. Remember, the steps are made for you to succeed, you just mustn’t skip a single one.
Where’s envy in all of this? Some are ahead of you, earning more. And, you can see that? It only means that you are not watching your step. You are not doing your best. Instead, you are wasting your energy on envy and hatred, thinking about other people’s success instead of your own. You are judging others for their success, showing you don’t understand the rules of the game of the stairs.
If you focus on your work,
If you carefully plan your actions,
If you accept your job as an opportunity to work hard on yourself,
You’ll save the energy you need to win the game and
You WILL succeed!
- It does not matter who pays you. You should do your job the best you can, and do it for yourself. It will bring you back to the road to success.
The next day, the woman went to work completely changed. She had made a choice that whatever she might do, she would give her best, and saw the difference soon.