Whatever You Do, Do it With Love
“I’ve often said you could give a wonderful workshop just reading the phone book and if you read it with love and that love infuses every name you read; then you teach it.”
– Ken Wapnick
The secret to succeeding at anything is to do it with love. When you are connected to something you love, people respond to that love. And if they do not, it does not matter to you, because you are feeling and expressing love.
Most of us have had the experience before. Someone is talking about something that would normally bore us to tears—advanced math, the history of some obscure TV show, or the drama of their work life—but we are enthralled. We may not relate to the subject, but we relate to the passion.
The passion is alive. It is full of energy. It animates the speaker and fills us with a sense of wonder and delight. The form this takes does not matter; the content of love behind it speaks far louder than the words.
The opposite is true as well. We have all experienced a conversation, teacher, or book about our favorite interest that simply does not capture our attention. There is no passion, no love, and despite our care for the subject matter our mind wanders to anything but the present moment.
Think back to some of your favorite teachers. It is likely that many of them were not teaching your favorite subject. Yet because they taught their subject with love, you loved learning. They could teach anything with that love and you would show up to class.
I think we can take this concept further. It is not that these teachers love their subjects and so we relate to them. The subject is completely irrelevant because they are teaching love. That is what we are learning, from their demonstration, and that is what we relate to.
The same is true of the best nurses, doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople. The same is true of people who take care of the homeless and poverty stricken. Their success is not determined by what they do, but how they do it—whether or not they are teaching love.
You are what you teach. People learn from the way you do things and the attitude you hold whether you like it or not. It does not matter what the thing is—writing a blog post, working, applying for a job, cleaning the house, making a phone call, admitting a mistake, creating a New Year’s Resolution, giving advice—if you want to truly succeed, do it with love.
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