Friday, July 06, 2007
GET YOUR RIGHT ATTITUDE
| F O O D F O R T H O U G H T |  |
| Subscribe Unsubscribe Change E-mail View Archive GET YOUR RIGHT ATTITUDE By Tim Stafford Jul 6, 2007 |
frustration in my job. It was partly due to
fatigue, I think. We'd had some deaths in my
family, which left me worn down. And then I went
through a patch where nothing I did seemed right.
I proposed projects which got shot down, and when
I wrote on assignment, editors scraped away at my
prose until only scraps were left. That's normal,
part of the process, but I felt frustrated and unappreciated.
I had to go back and relearn the right attitudes.
I need the right attitude to work hour to hour and long term.
Hour by hour, it's simple: do the work. I had to
stick my rear in my chair and not get up until I
had finished a major chunk of work. That meant
resisting distractions from phone calls and emails and news
reports.
If you don't stick to it hour to hour, your
discouragement will build. But if you work hard
in the short term, you'll accomplish something.
You'll find the work itself meaningful and
there's a good possibility your failures will turn around. That
happened to me.
Long term, I had to remember why I was working in
the first place. I had to believe in my vocation
all over again. In the deepest sense, I needed to
know that I do the work because God wants me to do it.
Why are you in your job? Maybe you're there to
fulfill a special gift. Maybe you're there to
make a living for your family. Maybe you're there
because the work needs to be done for the good of
society. To overcome discouragement, you need an
attitude that takes the focus off your sense of
frustration. You need to remember why your work
is valid. You need to remember that God is behind it.
Both these attitudes, long term and short term,
reflect what Paul wrote to the Philippians: "Your
attitude should be the same as that of Christ
Jesus." He goes on to describe how Jesus became a
humble servant, obedient even to the point of death (Phil. 2:5-8).
Hour by hour, a servant's focus is very limited.
Servants listen for directions, and they do
exactly what their boss expects. In the longer
term, servants know why they are working: because
they have a master who has called them to service.
We are meant to be servants of God.
Listen to your Boss, he'll tell you what to do.
Believe in your vocation because you know who
called you to it. And do your work because God is behind it.
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# posted by F O O D F O R T H O U G H T @ 5:00 AM 
