We use the word “work” all the time for all sorts of things. Are all those things really work? Not according to James M. Barrie, they are only work if you would rather be doing something else. Barrie was the author of Peter Pan, and he loved to write imaginative, creative stories but not everyone always understood them. He did a brilliant thing to help his audience understand the story. At the opening night for Peter Pan, he asked the producer to leave twenty seats empty for him to give away…not a great idea for someone who wants to make money…and yet the producer trusted Barrie and agreed. The night of the show Barrie arrived at the theatre with twenty children from the local orphanage. Their laughter, giggles, and excitement ignited the audience and made the show a smashing success. For Barrie, none of this was work, it was what he loved to do.
When we choose to do things it means something. Be it our profession, caring for our life, caring for other people, or even creating for ourselves…none of that has to be “work” unless we choose for it to be. It is not the tasks that makes things work, it is our attitude towards them. When we see our profession, our life and doing things for ourselves as a blessing, a chance to give, earn, grow and build then we change our attitude. Would you rather work for a living or do something you choose to do to support yourself and your family? It’s all about how you frame it. Work only has to be a bad word if we choose to let it be that way.
All too often we forget that we have a choice. We may not like the choices we have, so in the future we will need to make different choices. Until then, we must face our choices and do what is required to keep our life moving forward. These things that keep us being us are WORK only if we choose to call them that. What if we called them choices, options, opportunities or even blessings? Yes it may all sound like semantics – words are words. Are they? The words we choose have power. Power over how we think, power over how we feel, even power over our attitude. Choose different words and you choose a different perspective.
We have a choice everyday to choose how our life progresses…it is in our choice of words, our attitude AND how to think about what we are doing. Work is only “work” if you’d rather be doing something else. Choose today to be happy in our life, your work, and your world…and choose words that make you fee that way!
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