Work

• 2 Nephi 9:51…Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy. Hearken diligently unto me, and remember the words which I have spoken; and come unto the Holy One of Israel, and feast upon that which perisheth not, neither can be corrupted, and let your soul delight in fatness.
• “Continually ask yourself these key questions: ‘What am I really good at?  What do I enjoy the most about my work? What has been most responsible for my success in the past?  If I could do any job at all, what job would it be?’ If you won the lottery or came into an enormous amount of money and you could choose any job or any part of a job to do for the indefinite future, what work would you choose?”  Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 69
• “Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand.  The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”  Alexander Graham Bell.  Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 70
• “…your productivity begins to decline after eight or nine hours of work.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 80
• “There are specific times during the day when you are at your best. You need to identify these times and discipline yourself to use them on your most important and challenging tasks.  Most people are at their best in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. Some people are better in the afternoon. A few people are most creative and productive in the evening or late at night.”  Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 81
• “It has been estimated that the tendency to start and stop a task- to pick it up, put it down, and come back to it- can increase the time necessary to complete the task by as much as 500 percent.  Each time you return to the task, you have to familiarize yourself with where you were when you stopped and what you still have to do. You have to overcome inertia and get yourself going again. You have to develop momentum and get into a productive work rhythm. But when you prepare thoroughly and then begin, refusing to stop or turn aside until the job is done, you develop energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. You get better and better and more productive. You work faster and more effectively.” Eat That Frog, Brian Tracy, Page 110
• 1 Corinthians 3:6 -7…6  I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.  7  So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.
• “If there is someone at work who bothers you, again bless them with love every time you think of them.”  You Can Heal Your Life (Louise Hay) Page 106
• “In your Zone of Genius, you don’t feel like you’re working. Even though the time you spend there produces great financial abundance, you do not feel that you are expending an effort to produce it. In your Zone of Genius, work doesn’t feel like work. In your Zone of Genius, time feels completely different. Time seems to expand to support your activities. You have plenty of time to do what you most want to do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Henricks) Page 120
• “I’ve found that it’s essential, to begin with, a commitment to living in your Zone of Genius. Your commitment must come before you know how to make good on it. The image that comes to mind is from the third Indiana Jones movie, in which Indy must step out into thin air, in a gesture of commitment, before a bridge magically appears beneath his feet. The power of your commitment brings forth the means necessary for you to live in your Zone of Genius. If you will make a powerful, sincere commitment—a vow that you really want to live your life in the Zone of Genius—your journey will be blessed with uncommon good fortune at all the twists and turns of the road. Commitment has that power.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 121
• “I spent a lot of time wondering how to distinguish my genius from my excellence. I finally realized a big key to it: my genius is connected to what I most love to do. That’s why I want you to wonder about what you most love to do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 122
• “So, enter the outskirts of your Zone of Genius by asking yourself what you most love to do. Wonder about this until you have a clearly forming sense of it in your body. You don’t have to know it clearly or specifically yet. You just need to feel the glimmer of it in your inner world.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 124
•  “What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? (I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.)  When you’re doing this certain thing (and not burdened with the pressures and irritations of running a business), you are at your very happiest. When you’re doing it, you think “This is why I do the work I do.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 125
• “If you’re like most of us, you feel sad or irritated about the amount of your precious time that gets eaten up in the necessary trivia of your day. As you get more successful, it’s common to feel mounting pressure about this issue, an unnatural hurry-up that feels unhealthy to your well-being. I believe that the sense of mounting pressure is the call to live in your Zone of Genius. I’ve seen it disappear with miraculous speed when people opened up to wondering about what their true genius might be.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 126
• “Here’s the question: What is my unique ability? (There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organization I serve.)   We’re in search of the deepest essentials here; if you look into the essence of who you really are at the deepest level, you’ll find a unique gift you’ve been blessed with. That gift is your greatest contribution to the people around you. It’s the pinnacle skill of your working life. You can also use it to great benefit in your non-working life. (The ability is not unique in the whole world. There may be millions of people who have it. However, it’s usually unique in your particular circle or work setting.)” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 131
• “Do you know what your unique ability is? You may have discovered it already, but if you haven’t, I’d like to show you how to find it. First, let me share with you an image I like to use. Have you seen a set of those little Russian dolls? When you open the big doll there’s a smaller one inside it, and hidden within that doll there’s an even smaller one. Using that image, think of your unique ability as a skill within a skill within a skill. Here’s what I mean: your unique ability is usually camouflaged inside a larger skill you possess. You may not even realize that your unique ability is what is driving your success in applying the larger skill.” The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level (Gay Hendricks) Page 132
• “Across the board, having the opportunity to develop our strengths is more important to our success than our role, our title, or even our pay. In this increasingly talent-driven society, we need to know and develop our strengths to figure out where we fit in.” StrengthsFinder 2.0 (Tom Rath)  Kindle Location 220-22
• Enos 1:3 -5… 3  Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart. 4  And my soul hungered, and I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul, and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens. 5  And there came a voice unto me, saying: Enos, thy sins are forgiven thee, and thou shalt be blessed.
• “What is work?  It is thinking until you feel your brain is coming apart.” Softbank’s legendary founder and CEO Masayoshi Son
•  “Family philanthropy offers the family the chance to feed itself – to develop leadership, to develop links across generations that mean something. There just aren’t that many places where you can add to the social interaction of the family relationship as a piece of work. Work adds meaning and intensity to the family’s relationships that nothing else can – not being, not playing, not talking together. There is a wholly legitimate purpose to philanthropy as a source of meaning to a donor and a family. This is essential to the continued vitality of the American philanthropy experience.”  NCFP, “The Value of Family in Philanthropy
• Life Transition Options: a. “Keep on doing what I already do well, but change the environment. b. Change the work, but stay in the same environment. c. Turn an avocation into a new career. d. Double-track (or even triple-track) in parallel careers (not hobbies). e. Keep on doing what I am doing even past retirement age.”  Peter Drucker, Halftime
• “If you already have money without the necessity of working, it becomes easy not to develop the discipline and focus that lead to competency. Children who are raised in an impoverished environment are forced to become independent and competent because there is nobody providing for them. Whatever they desire must come through their own effort. What happens to a wealthy child surrounded by people who do things for the child: tutors, nannies, and strong parents-a whole world of people whose main function is to service the child? The critical issue is the lack of work experience. If you read autobiographies of great achievers, most of them struggled and had significant work experience. They sold newspapers, they worked on the docks, they worked in a store. They really worked hard, and this type of work is one of the important competency experiences. Contrast this to the world of wealthy children. If they’re not in school, they’re often in summer camp or traveling in Europe. Not only do they often miss the opportunity of working, but in families of generational wealth, they don’t even see the model of work in their families. The source of the family’s financial support is a trust fund. In these situations, how are they going to get an idea about what it means to work? Work is important because it is a method of validating oneself. Additionally, it gives the individual the opportunity to experience the “high” of achievement. When a child becomes addicted to the excitement of achievement, then money will not impair their productivity.” Wealth in Families Third Edition (Charles W. Collier) Page 44-45
• “To make your work meaningful, you need to align it with your true nature. “Work is holy, sacred, and uplifting when it springs from who we are when it bears a relationship to our unfolding journey,” writes activist, teacher, and lay monk Wayne Teasdale in A Monk in the World. “For work to be sacred, it must be connected to our spiritual realization. Our work has to represent our passion, our desire to contribute to our culture, especially to the development of others. By passion I mean the talents we have to share with others, the talents that shape our destiny and allow us to be of real service to others in our community.”  Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success. Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. Page 125
• “Native American songwriter James Yellowbank, who says, “The task of life is to keep your world in order.” And that takes discipline, a healthy balance between work and play, and nourishment of mind, body, and spirit within the context of community—values”  Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success. Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty. Page 125
• “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” Thomas Jefferson
• “What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.” Anonymous
• “When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!” Anonymous
• “Phenomenal Clarity of vision people gain at the end of their lives (same top 5 regrets people expressed in the last 12 weeks of life)
  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. (Every male patient) Felt they missed their children’s youth & partner’s companionship. 
  3. I wish I’d have the courage to express my feelings. 
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. Realized happiness was a choice.
• “All that is required of us to make us perfectly safe under all circumstances of trouble or persecution, is to do the will of God, to be honest, faithful and to keep ourselves devoted to the principles that we have received; do right one by another; trespass upon no man’s rights; live by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God and his Holy Spirit will aid and assist us under all circumstances, and we will come out of the midst of it all abundantly blessed in our houses, in our families, in our flocks, in our fields and in every way God will bless us. He will give us knowledge upon knowledge, intelligence upon intelligence, wisdom upon wisdom.” Manual, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow, Chapter 7, Faithfulness in Time of Trial from the Shadows into the Glorious Sunshine
• “As we administer any aspect of the welfare program, the primary purpose for which it was established must be kept before us. That stated purpose is to set up, insofar as it might be possible, a system under which the curse of idleness would be done away with, the evils of a dole abolished, and independence, industry, thrift, and self-respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership.” Manual, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Gordon B Hinkley, Chapter 21, Principles of Temporal and Spiritual Warfare
• “Welfare recipients should work to the extent of their ability to earn commodity or fast offering assistance. When meaningful jobs are not provided, when people are not encouraged to work, a demoralizing Church dole would develop, and the purpose for which the welfare program was established would be undermined. It is a law of heaven, and one we haven’t learned fully here on earth, that you cannot help people permanently by doing for them what they can do, and should do, for themselves.” Manual, Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Ezra Taft Benson, Chapter 21, Principles of Temporal and Spiritual Welfare