Hard Work
By Steve Pavlina
Success literature/'lɪtrətʃɚ/ going back hundreds of years espouses/ɪ'spaʊz/ the benefits of hard work. But why is it that some people seem to feel that “hard work” is a dirty word nowadays?
I define “hard work” as work that is challenging/'tʃælɪndʒɪŋ/. Both hard work and “working hard” (i.e. putting in the time required to get the job done) are required for success.
A problem occurs/ə'kə:/ when people think of challenging work as painful or uncomfortable. Does challenging work necessarily have to be painful? No, of course not. In fact, a major key to success is to learn to enjoy challenging work AND to enjoy working hard at it.
Why challenging work? Because challenging work, when intelligently/in'telidʒəntli/ chosen, pays off. It’s the work that people of lesser character will avoid. And if you infer/ɪn'fɝ/ that I’m saying people who avoid challenging work have a character/'kærəktɚ/ flaw/flɔ/, you’re right… and a serious one at that. If you avoid challenging work, you avoid doing what it takes to succeed. To keep your muscles/'mʌslz/ strong or your mind sharp/ʃɑrp/, you need to challenge them. To do only what’s easy will lead to physical and mental/'mɛntl/ flabbiness/'flæbinis/ and very mediocre/ˌmidɪ'okɚ/ results, followed by a great deal of time and effort spent justifying why such flabbiness is OK, instead of stepping up and taking on some real challenges.
Tackling challenges builds character, just as lifting weights builds muscle. To avoid challenge is to abandon one’s character development.
Now it’s natural that we’ll tend to avoid what’s painful, so if we see challenge as purely/'pjʊrli/ painful, we’ll surely avoid it. But in so doing, we’re avoiding some very important character development, which by its very nature is often tremendously /trɪ'mɛndəsli/ challenging. So we must learn to fall in love with challenge instead of fearing it, just as a bodybuilder can learn to love the pain of doing “one more rep” that tears down muscle fibers/'faibə/, allowing them to grow stronger. If you avoid the pain, you miss out on the growth. This is true both for building muscles and for building character.
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