“Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy” and Other Myths

They say you have to work hard to get ahead. They say you should keep your shoulder to the wheel and your nose to the grindstone. Seriously? Wheels are shaped the way they are so that they’ll roll with minimal effort. Putting your nose to a grindstone would be an extremely painful and useless thing to do! After last week’s post about joy and alignment, one commenter wanted to talk about action, so that’s what we’re focusing on this week. Action. Work. I want to start with a quote from Abraham.

When you hear the alarm clock go off in the morning, when you head to your workspace to do your work, how do you feel? Do you love what you’re doing so much that you’re eager to start the day? Is it pulling you so powerfully that you have trouble quitting at day’s end? Does it haunt your dreams? Do you talk about what you’re working on to everyone you know?

My beautiful creative sisters, I have to tell you that most of us humans have this work thing all wrong.

We have stupid sayings, like “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” I want to replace that with, “If it’s hard, you’re not doing it right.”

Our work, especially our creative work, should be joyful. We are never more Divine than when we are creating. And the Divine is never grumpy or resentful.

Our Source is love, and joy is love’s biggest side effect.

There is never any benefit to forcing yourself to do what every cell in your body is rebelling against doing. If storytelling is hard work for you, then that is your clearest indication that you are in the wrong field. The only reason to write is because you love writing. The only reason to paint is because you love painting. The only reason to do anything is for the joy of it. Not for validation, or fame, or money. In fact, you should remove all of those things from the equation. Like the song says, “Do what you love, and the world will follow.”

The faster you take money out of the equation, the faster you’ll become wealthy.

So on days when you feel like writing, write. When promotion is

calling to you, promote. If you feel inspired to update your website, then update your website. I woke up this morning excited that it was Saturday, because I blog on Saturdays, and I love writing this blog.

But if there are things in this creative entrepreneurial business of yours that you don’t love doing–say, taxes for example—then stop doing them. It’s that simple. And it’s far easier than you are letting yourself think it is.

There are myriad gifted people out there who love crunching numbers. (English 101 note—yes, that is the correct use for of myriad. “A myriad of” is wrong.) Find one of those genius folks to do your number crunching for you. There are brilliant ones who find their joy in creating gorgeous websites. There are others who get their bliss on by managing social media. There are millions of artists whose creative outlet is the very thing you hate doing. Find them. Talk to them. Hire them. Trade services with them.

I hear you, sweet readers. You’re saying, “I can’t afford to hire someone! Are you out of your mind?” The truth is, my friends, you can’t afford not to.

The quickest, surest path to your wealth and abundance, is the path of joy.

Doing what you love, milking it for every ounce of joy it has to offer, is the shortest, surest path to success. Doing things you hate makes you miserable and resentful, and feeling that way takes you on detours, and knocks out bridges, and puts obstacles into your path.

So tell me, if your roof was leaking, would you find a way to hire a roofer? If your sink was broken, would you find a way to hire a plumber? If your car breaks down, won’t you find a way to hire a mechanic? This is no different. This is crucial.

Also, and this will be covered more thoroughly in a future post, so for now just trust me on it. Anytime you feel “I can’t afford to…” do something, you are focused on lack, and therefore, attracting more lack. To be abundant, you first have to feel abundant.

Anything you believe is possible, is possible. If you just trust that the force that creates worlds is capable of finding you an affordable bookkeeper, or website updater, or virtual assistant, then it will. Don’t worry about the details. Just believe, and expect, and keep your eyes open and someone or something will show up to take over the jobs you enjoy the least.

There’s a little more to it. You also have to stop hating those tasks quite so much, in order to let them go.

The moment you’ve trusted one other person to take some of your least favorite tasks off your shoulders, and you start basking in the relief of that, more of your least favorite jobs will magically melt away from you, and before you know it, your only jobs will be the ones you love.

You do not need to work harder or longer or smarter or better to achieve success. You need to work inspired.

The key to success and wealth is not more hours spent working. There is no magic formula that states X hours can only earn you a maximum of X dollars. Otherwise, there would be no multi-billionaires in the world. The key is the opposite. Spend more time on your own spiritual alignment, more time cultivating joy, more time thinking positively, laughing with friends, indulging in things you love.

And more than anything else, spend much, much more time in deep appreciation of the abundance you already have.

By doing all those things, you align yourself with your Source, your Higher Self, the Bigger You. And from that place of alignment, inspiration comes, and along with it, come all the components you need to bolster your success. Your path lights up like a runway. All the people, the connections, the systems and apps, all the ideas and inspiration you need to get you directly to your goal, begin to fill that path. Brilliant ideas come to you when you’re in a state of joy and appreciation. Then and only then is it time to take action.

It’s not action, but inspired action, that brings results.

In the meantime, here are some simple practices to help you find more joy and less work, in your work.

1. Rather than forcing yourself to do the tasks you don’t want to do, do the ones that bring you the most joy first. Then maybe do just a little bit of the less pleasant one, while you’re still on that creative high from the fun stuff.

2. The entire time you’re doing the joyful jobs, be mentally psyching yourself up for the less joyful ones. Fill your mind with a little thought rampage that gradually takes you to an easier place about the task in question. Soon I’ll find someone else to do this for me. Soon I’ll figure out how to have it automated. Any day now there will be an app or program to make this job completely unnecessary. This might be the very last time I ever have to do this job. I’ll feel loads better after it’s finished, that’s for sure. I don’t know why I hate this job so much. It’s fairly simple, after all. I wonder how I ever convinced myself to hate this job so much anyway? What’s so bad about it? Some people love doing this. I’m going to meet some of those people. 🙂 It will probably take me less time than I think. I wonder if I can come up with three things that I actually like about this task. I wonder if I can learn to like it so much that I lose all my resistance surrounding this job. I wonder if I can find a way to actually enjoy it a little bit.

Hint: If you learn to love the task you currently hate, if you get yourself so at peace with it that you seriously start to think maybe you don’t need to be rid of it after all, that’s when the necessity of doing it will suddenly evaporate from your life forever.

3. Don’t worry about the details of how the less pleasant tasks will ever move off your to-do list. You don’t worry about the details of how the moon is going to change Her phases, do you? You don’t worry about the details of how the sun will rise and the seasons will change on schedule, do you? You don’t worry about how the signal from some distant satellite is going to bring the newest episode of The Walking Dead into your living room, do you? And yet all of that happens. You don’t need to micromanage science and nature. It happens because it happens. Joy brings you more joy. It cannot fail.

Be joyful, and the not-joyful stuff is going to fall away from your life.

4. Pay as little attention as possible to the stuff that you don’t like. Either get it done in the most joyous manner possible, or hand it off to someone else to do, but don’t waste weeks mulling it over, dreading it, talking about it. What you think about grows. So you’re far better off making a decision, any decision, and going with it. Just let it go in the most painless and joyful way possible. Even if that means doing it yourself. But be sure to psych yourself up for it first, if that’s the case. (See step two.)

Thanks for coming by, folks. If you have topics you want me to cover, please let me know either by email or on the comments section below! Till next week, be happy!

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