of Seth's Tribes (1)

How Was Your Day?

It’s four a.m. and I can’t sleep. So I’m sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Jamaica, checking my e-mail.

A couple walks by, obviously on their way to bed, having pushed the idea of vacation a little too hard. The woman looks over to me and, in a harsh whisper a little quieter than a yell, says to her friend, “Isn’t that sad? That guy comes here on vacation and he’s stuck checking his e-mail. He can’t even enjoy his two weeks off.”

I think the real question – the one they probably wouldn’t want to answer – was, “Isn’t it sad that we have a job where we spend two weeks avoiding the stuff we have to do fifty weeks a year?”

It took me a long time to figure out why I was so happy to be checking my e-mail in the middle of the night. It had to do with passion. Other than sleeping, there was nothing I’d rather have been doing in that moment – because I’m lucky enough to have a job where I get to make change happen. Even though I don’t have many people working for me, I’m in the business of leading people, taking them somewhere we want to go.

On the other hand, most people have jobs (for now) where they fight change, where they work overtime to defend the status quo. It’s exhausting. Maintaining a system in the face of change will grind you down.

Think for a second about the people you know who are engaged, satisfied, eager to get to work. Most of them, I'll bet, make change. They challenge the status quo and push something forward - something they believe in. They lead.

"Life's too short" is repeated often enough to be a cliché, but this time it's true. You don't have enought time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It's not jus pointless, it's painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don't need to escape from.

The amazing thing is that not only is this sort of life easier to set up than ever before, but it's also more likely to make you successful. And happy. So how was your day?