Say ‘Yes’ to whatever life has to offer!

Have you faced tasks in your job where you wished someone else could do them? Even though you know the importance and have the skills to do those tasks, but either they fall into the category of monotonous work for you or you don’t feel like putting your best effort toward them.

Being in finance and especially in my role as the CFO, I had to put a lot of signatures on bank and company related documents. I was slowly developing the attitude of non willingness for signing these documents.

There was a time in my childhood where I used to practice my signatures, so that one day I could place them on important papers. Even today, I often admire creative signatures put by certain people who do it very meticulously. Yet, here I was, running away from my own childhood desire.

Some reasons which contributed to this limiting attitude were mental lethargy for the physical work of signing on many documents, discussion in my peer group and looking down upon this important task and the mundane routine of doing it on a consistent basis.

The other examples when I see this attitude creeping in me is while doing household chores. My upbringing has been in a traditional Indian family with my mother primarily taking care of the household. Being the youngest of three siblings and with two elder sisters, tasks at home were assigned last to me. In short, I have been a pampered child.

I started to take concrete action when I started to live in a different city away from home and especially after marriage when my wife started to point it out to me.

Over time, I discovered that when I did things with enthusiasm, I had more energy and felt less tired in doing them. To develop enthusiasm, I remind myself to say ‘Yes’ to doing that task with love and joy and keeping the focus on what needs to happen rather than what I or others think about it.

It is also important for me to remind myself to have the right attitude or correct it when I see myself wavering. What are ways that help you keep the enthusiasm going for routine or mundane tasks?