082 - Save Time, Money & Energy by Doing Work You Love

Wade Galt, author of Put Your Money Where Your Soul Is and creator of 4-Day Work Week Academy, want to talk to you today about something that seems so simple and a lot of people talk about but doesn't always seem to get implemented. We want to do work that we love and we hear these ideas about doing work that we love and how it will help us be happier and make more money. But the execution of it's not always easy. And so if we run into obstacles, it's very easy to kind of pull out of the idea quickly and go a different direction.

Why don't I suggest to you is if you're looking at your career and your work life and your life from a long term perspective, it's going to save you time, money and energy for you to do the work that you love. Now, it doesn't mean you're always going to do the work that you love. If you're an NBA athlete playing basketball, you don't always get to be on the court dunking a basketball. There's preparation work for that. If you're a rock star, you don't always get to be on stage.

There's practice, there's rehearsal, there's other parts to it. So this is not saying that everything's meant to be roses, but if you're doing work that you love, at the very least worth you enjoy, you're going to be more likely to be successful, more likely to make a positive impact on people, more likely to be able to make more money and more likely to be able to increase that and just have that in a good sort of what you want to call it, karma or reputation.

Keep cycling itself and keep building upon itself.

So the first thing I want to suggest to you is that loving work is much more profitable than hating him. Now, this might sound kind of obvious, but if we keep it real simple, when you do work you hate, it reduces your motivation, which usually reduces your performance, your willingness to study, your willingness to become great, which usually reduces your results. And it gets worse. You make less money, you're not as happy. And so there's this downward spiral that happens if you're aware of this.

Now, a lot of people, most people perhaps at some point have been in a situation where they've done work that they either didn't like very much or they hated it, or it was something that started out good. And it changed maybe because of the environment or the people. I'm talking specifically about the work itself. And so if you're not really into the work, of course, that's going to be something that's going to usually make some sort of negative impact on your situation, your desire to get results and your willingness to become great.

When I think about any of the great teachers that I've studied over the years, whether it's a Zig Ziglar or Wayne Dyer or Stephen Covey listening to Tony Robbins stuff, Brendon Burchard, Dan Sullivan any of these people, you'll find these are people that are committed to their craft. They've worked really hard on it. If you look at the best performers in the world, the same thing happens. And a lot of people seem to say, well, these people are lucky.

They've gotten to this level because of luck or because somebody bless them and it's because they've been willing to do work that other people have not been willing to do. And it has not felt like a chore for many of them. For some, maybe it does. But for most I'd say, you know, I have this curiosity about this work. I'm not sure why, but it really intrigues me and I want to learn more about it. So if we at least move from hating our work to doing work we enjoy, it's going to make it much more likely that we'll at least follow through on the work and get certain results that are likely to create profit.

And of course, if we're making money doing work, it's going to make it much more likely that we are happy with it, that we're enjoying it, that we're getting compensated. Well, yes, we are getting to enjoy outside of work some of the things that go with it, of being able to afford nice things live perhaps where we'd like to live, or at the very least see ourselves moving in a positive direction and feeling recognized that the work we're doing is helping people.

We're getting positive feedback. We're being told that we're good. We're being told that we're worth investing in. So very likely we'll have people invest more time and effort and energy into us. And then if we're doing work that we love, not to be really clear about this, this doesn't have to be your social work, the entire reason you're put on this planet that might or might not be what pays your bills. At least that's my experience. I know plenty of people who make lots of money that are not doing their social work, but they do their social work somewhere.

It might be their volunteer work, but in their work they're at least doing work that they really enjoy borderline love, or at least they love the process. They love something about it that really gets them engaged. It might be they love the difference they're making. It might be that they love how the work is done, the intricacies, the challenge, whatever it might be. But they love something more than just the money. They love something about the process.

And when you love the work, it makes it so much more likely that you're going to go the extra mile, you're going to do the research, you're going to practice more. You're going to invest the time to become great and deliver at a world class level. When I think of the things in my life that I've done at a very high level that I feel very proud of and have done for a long period of time, the two or three things that come up to me, two of them have to do with family.

One is being the best father I can and the other is being the best husband I can. And in my experience, when I'm doing these things, what I'm focused on being the best that I can. It makes it easier for me to invest the time to do more of the work, to be willing to put in the time, in the hours. On the other hand, when I am not as interested in doing the work, when I'm less interested, when it's something that I'm trying to make myself want to do, I don't get as good of results.

So I'm going to suggest to you is that so much of this is about you being able to get clear about what is it you most want to do and in some way find that and do that in your work, even if that's only part of your work, even if in your job you say Wade, I only get to do this for 10 percent of the day or 20 percent of the day, being able to find a way to weave that in so you get to enjoy it can be extremely helpful.

Now, the next part of this is when we start to look at what happens. When we are doing work that we hate, so let's take a step back for a second here, because a lot of people minimize this and more than anything, they minimize it in the short run. So they know in the long run that they don't want to do a certain type of work. I remember one of my friends at a job telling me Wade don't ever get really good at work.

You can't stand because if you stay there long enough, you'll start making so much money that'll be hard for you to get out. And his words were very true. And my experience really helped me kind of get a sense of what it was that was going on.

And that is something that I think drives why you get such good results, why you're so great at what you do, why are you so passionate, what you do and why people love working with you. So when you're hating your work, that can be extremely expensive. And so if you think about this for a second, the more frustrated you get, the more likely you are to need to make some sort of attempts to fix this problem, this frustration.

So when we're frustrated, we generally do poor work. This leads to lower confidence and lower earnings most of the time, and that's not a good thing if we're trying to make results happen here. And then this can lead to attempts for us to compensate for unhappy feelings with purchases or even worse, perhaps unhealthy addictions. Now, one of the things that I find a lot of people will do is they will have a job that they don't like the job, maybe not hate it, but it's something that on some level they resent doing it.

They don't like being a part of it. They wish they weren't doing it in a very strong way. And so what their finances look like are kind of a yoyo. They'll say, I'm doing this job that I cannot stand. I hate this job. And so in order to make up for that, what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend a lot of money on the weekend enjoying myself. And there's nothing wrong with spending a lot of money on the weekend, enjoying yourself.

But if you're doing that to make up for the fact that you hate your job, now you're in this sort of vicious circle. And I've met many people that they start making a certain amount of money. They're making six figures, multiples of six figures, and they cannot stand the work they do, but they're buying things and they're making financial commitments or promises that are putting themselves in the situations that make it very difficult to get out of. And so now they're really sort of trapped by their own design unintentionally into something that has them doing work.

They don't love doing work they can't stand and continuing to have to do it. So hating our work is not saying that we're going to always love every step of it. It's not saying we're not going to hate certain parts. We're not going to have bad days. This is a bad one. This is a pervasive experience on a regular basis, day in and day out. I don't like what I'm doing. Don't feel proud telling people what I'm doing, don't want to be doing, wondering what I'm doing, that sort of a situation.

On the other hand, if we're doing our work and we're doing work that we love or at least we love, a part of it is a part of it that we look forward to. There's a part of that we know. This is why I enjoy working. I really want to do this part that's going to lead to more happiness. It's going to lead to more income. It's going to make it less expensive for us to be happy. And so what I want you to consider is think about a person, you know, and maybe it's you, but think about somebody else, if possible, that really seems to need to buy a lot of things to be happy.

Again, I'm not doing this for the sake of putting the person down or thinking of a character from a movie, if you like, if you want to be personal and you're trying not to criticize people and be in that space, but think of the type of person that seems to need a lot of either reinforcement or approval or they need to be buying toys. They need something outside of them, a toy, a gadget. Applause Something like that.

That way of living, it's just not very happy. It's something that requires this constant effort, this constant performance. I think if you've been on the planet long enough, you've met people that it seems like they're always performing. And this is not meant in any way a criticism. It's one of these situations where very often this person is feeling like they need to do something, they need to perform. They need to be doing something of value to be considered worthy.

And so when you have a situation like that, that's very difficult. On the other hand, when the default is, hey, I'm enjoying my work, I have enough. I'm grateful for what I have in the world. I have enough abundance, then I'm going to be more likely to do better work. I'm going to be likely to focus on the work and get the results. I'm going to be in a better mood, higher energy level, and even more so if my income is not so critically important.

If I'm not buying so many gadgets and so many toys that I can't afford, I'm not going to be as likely to stress. So if you talk to people who are teachers or social workers or people who have done that profession or similar professions for a long period of time, you'll realize that they're very aware that those professions often, at least in the United States, don't pay a lot of money. And yet these people have found a way to live within their means, to still enjoy life, to enjoy what's most important to them and do the work they enjoy.

And so many of the people that I meet, friends of mine at the viable courts that are there on Fridays, some of them are entrepreneurs. Some of them are people that simply manage their time and know how to be out there and enjoying life by keeping their expenses low and making sure that they can at the very least, enjoy their weekends in their time outside of work.

When we're doing the work we love, we're going to do it better and that's going to lead to higher confidence and most likely higher earnings. So if you're a server, a waiter, a bartender, if you're a teacher, a coach, if you're in any sort of position that allows you a chance to earn more based on your performance, whether it be directly through your job or whether that be through a situation where you can earn additional money from from Side-hustler or whatever it might be, it's going to put you in a much better situation to be more confident, to be earning more money and then ultimately making our default emotional state happier.

Or chances are that's already our default emotional state and that's just amplifying that, requiring a lot less outside influences, a lot less purchases, which then makes it less expensive. Don't need all these purchases. So I'm not stressed to buy these purchases. I don't have to have them to be happy. I can be happy where I'm at.

And similarly, I don't need a lot of external validation. I don't need a lot of people telling me what it is that I need to be or how I need to be in order for me to feel approval. I can get it from what I do. And so I'm less likely to have my life or my decisions based upon somebody else's decision of who I should be or what I need to be able to be more likely to be doing work that is profitable in the long run, because, again, if I love the work, I'm going to invest the time I'm going to get better at it.

And it would be much more likely to get the results that are going to help me to earn more money to support the causes I enjoy, to fund the lifestyle I like. And be able to live the way I want. So, again, I really encourage you to consider this very basic concept, that loving work, while it's not the only thing in the world and certainly there is a place for gratitude, there's a place for saying, hey, you know, Wade, things are tough right now.

And if I just have a job, I'm grateful for that. And that's awesome. And coming from that place of gratitude is definitely great. At the same time, being able to find something in our work that we truly love and enjoy that allows us to feel like we're sharing our gifts with the world and allows us to feel like we're giving something that can't be given otherwise. Or at least that's unique. That's our unique contribution allows us to be happier in what we do.

And again, more likely to be recognized for being awesome, what we do and much more likely to get compensated really well for it. So I hope you find this helpful. I hope this inspires you in your journey to continue to see how can you bring joy to your work just by your attitude. But how can you also look for that part of work that you're most excited about? If you're in a large corporation and you're currently in one department, let's say it's accounting, but you've always wanted to be more creative.

How can you perhaps get to more the marketing side or the product creation side or maybe doing a project here and there and maybe working with that team, being the accountant on that team, finding ways to get you doing that? And of course, if you're an entrepreneur, how can you look to start doing work that allows you to do more of this? Even if 60, 70, 80 percent of your time needs to be able to fund your work, how can you create a situation that allows you to eventually get where you most want to get by doing that?

And so, absolutely, if you're happy with your passion, you can stand in the marketplace longer. So many people that want to get to a certain result want to get there yesterday. And so when they're trying to get there, it doesn't happen. And then they pull out very quickly. It's like if you're going to be a rock star and you say, I want to be a rock star, well, I'm going to give myself one year to be a rock star.

I'm going to play five nights a week. So I'm paying two hundred fifty gigs. And if at the end of that it doesn't happen while I'm out versus saying, you know what, what I'm going to do is I'm going to approach this from a standpoint of saying I'm going to do three gigs a week. So that's one hundred and fifty year. But I'm going to have a job that allows me to stay in this the whole time. So I'm still paying my bills and keeping my expenses reasonable.

And I'm going to do the work that I love, even if it's something completely different. But I'm allowing myself to do that, allowed myself to have that default happy state that allows me to fully enjoy my life. And so what I'm going to suggest to you is if you're looking for a way to get more towards a 4-Day Work Week lifestyle or something similar to that, whether you're an employee, a side-hustler, a freelance or an entrepreneur or a business owner, executive or CEO for a club is a community where we're committed to helping people make more money, impact more people in less time, doing what you do best and wherever you are, there's a point where you can start and we can help you get there.

So I hope you find this helpful. I hope this serves you in your career, in your personal life. If any questions this, feel free to reach out to me and connect with me at Wade, at 4-Day Work Week dot com. Otherwise go to a four day club, get started in the community and look for to see you in there. Thanks so much.