The Love-Logic of performance

Regardless of what we are involved in, it is the quality of your relationship with it that determines the quality of the outcome. When a person has a bad relationship with their spouse, it reflects in how they treat them. A bad treatment from a spouse might affect the entire family. In the same manner, a bad relationship with an item you possess is reflected in the state of the item itself. The principle applies to an occupation as well. Give your work the best you can give it and it will return the love. However this might seem an impossible thing to do if you don’t love it enough.

When a man does not treat his car very well, it is only a matter of time before the car registers its displeasure. It is a simple question of not servicing your car as regularly as is required to keep it in shape. When this becomes something you forget and or cannot be bothered with because you have more important things to do, the quality of your relationship can be called into question and the state of the car will reveal the real state of affairs. Cars do not understand excuses. Not giving your car the best you can give it then forces the car to not give you the best it can give you. This is all based on your input and when your car begins to fail you, all other aspects of your life begins to suffer.

The role of relationship in performance is great indeed. There is a relationship between you and the occupation you are involved in just as there is with your spouse. The nature of this relationship is reflected in how you think about the occupation. How you think about anything determines your behavior towards that thing. This is true even for your spouse. It will in the long run determine if they love you back or not. To get the best out of an occupation it must see that you truly love it and not just pretending because of what you can get out of it. It then chooses you. YES chooses you! To get involved in an occupation, you must register your interest and when it sees that the interest is genuine and that you indeed have what it needs, it accepts your application. The unity is then created and the performance is high because you have the double impact of you and the occupation working in harmony. After that you must maintain and service this relationship by continuous improvement- finding better ways in which you can show your more love. You must contribute to the industry and not just take from it. You must profess it and show others its beauty. You must genuinely love it with all your heart. 

It then continuous to give you better rewards in return. Remember the more you put in, the more you will get out of it and when the love is true, this will require very little effort. A person who is the best at something has a deep relationship with that thing and understands it in a way that nobody else does. They can tell you things about it that you would never have found out for yourself. They spend more time with that thing than anybody else does. But it must be a mutual relationship.  If you have seen the relationship between a master craftsman and his tools, you already know what I am trying to say.

I woke up one day and realized that a shirt has been lying on the floor for a few days. I asked myself what will happen if it stayed there much longer. How does the shirt feel about the whole situation? How would I feel if I was lying on the floor for a few days and being stepped on occasionally? What will it take for me to pick up the shirt and put it in a place where it will be happier? Can an unhappy shirt make me happy? Does this explain why I am always badly dressed? Will I eventually lose my shirt because I didn’t treat it well? Should I do something before the shirt leaves the realm of usability? Truth; I was not loving the shirt enough…. I began to think about how this shirt came from the best shirt I had and to the one the spends days on the floor

I remember the woman I used to love telling me that I did not move heaven and earth for her. I think she meant that I was not sacrificing enough for her and that obviously brought my so called love for her under scrutiny. A few months down the line, she had left me. I used write computer software until a few years ago. In those days I spent a lot of time learning other people’s methods and even occasionally copying codes which I modified to create my own applications getting some applause here and there. I made some money whiles I was at it but not like Bill Gates. The quality of my relationship with programming was nowhere near what bill had. There are programmers out there writing codes for the fun of it; posting them on the internet for people like me to copy. They wrote tutorials and post them for others to learn and be better. The industry loves these guys because they are contributors. They are the chosen ones. Not surprising they know all the secrets. Me I just took from it and gave very little back. I learnt only what others taught me and never really discovered much on my own.  But don’t just take from it, contribute to it. If you find in your occupation that you are unable to do so… something is wrong.

In my software writing days some thought I was a genius; I did not feel that way about myself. In time I did not want to do it anymore. It was not true love and like all false things, they don’t last forever. The countless seemingly impressive hours I had spent with her was all for taking and my personal gratification. So I can look like a genius. So I can make money. So I can get all the applause and I did get some but only for a while. When I finally broke down, it was other people’s fault. It will take three years before I will find my true love. When it happened, I just knew everything was right. In a short period I am contributing more to her than many who have been on the road longer than me. I don’t even have to try. And even though she continues to test my commitment, I have no problem passing the test all as I genuinely love her. When I get applause now no matter how small, it feels incredibly right! This is not an unusual case. Most people are caught in such situations with many doing jobs they should not be doing out fear of losing security. Some just want to belong and they work very hard at this.  The lack of real love make living their life a great challenge and they are never really above average in the things they work so hard at. They have not developed the right relationship with their occupation or I should say they are not a match made in heaven. 

Take any aspect of your life you are not happy with. Or even a possession that is in a bad state. Take a close look and you will realize it is in a bad state because of your treatment of it. Love cannot be faked for long. In fact hate often masquerades as love- fake love. So if you are pretending to love your occupation, you actually hate it and it knows. To find and do what you love is a blessing to your performance. A good relationship with your occupation is very efficient fuel for your performance. This idea is based on LOVE-LOGIC.