Seriously

"The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous."
Margaret Fontey

Are you serious? It turns out that the more seriously we take something the heavier and more permanent it seems. And it turns out that the more we don't want something, the more seriously we take it. So the things that we dislike actually seem to be more important and more permanent than the things we like and want. This is why we always seem to remember the bad events in our lives more easily than the good ones, and why we always seem to remember our failures more than our successes.

When we take our work seriously, we are focused on what we want to acheive with our work. We have a goal that we are working towards. We are serious about our results. This means that the result we want to get will seem to be important and permanent. That is, of course, why we are motivated to work for it. We can't be serious about doing our work if we are not serious about getting a result that is important and lasting. So taking one's work seriously is imperative if we are to be successful.

Taking ourselves seriously is another matter. When we take ourselves seriously we are strengthening our ego. And our ego is focused on making us miserable by reminding us of all our failures and shortcomings, and all the reasons why we can't succeed. We end up making our obstacles, failures and shortcomings into what is important and permanent, rather than the goal we wish to acheive. We begin to feel like acheiving our goal is a measure of how good we are, so there is much unnecessary fear and anxiety about not acheiving it. So we are much less likely to actually get what we want. Taking ourselves seriously is disasterous to our success.

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