Every morning as I drive to my 5.30am exercise class I see this man sweeping the pavement around the shops, getting it ready for when the coffee shops open and the chairs and tables get set up…
He always seems so attentive to his work, so in the moment… and always when I drive past later and the chairs and tables are out… not a leaf to be seen…
Now I don’t know him, and maybe he hates sweeping the street, but that is not the energy I am feeling from him… he does it with such commitment and care.
No applause from an audience, nobody necessarily noticing the work that he has done when they come and grab their coffee, but making a difference in the world in his circle of influence just the same…
As Martin Luther King said, ‘“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
You see there is always so much focus on success meaning, ‘moving up the ladder’, ‘earning more money’, ‘setting bigger goals’, ‘being an entrepreneur’, becoming famous’, getting more likes’… but this to is success… simply taking the job you have chosen for now and then putting all of you into it and doing it the best you can, trusting that it all makes a difference some how.
We will always need somebody to do ‘those jobs’…. those that seem, mundane, boring and certainly not ego stroking… but show me a person that sweeps streets like he loves it and knows it makes a difference, well I will show you a happy content person.
And some of those street sweepers will go onto being the entrepreneurs, because there was this great idea they got one day when they were practising the mindfulness that comes with sweeping like you know it makes a difference. 😉
So whatever job you find yourself in today, own it and do it like it matters because it really does… more than you think!
