“My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure. ”
Every morning I awake with a desperate request to the universe:
Universe, please grant me the tools to convince everyone that they can and they should stop hating Mondays, because there’s a better career waiting for them out there somewhere if they only do the work to look.
I feel like the recipient of some beautiful epiphany about the meaning of life, and I want so much to let you in on it! I want to elucidate why I feel called to do this work and to spread this message. Why I’m so convinced that achieving joy adjacency in professional life is The Answer. The real thing.
But despite all the words I’ve written all over this website, I feel I always fall just short of a true translation of my epiphany. It’s a truth I know, at the very core of my being, but I’ve not yet been granted the wisdom to explain it with the kind of simplicity and elegance that launches entire movements.
I recently finished an excellent book by Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist: The education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL. In the epilogue, I came as close to something like the answer to my request as I’ve ever gotten.
But let me set this up for you first.
The Pareto Principle
There is an irrefutable and well-documented link, backed by mountains of research, between the quality of the work you do, and how much you enjoy doing it.
It has to do with the Pareto principle, an economic law that states that systems of human creation will always tend toward an inequitable allocation of the resources within that system. The Pareto principle has been used to explain everything from income inequality to diet and exercise. You’ve heard about the Pareto principle whenever you read something like:
“80% of sales come from 20% of clients”
“The top 20% of earners pay roughly 80-90% of income taxes”
“20% of your training will be responsible for 80% of your results”
“For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
The Pareto principle is also sometimes referred to by economists as the “Matthew effect”, in which Jesus’ disciple Matthew tells us that the rich will get richer while the poor will get poorer.
Feel free to reach out to your local economics professor to learn more about Pareto distributions and human systems. I’m not here to lecture you about income inequality. Rather, I want to explain why obsessively zeroing in on, and targeting, and then channeling all your professional efforts towards maximizing joy is the most efficient, optimal, happy-making, smile-inducing, wealth-generating way to manage your career.
You see, most of us aren’t great at everything we do. We can only hope to be passably competent at most things. The best among us, well, those lucky few 20% are developing expertise at a small subset of things.
And you can be sure that if you count yourself among the 80% who derive little joy from your work, taking home a meager income, living on crumbs of hope that maybe your boss will stop being crazy, your colleagues will be nicer, and your promotion will come, that even this little will be taken away from you.
Meanwhile, the 20% is laser-focused on discarding the 80% of daily distractions, seductions, fears, and contradictions that vie for their attention, and mastering the 20% of things that move them at the metaphysical level. These things are the source of their passion, their dedication, their obsession, and their joy.
Because they are so deeply connected to their work, they cannot help themselves when they find them. They want to do more of them.
The feedback loop operates in both directions: a virtuous cycle. The more you love doing something, the better you become at it. Consequently, being very good at something imbues you with confidence, goodwill, and joy, so that you do even more good work.
Congratulations! You’re now operating inside your own 20% resource allocation, and can enjoy an ever-growing divide from the 80% of tasks, projects, jobs, and responsibilities that simply never did it for you!
And how do you find this 20%? My theory is that joy is tied to purpose. In order to do our best work, we need a strong, compelling why. If we can’t rationalize to ourselves why something we give so much of our time to is worthwhile, our minds will start building up defensive barriers against doing it. This self-preservation instinct, operating at the subconscious level, takes various forms: laziness, calling in sick to work, a nagging suspicion you’re just not very good at your job and will never amount to anything, irritability, a bottle of wine every night after work…
I could go on. It’s the mind screaming: “Stop doing this thing! It lacks meaning for you! There is no purpose in it! Go find what makes you tick!”
You need purpose. You need a why. Or you will never, ever distinguish yourself, or be particularly good at what you do.
Purpose Is A Force Multiplier
The relationship between productivity and purpose is powerful. So powerful, that I’m convinced it is the moral responsibility of every human being alive (including you — reading this) to identify and work in your purpose.
Purpose-driven work contributes to a better world, because when you love what you do:
You are less grumpy and more joyful, which positively impacts other people
You do more of it, becoming more productive and growing your mastery
Everything feels less like a chore and more like a calling. You may love your work, but NOBODY likes chores, ok?
Even chores feel more tolerable, since they’re done in service of your higher self, your calling, the stuff that lights you up and makes you want to run around naked in a snowy field at midnight screaming about how much your job rules
Purpose acts like a force multiplier, causing even your smallest inputs to generate outsize outputs because of the quality and precision of your inputs as a master of your craft
So now, back to Eric Greitens.
…
I can cop to a few things in common with Mr. Greitens. Other than a few minor details — I never served as a Governor of Missouri, nor as a Navy SEAL — there was enough in his story to keep my attention:
He’s a boxing champion. I’m obsessed with boxing (tho my left uppercut needs work).
He has a long career as a humanitarian. I spent six years in economic development.
He lived in Rwanda. I lived in Rwanda.
So, you know, we’re peas in a pod!
In the epilogue of his excellent book, he writes about visiting wounded Marines at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, some of whom sustained injuries grave enough to likely end their combat careers.
They all, to a [wo]man, first respond that they’d like to go back to their unit/team/assignment.
But if that’s not possible, then what?
It’s better I just paste the text here for your consumption, and even better if you just go out and read the book. I highlighted key points here, and some of the text is edited for brevity:
I walked into another room where a Marine had lost part of his right lung and the use of his right hand. With his good hand, he took mine and shook firmly… We talked for a while about where he'd served, how he'd been hit, and where he was from.
I asked him, "What do you want to do when you recover?" "I want to go back to my unit, sir." I nodded. "I know that your guys'll be glad to know that."
In Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape school we were taught the "Stockdale paradox," named after Admiral James Stockdale, a POW in Vietnam for seven and a half years who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his leadership while in captivity. Stockdale taught that as a leader, you must embrace reality and be brutally honest about the harsh facts of your situation. At the same time, you must maintain hope.
The reality and the brutal fact was that this Marine was not going to be back on the battlefield with his unit any time soon. So how could he maintain hope? In Croatia, Rwanda, Bolivia, India, and a dozen other places overseas, I'd seen people rebuild their lives by renewing their sense of purpose.
I said to the Marine, "If you can't go back to your unit right away, what would you like to do?"
He said, "I thought about that a little bit. You know, I had a rough childhood growing up. The Marines was the best thing that happened to me. Those men steered me in the right direction. I've thought that maybe I'd like to go home and maybe be a coach. Maybe I could go home and be some kind of coach or mentor for young kids."
In another room, I talked with a Marine who had lost both his legs. His head was shaved in the Marine Corps high and tight, and his upper body was still powerful. I asked him, "What do you want to do when you recover?"
"Go back to my Marines, sir." After we talked a bit longer, I asked him, "And if you can't go back right away, what would you like to do?"
"I think that maybe I'd like to stay here at Bethesda. I want to find a way to help these other Marines to recover, let them know there's hope for them. I was pretty down when I first learned that I lost my legs, but I've had a lot of wonderful people that helped me, and so I'd like to help out other guys that come in."
Later, I talked with a Marine who had been hit by a roadside bomb. "How's your hearing?" I asked.
"In one of my ears it's bad. In the other it's getting better. The doctors say they think it'll come back. I hope it'll all come back soon."
When I asked him what he would like to do if he couldn't go back to his unit, he said that he might want to become a teacher. His dad added, "We've been talking about him going back to college to get a teaching degree."
As I left the hospital that day, I knew that these men and women had a long stream of visitors who were coming to the hospital to tell them, "Thank you.” And it was clear that our men and women appreciated that. It meant a lot to them when they heard, "Thank you."
I also realized that these men and women had to hear something else. In addition to "Thank you," they also had to hear, "We still need you." They had to know that we viewed them not as problems, but as assets; that we saw them not as weak, but as strong. They had to know that we were glad they were home, that we needed their strength here at home, that we needed them to continue to serve here at home.
I knew from my experience working with Bosnian refugees and Rwandan survivors that those who found a way to serve others were able to rebuild their own sense of purpose, despite all they had lost. I knew from my time in refugee camps and my time working with children of the street that to build a new life in the face of great challenge, what mattered was not what we gave them, but what they did.
Our wounded and disabled veterans had lost a lot. Some had lost their eyesight. Some their hearing. Some had lost limbs. All of that they could recover from. If they lost their sense of purpose, however, that would be deadly.
I also knew that no one was going to be able to give them hope; they were going to have to create hope through action…I found plenty of organizations ready to give to veterans or to advocate for them, but no organizations that were ready to ask of wounded veterans that they continue their service.
I wanted to welcome returning wounded and disabled veterans not just with charity, but with a challenge. So I donated my combat pay to begin a different kind of veterans' organization, and two friends contributed money from their disability checks. …We would provide them with the challenge and the opportunity to rebuild a meaningful life by serving again in communities here at home.
When I committed to work as a volunteer CEO, a good friend asked me to re-think my plans. "How are you going to make money? How are you going to support yourself?" I thought of Jason and Caroline, who had left everything to work with the street children of Bolivia. I thought of the nuns I had seen in the home for the destitute and dying in Varanasi, India, of the aid workers who had flown to Rwanda. I thought of Earl Blair, who dedicated his life to teaching young men to box. I had learned that there came a point in their lives when they simply had to listen to their hearts and trust that if they did the right thing, all would work out in the end.
Read that last bit again.
“I had learned that there came a point in their lives when they simply had to listen to their hearts and trust that if they did the right thing, all would work out in the end.”
This is what I’m talking about when I go on endlessly about purpose. When you find deeper meaning in your work, and when this meaning resonates with your very core, you are able to clear away distractions, ignore other people’s criticisms, defeat your internal resistance, and drown out the many reasons not to do the thing…and just focus on doing the thing.
In other words, when you find your purpose, you are able to listen to your own heart and trust that if you just keep doing the right thing — the right thing for you — that all will work out in the end.
And now I come back to the poem I quoted in the beginning of this article. It describes Sir Gallahad’s quest to find the Holy Grail: a quest of endurance, hardship, and endless roadblocks. A constant test of faith in the worthiness of his mission, commitment to his goals, and resilience in the face of adversity, even if his success was everything but guaranteed, since he was after no less than the Holy Grail:
“My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.”
Sir Gallahad’s strength was equivalent to that of ten, because in his heart, he had no doubts about the value of his mission. His utter and pure commitment to his purpose gave him the strength to slog through considerable hardship. This is the hardship we all face when we chase our highest goals. The only way to rationalize our emotional commitment to our work is to have a powerful and motivating purpose behind it.
Tennyson is not just referring to the nobility of Sir Galahad’s quest. He’s giving you the formula for excellence! If you commit yourself to mastery, if you know in your heart this is your purpose, if you clear away all other distractions, your strength will be as the strength of ten, because you’re going to be really, really good at what you do!
Believe this. Accept it as truth. Do not sell yourself short. Find your purpose or email me so I can help you find it, and then redirect all your resources toward the realization of your purpose. You WILL be good at it. You WILL distinguish yourself in it. You WILL build wealth.
But find your purpose.
I’ll leave you with one more thing to mull over:
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Sometimes — nay, often — your purpose-driven work will be crushingly monotonous. You will experience doubt and fear. This is natural. And if you were only tenuously connected to your job, attached only by the weak tentacles of position and paycheck, you might well come across such obstacles and quit.
But you’re in your purpose now. This is flow state. You’re committed and you love it despite how much you sometimes hate it. You’re strapped in, umbilically linked. This…harness this.
It’s not the hundredth blow that cracks the rock, but all the blows that came before.
This is the kind of commitment that builds mastery, for only this kind of commitment, borne of purpose, imbued with why, in service of your higher self, can push you through the drudgery and muck you will certainly encounter on the quest for your personal Holy Grail.