Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude

A definite goal made her enthusiastic. In one of our classes, we were talking about this principle of bringing enthusiasm into one's job, when a young lady in the rear of the classroom raised her hand. She got to her feet and said:

"I've come here with my husband. What you say may be all right for a man in business, but it's no good for a housewife. You men have new and interesting challenges every day. But it's not like that with housework. The trouble with housework is... it's just too darned daily."

This seemed like a real challenge to us: there are a lot of people who have jobs that are "just too darned daily." If we could find some way to help this young lady, perhaps we could help others who thought their work was routine. We asked her what made her housework seem so "daily," and it turned out that she had no sooner finished making the beds when they were dirtied again, washing the dishes when they were soiled again, cleaning the floors when they were muddied again. "You just get these things done so they can get undone," she said.

"It does seem frustrating," the instructor agreed. "Are there any women who do enjoy housework?"

"Well, yes, I guess there are," she said.

"What do they find in housework to interest them and keep them enthusiastic?"

After a moment's thought the young woman replied, "Maybe it's their attitude. They don't seem to think their work is confining; they seem to see something beyond the routine."

This was the crux of the problem. One of the secrets of job satisfaction is being able to "see beyond the routine." It is knowing that your work is leading somewhere. This is true whether you are a housewife or a file clerk, a gasoline pump operator or the president of a large corporation. You'll find satisfaction in routine chores only when you see them as stepping stones. Each chore I a stone, leading in a direction that you choose.

Use the step-stone theory. The answer, then, for this young housewife, was to find some goal which she really wanted to achieve, and to find a way to make her routine daily housework lead to the attainment of that goal. She volunteered the information that she had always wanted to take her family on a trip around the world.

"All right," the instructor said. "We'll settle on that Now, set yourself a time limit. When do you want to go?"

"When the baby is twelve years old," she said. "That will be six years from now."

"Now, let's see. This will take a little doing. You will need money, for one thing. Your husband will have to be able to take off for a year. You will have to plan an itinerary. You will want to study up on the countries you will be visiting. Do you suppose you can find a way to let bed-making, dish-washing, floor-

scrubbing, and meal-planning be stepping stones toward your goal?"

A few months later the lady in this story came to see us. It was apparent the minute she walked into the room that here was a woman who had succeeded proudly.

"It's amazing," she told us, "how well this stepping-stone idea has worked! I haven't found a single chore that doesn't fit in. I use my cleaning time as a thinking and planning time. Shopping time is a wonderful time to expand our horizons: I deliberately buy foods from other countries: foods that we will be eating on our trip. And I use the meal time as a teaching time. If we are having Chinese egg noodles, I read all I can find about China and its people, and then at dinner I tell the family all about them.

"Not one of my duties is dull or uninteresting to me anymore. And I know they never will be again, thanks to the step-stone theory!"

So no matter how humdrum or tiresome your job may be, if at the end of it you see a goal that you desire, that job can bring satisfaction to you. This is a situation which confronts many persons in all walks of life. One young man may want to be a doctor, but he has to work his way through school. The job he takes will be decided by many factors, such as hours, location, rate of pay, and so on. Aptitude will have little to do with it. A very intelligent, ambitious, young man may end up behind a soda fountain, washing cars, or digging ditches. Certainly the job offers him no challenge or stimulation. It is merely a means to an end. Yet because he knows he is going where he wants to go, to him whatever strains the job may impose on him are worth the end result.

Sometimes, however, the price to be paid on a given job is too high in relation to the goal which it will purchase. And if such a job should happen to be yours, change your job. For if you are unhappy at your job, the poisons of this dissatisfaction spread into every phase of living.