Who Will Cry When You Die\?: Life Lessons From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari pdfdrive com

99.
Love Your Work
One of the timeless secrets to a long, happy life is to love your work. The golden
thread running through the lives of history’s most satisfied people is that they all
loved what they did for a living. When psychologist Vera John-Steiner
interviewed one hundred creative people, she found they all had one thing in
common: an intense passion for their work. Spending your days doing work that
you find rewarding, intellectually challenging and fun will do more than all the
spa vacations in the world to keep your spirits high and your heart engaged.
Thomas Edison, a man who recorded 1,093 patents in his lifetime, ranging from
the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and the microphone to the movies,
had this to say about his brilliant career at the end of his life, “I never did a day’s
work in my life: it was all fun.”
When you love your job, you discover you will never have to work another
day in your life. Your work will be play and the hours will slip away as quickly
as they came. As novelist James Michener wrote:
The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and
his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information
and his recreation, his life and his religion. He hardly knows which is
which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does,
leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is
always doing both.

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100.
Selflessly Serve
Albert Schweitzer said, “There is no higher religion than human service. To
work for the common good is the greatest creed.” And the ancient Chinese
believed that “a little fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”
One of the greatest lessons for a highly fulfilling life is to rise from a life spent
chasing success to one dedicated to finding significance. And the best way to
create significance is to ask yourself one simple question, “How may I serve?”
All great leaders, thinkers and humanitarians have abandoned selfish lives
for selfless lives and, in doing so, found all the happiness, abundance and
satisfaction they desired. They have all understood that all-important truth of
humanity: you cannot pursue success; success ensues. It flows as the unintended
but inevitable by-product of a life spent serving people and adding value to the
world.
Mahatma Gandhi understood the service ethic better than most. In one
memorable story from his life, he was traveling across India by train. As he left
the car he had been riding in, one of his shoes fell to a place on the tracks well
beyond his reach. Rather than worrying about getting it back, he did something
that startled his traveling companions: he removed his other shoe and threw it to
where the first one rested. When asked why he did this, Gandhi smiled and
replied: “Now the poor soul who finds the first one will have a pair that he can
wear.”

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