How To Love Your Mondays Like Fridays

OK, in your best FM radio voice, let’s hear it: It’s the weeeeekend.

Some weekends are welcomed more than others, depending on the week, of course. But, if you find yourself slogging through your weeks just to run whimpering into the arms of Friday evening, you might have a bigger issue than a couple days off can resolve.

I was reminded this week of a concept that I heard during the 2013 Million Dollar Round Table annual. It was during Rory Vaden’s presentation of “Take the Stairs,” which is self-explanatory – if you have the choice between escalator or stairs … I think you can guess the rest.

Basically, he was saying to make it a habit to do the hard stuff. Those people always win. You want those folks in your organization or in whatever circle you inhabit.

Being a veteran stair-climber, I nodded in smug agreement. Then he knocked me down a couple of pegs with a concept he introduced toward the end.

The idea was that success is never owned; it is rented and the rent is due every day.
He reached a crescendo as he said you can substitute whatever you want in the place of “success.” You don’t own a happy marriage – you rent it. You don’t really own a thriving business – you rent it. If you stop paying the rent, you start losing it.

That rang a few bells for me. In each of the cases, the rent you have paid in the past is good will, at best. Sure, there’s some equity, but that evaporates as value plummets. See how much your broken business yields on the market.

Also with a job. Many of us can grow complacent and come to believe that the place owes you that job. After all, here is where your blood, sweat and tears once fell. We shuffle in on Monday and sprint out on Friday, as weeks blur into years.

Somewhere along the way, the deal turns into an entitlement. Then you atrophy into that creeping sense that you are owed something you don’t quite deserve.

That year, 2013, I saw that my Fridays had darkened into a different shade of the Mondays. I realized I had to step up in some things and to step out of others. .

Sometimes we turn to distractions to take our minds off the yawning sameness of living like that. But, Vadim’s point was that these things warranted more attention, not less. More presence, not more escape.

So, home, work or wherever, if it’s worth being there, it’s worth investing in.

Happy Friday, everybody.