Do you believe that you provide value through your work?

In the absence of numbers, all I could go on is my experience while shopping.

I go to the bookstore and the people working there are involved in every activity except figuring out why I am there and if I got what I was looking for. I go to a popular coffee shop and am amazed that the service is so poor.

Of course, the place is packed so I am figuring, since we “like it so” why bother to provide an extraordinary service? I’ve started to look into the eyes of those serving me and I see emptiness, an absence of motivation, a “going through the motions” glazed over functioning.

These folks rarely snap out of this unconscious behaviour until someone like me, forces them to interact. They would rather discuss movies, what they saw on Netflix (an actual conversation I heard while at a bookstore in Trincity mall) than attend to me, a mere customer.

This is sad as it pertains to customer service. It is sad that the owners of these establishments are not taking responsibility because if they really were, they would be checking so regularly that I would not have to be faced with these empty souls in search of some much-needed guidance and direction.

But the empty souls sadden me the most, because to paraphrase that popular quote by Henry David Thoreau, these men and women are leading lives of quiet desperation and will probably die with their song still in them.

If you feel that you’re just going through the motions in your job, that it doesn’t pay enough, that your take home pay won’t take you home and that perhaps months should be shorter. If you’re thinking that there must be something more and that even though you are successful by society’s standards you still feel as if something is missing, then I hope I got your attention.

You either don’t see the value in what you do, or you see your value as far as what you do for your company, but can’t necessarily see your value beyond your job description and deliverables. So you’re either operating at a mediocre level or you are operating in your zone of competence.

Bestselling author Rory Vaden says, “It doesn’t much matter what we say we believe, our real beliefs are revealed by how we act.” We can lie with our words but we cannot lie with our actions. You don’t even have to tell people what you believe, because you can show them.

And how congruent are the things you say you believe in alignment with the things you actually do? Whether you work for yourself, or are employed, Courtney Carver, the Be more with less blogger says the following statements are true when you believe in your work: • You create and work with people from your heart and soul.

• It will energize you instead of exhaust you.

• You are connected deeply to what you create and the people who use it.

• You can see possibility through uncertainty.

• You can trust people to buy it instead of forcing them to make a sale.

• You can charge what it’s worth.

• The right people will want to work with you.

In their book, The Big Leap authors Hendricks and Johnson tell us: “Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success, and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy. When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure… Unfortunately, our thermostat setting usually gets programmed in early childhood, before we can think for ourselves. Once programmed, our Upper Limit thermostat setting holds us back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance, and creativity that’s rightfully ours. It keeps us in our Zone of Competence or at best our Zone of Excellence. It prevents us from living in the ultimate destination of the journey — our Zone of Genius.” I believe that the challenge we face is to stop labelling ourselves as incompetent, or lazy or difficult to work with. Let’s look at the contexts that trigger our behaviour, let’s understand what makes us unique and how we can use that individuality to gain the edge we seek in our lives! For a free copy of the report “How to take Full Advantage of your Zone of Genius and Gain an Edge in Life” send an email to possibility2profit@gmail.com