"Your job exists to give you the life that you want" - Colin Campbell.
I think maybe I need to put this on our quote wall; I think maybe this is the quote that I would like to be remembered for if I was ever remembered for anything (unlikely).
Those of a certain age who used to listen to Radio 1 in the afternoons in the 1990s and early 2000s will remember Mark and Lard with enormous fondness (The Boy Lard).
Mark and Lard are from Manchester, and they were the most inappropriate and irreverent DJs ever to grace the airwaves of Radio 1.
They were utterly inappropriate with their innuendo, but they were hilarious, and those of us of that generation (males and females alike) got great joy at how they broke up our afternoon.
I remember one sketch in the middle of an afternoon when I was treating a lady who must have been 60 or 70 for dentures.
I literally bit holes in my cheeks, not to laugh as I was working.
It was an utter joy (she never noticed at all and was never listening because it was background noise).
One of the things that Mark and Lard used to say was, "We're the only thing on Radio 1 right now".
They would usually do this after they'd broken out into uncontrollable laughter because of something that they were doing.
I remember a particularly hilarious time with Mr Methane.
The point here is, though, that Mark and Lard were never going to be Primetime BBC, One hosting game shows or talent shows or I'm a Celebrity or any of that sh*t.
Mark and Lard knew exactly what they were and who they were, and they loved their work, they carried on doing what they were doing and couldn't believe that people let them; they couldn't believe that their job was their job.
The funny thing is, many of us have the opportunity to have a job like that on a day-to-day basis; it's just that we choose not to.
We choose to get caught in the lifestyle trap, buying things for our families and our children that they don't want, but we think we have to or else we will be unhappy.
We choose to be serious when we don't have to be.
We choose to be joyless when, in fact, our days can be filled with joy and working with people whom we love, respect, trust, and admire.
That is the key to this.
The key to your work existing to give you the life you want is to choose to be surrounded by people who allow you to have that type of work.
I referenced the Madrid Paradox in this blog.
I talked about the trip to Madrid with my friend Colin Burns and my son and with one of my best friends, Tom Reason, who is my wife's cousin but also our marketing and education director.
It's a joy to work with people like this because there is no boundary between going to Madrid and sitting in a marketing meeting, deciding how you might fill a business course; it's all the same.
It's Chris Barrow's lesson to live by, which is 'there is no work-life balance because the opposite of life is death, not work' and work is such an important and immovable part of your life that what we should be trying to do is leveraging our work for joy, not leveraging our work for money.
As a final reference to some sort of movie or metaphor (I know you must be fed up with me after seeing this sh*te), I go back to Lord of the Rings, the book, not the film.
The dwarfs were renowned for their greed in the Lord of the Rings world but the Elvin Queen Galadriel speaks to the dwarf Gimli as they're leaving her forest and says to him, "Your hands shall flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion."
I think that's what happens when you have joy and seek joy in your work.
Blog Post Number - 3707
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