We all have so much potential to develop, so the time to develop that potential is now. When you develop your potential, you are becoming more valuable, so the value you can add to others grows. As you continue to add that value to others, the passion for what you do grows also. As you grow older, you will not be living a normal life and the pride you will feel for what you do will keep growing too.

How do you see the world right now? Did you know that how you see the world has so much to do with how the world sees you?

1. How You See Things

I bet in work right now that there are so many of your colleagues who turn up in the morning and they are very negative about being there. I was one of those, and so were my friends. I couldn’t wait to leave, and when I did leave, I was still in a negative mood.

When I started my apprenticeship, after about a year of being in the job, I hated going to work, I hated being there, and I started to hate doing the work too. Most of the people I worked with were in the same place too.

When the shift started, it took me a while to get started, and when break time came, I was the first to leave and head to the mess room. This was being noticed by a lot of people because as we said earlier, we are always a role model for somebody.

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I saw what I was doing as a job, and that was it. I was 17 years old, and I was not working towards something. I didn’t have a personal mission every day when I went to work that I needed to fulfil.

The people I worked with during my apprenticeship, a lot of them still feel the same way about their jobs.

They still hate getting up in the morning to go to work, they still hate driving in, and they hate turning up to the job. They have a negative attitude all day, do as little work as possible and they can’t wait to leave.

I know there are a lot of your peers feel the same way too. They hate waking up in the morning, travelling in and then turning up. They do as little as possible to get through the day and then can’t wait to leave to get back home.

People who have this attitude towards work are a causing a problem to everyone else.

2. Solving Problems

Problems need to be solved, it is very difficult to solve problems on our own, and much better to solve problems together.

These people don’t know and can’t see that they are the problem, including myself, and I first realised this when I was given my first leadership development training.

I was 23 years old and a graduate engineer. I was going through university, so not fully graduated but I still saw what I was doing as “just a job”. I still couldn’t see what my mission was, how to reach my full potential and how to help others.

The leadership development training was a three-day course, and involved other colleagues who also had the same negative attitude towards their job as described earlier. What was being taught on this course are some of the same principles that I am describing in my books.

Anyway, during one of the breaks in the first day of this leadership development course I wanted to talk to the course trainer. It had only been a couple of hours into the course and already I was reflecting on myself.

I was thinking about where I was in my life, my career and where I wanted to get to. I was thinking about the question, where do you see yourself in 5 years? To be honest, I didn’t really know. I knew I would finish my engineering graduate scheme, but I didn’t really know after that.

There were others on the course with me who were older and had been in the job for a lot longer, but they were unhappy.

Some had even worked there before, left because they were unhappy, got a different job that they thought would make them happy, it didn’t, and now they were back at the same company unhappy again.

What are your thoughts on what made them unhappy? If they were unhappy at first, left and were still unhappy, came back and were unhappy again, then the problem must have been themselves, right?

3. Working On YOU

So, the course went on and the more we were taught, the more we realised that the only thing that was making us all unhappy and was us. If you go somewhere different, and you still have the same problem as before, then there is only one answer to what the problem is: YOU.

Now that we realised that we were the problem, we were in a perfect position to investigate the problem and solve it. If you are unhappy at work then you are in an even better position because you can investigate and solve the problem of YOU right now.

I made the decision during the leadership development course to be grateful for where I was in my life, but not satisfied. I decided from then on that I was going to work on myself and change myself.

You should do the same and make the decision to be grateful, but not satisfied in your life too. Work on yourself to become the best version of yourself every day from now on.

It is better to build strong children than to repair broken adults. You must focus your energy on building a new you, not repairing the old you.

From then on after my leadership development course had finished, things started to improve. I took leadership development very seriously. I started to read books, watch videos, take online courses, and practice leadership as much as I could. I was and I still am always grateful, but I am never satisfied.

I was investing in myself and my own development. You are reading this article, so you are doing the same. When you invest in yourself and you work on yourself to keep improving, things around you improve.

4. Helping Others

You will help others to work on themselves, and they will do the same. You will take this way of thinking and behaving into the world of work when you are there full time.

Everybody throughout the world has a gift, and it is our duty to share those gifts. Leaders know how to unlock a person’s potential. As a Leader, you will know and understand the people around you and their gifts. It is your duty to unlock that potential and expose their gifts to others who need them.

If your colleague, a family member or a friend provided you with one of my books, then it shows how much you are cared for. They are investing in you because they love you. It is only you who can take action and improve your life, nobody else can do that for you.

No matter if you’re working, you must always be grateful for where you are in life. Gratitude is a decision we make, and it is the right one. You must be grateful for your parents, your family, your friends, your work colleagues, and your boss.

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You must be grateful for the opportunities you have received so far in your life to grow, and for the opportunities you are going to receive later in life. Life is a privilege, and we must all be grateful for that privilege.

I never really saw my workplace as a place to grow, to learn or to make a difference in my own or in the lives of others. I know you will start to see your workplace as that. I know you will start working on yourself to become the most valuable you can be so you can make that difference in the lives of others.

But remember you must always be grateful, no matter where you are in your life, and you must never be satisfied.

Make that decision about where you want to go and be positive about where you are now. If you are always grateful and never satisfied, you will keep that positive outlook on where you are now, and where you’re going next.

If you can make a positive difference in your own life and in the life of another person, you will be living well. If you can help another person become successful in life, then you too will be a success.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)