You Get Out of Life What You Put into It
Anyone who has ever planted a vegetable garden knows the truth of the saying, "You get out of life what you put into it." Just consider all the things that can go wrong with a vegetable garden.
If you don't break up the ground, remove the weeds, and add nutrients, seeds won't have nearly as good a chance to sprout and to grow to their full potential. Forget to put seeds in, and whatever grows in your garden probably won't feed you very well.
Fail to keep the ground moist enough, and your vegetable shoots will soon wither and blow away. Drag your watering hose carelessly over the young plants, and they will lie broken and useless rather than becoming larger and stronger.
Ignore the weeds that regularly pop up, and you may still end up with a harvest of weeds rather than of vegetables. Forget to protect your crop with rabbit wire, and the hungry critters will eat better than you will.
Omit insecticide at critical times, and you'll only have bare stalks to show for your efforts. Fail to pick the vegetables when they are ready, and you've only managed to produce expensive compost for next year's planting.
Is it any wonder that many parents encourage their youngsters to plant and to care for small vegetable gardens? It's better to learn these important lessons about doing all that it takes to succeed at ages five, six, or seven than later on.
The saying is especially helpful in drawing attention to the benefits of learning how to accomplish important, practical results. Consider school work, one of the first places where young people either gain or fail to obtain advantages in proportion to the attention and effort they put into their learning activities.
If young people don't pay attention during classroom activities, they may not even know what subjects have been covered. Unless the daydreaming youngster takes home and shares a long-term assignment, parents won't find out about the lack of attention until quite a bit of time has passed. If parents aren't aware of what a child is doing or they don't care, the problems arising from inattention may never be remedied.
The dreamy youngster will eventually receive lots of feedback from the teacher and possibly from parents, but it will be quite easy for the correct lesson to be missed: Youngsters have to take responsibility for their own learning.
The clueless child could easily conclude that the adults are just being unreasonable in their demands and expectations. Such an incorrect conclusion does more harm than good.
There's another aspect to efforts being rewarded that's worth appreciating: If you take the saying seriously, you will probably set higher and more challenging standards for yourself than someone else would set for you . . . simply because you want to gain the benefits that come from doing better and more work.
You may not agree that the saying encourages setting and achieving higher standards. Let me share an example to demonstrate what I mean.
Mr. Larry Bauman has worked hard throughout his life, beginning with helping to pay for high school and college expenses by managing a picture-frame shop. That dedication paid off early. After graduating from Emory University where he studied English, political science, and marketing, he was offered a series of ever more challenging opportunities to establish and to develop an enviable management career in the wall-decor industry.
Energized by these opportunities to build on his knowledge and to accomplish more, he worked in many different parts of the industry and in a variety of roles. From these experiences, he developed many trusting relationships and learned to help others profitably grow their businesses.
While thus engaged, Mr. Bauman also sought a way to accomplish his long-standing interest in working for himself. Following a successful two-year contract engagement to turn around someone else's business, he accomplished his goal by founding Phoenix Business Consulting, Inc.
Seeking to add more value for his clients, he next earned certification as a management consultant and formed valuable alliances with successful consultants whose expertise was complementary to his own.
To raise his visibility and credibility with potential clients, Mr. Bauman wrote three books about helpful sales practices and coauthored a leadership book. In addition, he published several articles and white papers. In contrast to his extensive writing, it is unusual for more than one business consultant in a hundred to write even a single book related to his or her professional expertise.
Wanting to acquire even more knowledge and to add effectiveness, he decided to begin doctoral studies in behavioral economics (an important discipline for improving management performance) at Rushmore University. He soon discovered that he had set out to accomplish something quite difficult because he still needed to maintain a full-time consulting practice.
Rising at 4 a.m. daily, Mr. Bauman read and wrote papers on topics in psychology, heuristics, decisional analysis, and economics until 10 a.m. On week days, he then started his full day of work as a consultant. When I asked him about setting high goals, he mentioned that he found his studies to be challenging because he felt encouraged to set and meet high standards so that the rewards he gained would be greater.
After earning his Ph.D. degree, he immediately began to enjoy the benefits of the hard work. He published his dissertation, making his research more readily available to clients and to those who are interested in the subject. He broadened his client base and he secured desirable consulting assignments in the life sciences industry, often working with high-level executives and operating people. The university invited him to join its faculty, as well.
Since then, Professor Bauman has gained great satisfaction from an expanded consulting practice, more book-writing opportunities to share the learning he gained after graduation, and the intellectual stimulation of supervising graduate business students. He expects to write even more books, articles, and white papers.
Based on his experiences with putting in great efforts to gain valuable rewards, I asked Professor Bauman what advice he has for someone who is now in his former situation and is thinking about earning a mid-career graduate degree in business.
His advice was unambiguous: "Be prepared to work hard. You will get out of it what you put into it."
Not everyone has the schedule flexibility that comes from being an early riser and a self-employed consultant. In addition, some people don't feel as energetic as others.
Does that mean that no attractive choices are available to get more out of life? Of course, it doesn't.
A more practical route for many people is to focus on the following five principles in making more effort in order to gain more benefits:
1. Start long before you require the results that you want to obtain.
2. Seek advice from highly talented individuals about how to accomplish a lot from whatever efforts you can make.
3. Focus on useful activities that feel more like play than like work.
4. Don't let your efforts draw you away from other important priorities (such as your faith, your family, and your health).
5. Point your efforts toward results that will enable you to eventually enjoy enough bounty to make the efforts worthwhile.
About the Author:
Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, who often teaches people who want to improve their effectiveness in order to accomplish career breakthroughs through earning advanced degrees. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness, visit
http://www.rushmore.edu .
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