Why do we work` The best answer is to become a better person. Once we understand that we have the potential of doing a whole lot more than we think we can, then whenever we are becoming bitter while we are working, we will do the best we can to move away from being bitter to being better. George Bernard Shaw said a very powerful thing `God give me the courage to change the things I can, the patience to bear with the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to differentiate between the two.` Work is the way to self improvement, everyday that we work; it is an opportunity for us to become better in dealing with the challenges of life and come out better not bitter. Why do we get married` The best answer is to produce better persons. Producing better persons is a life long process. The challenges we face at work give us the opportunity to become better in handling and in the process we become better. It then allows us to guide our children to become better in handling such challenges in their own lives. At work we come across all kinds of challenges, majority being people related. Often we come across people who are arrogant, insecure, biased, quick to temper, prone to misunderstanding, and miscommunication, it requires ability on our part to deal with such individuals. Once we develop our abilities, it then allows us to become a better coach to our children, and enables us to set them up for greater levels of success in their student and later on in their work lives. In fulfilling our responsibilities at home and at work, we can do them with a sense of commitment, or with a sense of compulsion. We can do the tasks involved in each of the responsibilities thinking that they are important not difficult. Creating a sense of commitment and thinking of the tasks as important is the result of the way we think. The way we think is influenced by multiple factors, like our upbringing, the company we keep, the quality of reading and viewing of television and movies. We can't do much about our upbringing, although we can do a lot about the upbringing of our children. Viewing of movies such as Taare Zameen Par, or Pursuit of Happiness goes a long way in creating a mindset that will create a thinking conducive to creating a sense of commitment. Keeping the company of individuals who are committed to healthy causes at work and otherwise diffuses in us the will and the desire to be a committed person. Reading the autobiographies and biographies of high achievers in various areas is the virtual way of keeping their company that also helps in becoming more and more committed.
Extensive research on happiness finds that there are three components of happiness: pleasure, engagement that is the depth of involvement with one's family, work and hobbies, and meaning that is using personal strength to serve some larger end. Of the three pleasure, engagement, and meaning, pleasure is the least consequential in creating happiness. This is crucial because so many of us build our lives around pursuing pleasure. It turns out that engagement and meaning are much more important. Please do your best, always. Commitment will keep complacency and cynicism away.