Hard work, Acceptance and Humility

Hard work, yes, I’ve been a big fan of this word. Whenever I want to reach or to achieve something it is the first word that enters my mind. Hard work taught me a lot of things. One of them is that “success is sweeter when you worked hard for it”. It also taught me discipline and focus. I can go on with a lot more actually. 

It is true. Hard work allowed me to reach greater heights. People loved me and supported me because of my hard work. They never saw me complain nor slack. In fact I was amazed of my abilities to get what I want because of hard work.

However, just recently, I sat down and looked at my old planners and read my rants. I was so hard working. But I can feel that I was not happy during those moments. I also looked at some of the people who are so close to me. They are also determined and HARD WORKING. But if you would see them and hear their stories you could definitely feel that something is missing. Same with what I feel that was missing in me before.

All these time, I thought hard work would be the best weapon to happiness. I was wrong. Hard work is the vessel. The vessel for us to reach acceptance and humility.

Hard work will not succeed all the time. There will be days that no matter how hard you try or how well you do your thing it will just fall apart. So did your hard work became wasted? No, hard work taught you ACCEPTANCE and HUMILITY. 

Acceptance that not every day is a sunny day for us. Acceptance that there will always be someone greater or better than us. Acceptance of our limitations. It is so amazing how can hard work find a different route to serve its purpose.

Humility to admit that we did not prepare well. Sometimes we can try so hard but has not prepared enough. Humility to ask forgiveness or to be sorry to the people we might have hurt or stepped on during the process of our hard work.

These two would bring us happiness. The kind of happiness that makes is sleep at night with our soul at peace. The kind of happiness that makes us want to try one more time because we know that even if our hard work fails it would lead us to acceptance and humility. 

Hard work may bring us to greater heights and amazing places. But only acceptance and humility will give us genuine happiness.

The three works hand in hand together. The process may not be as easy but as the cliché would say “it will be worth it”