Don’t Hold a Begrudge

There should only be two kinds of actions: ones you don’t take, and ones you take with great enthusiasm.

This isn’t me saying to only do things you want to do – that would be nice, but it’s not realistic. It’s me giving you the powerful advice that you should never do anything begrudgingly.

I’m of the mindset that I like to get the maximum benefit out of everything I do. And when you do something begrudgingly, you forego a lot of that benefit. Sometimes in life, you will simply have to do something. Pretty often, actually. And some people react to this truth with great petulance, kicking rocks and grumbling the whole way. They act as if the most important thing in the world is that everyone around them knows how much they don’t want to be doing this.

First, that’s silly because doing that takes significantly more mental and physical effort than just doing it and going on about your day. But second, and more importantly, that’s leaving half the reward on the table.

Whenever you do something, there’s always this great secondary benefit of scoring points with other people. Remember when you were an adolescent and your parents made you do the laundry or the dishes? Once that command came down, you were going to do that chore no matter what. It was set – your attitude wasn’t going to change the task at all.

Now imagine yourself back in that position. You have your assignment, and absolutely nothing about your attitude will change it. So now you have two options:

1. Do those dishes with the maximum amount of belligerence and sass. They will take longer, you will be in a worse mood, and your parents will treat your completion of the task as the bare minimum required and not feel any obligation to reward or even praise you. Or…
2. You can do those dishes with great cheer and enthusiasm. This takes no additional effort on your part – I’m not even suggesting you do extra work like also sweeping or anything. I’m saying just your attitude alone will make the task more fun and enjoyable, get it done faster, and your parents will be so utterly thrilled with you that they’ll probably buy you a car.

This is one of the great hacks of life: Training yourself to always approach tasks that you have to do as if you had, in fact, chosen to do them with great joy. It’s getting twice the reward from the same or less amount of effort, while also having more fun.

This is the easiest thing in the world to put into practice, today, if you know how to spot it. What’s something your partner or roommate harps on you to do more? Look, you know you’re eventually going to cave and do it – so don’t “cave and do it,” jump on it! Do it with enthusiasm, make a production out of it, and gift your actions to that person with some nice comments about how much their happiness means to you.

Assignment you don’t like at work? Well, unless you’re planning to quit, you’ve probably got to do it at some point. So do it with cheer! Might as well score some additional reputation as a go-getter and pleasant work colleague if you’re doing the same tasks anyway.

Almost everything you do is an exchange with somebody. If you’re putting in the same on your end either way, but you can get more in return by simply changing your attitude, that’s a superpower. In the same way you should generally brag more about what you’ve done, you should also smile more about what you’re doing. Both of those things squeeze more juice out of the same orange, in a way that benefits you and harms no one else. So don’t begrudge – be great!