If today was your last day at work, what would it be like? Would you be happy? Would your co-workers be happy or sad? How would your supervisor react? What about your company’s customers, suppliers, and other external contacts?
If the answers are not clear to you, here’s the good news:You have absolute control over the answer to each question. The answer, however, is not about control but about choice. Your choices determine their answers. Simple, but not easy.
Choice is a tricky word, but it’s what makes us human. Ask your pet to go on a diet and see what happens. Ask your cat to not chase lizards and see what happens. Only humans can choose and not be controlled by instinct. Choice gives us the ability to pursue actions that are not instinctive and lead us to the outcomes we desire. Choice leads to actions, actions to habits, habits to character, and character to destiny. Social scientists estimate that today we will each make over 100,000 choices. Don’t try to prove this, or you’ll probably cause a wreck!
So how do you get the responses you desire on your last day at work? Start by serving others and putting them first. Serving others could be as simple as really focusing in on the other person in the conversation and turning off your own responses until they finish. Serving could be as simple as finding something good to say about everyone. Everyone. How about choosing to give your company your best effort when you don’t “feel” like it? Like the afternoon before, or the morning after, March Madness final. Simple, but not easy.
Here’s my daily plan. Bring two goals to every choice.
1) What is the right thing to do (not the easy thing)?
2) Will the person or company be better because of their interaction with me?
Simple, but not easy.
Everyone will have a last day at work. On that you have no choice. The choice you do have is really when to start determining everyone’s reaction. Choose wisely.