Never Work a Day in Your Life

Lesson 5 from Leadership Gold

John Maxwell

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781400275397
• eBook ISBN:
  9781400275397
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Smart leaders learn from their own mistakes. Smarter ones learn from others' mistakes—and successes.  

John C. Maxwell wants to help you become the smartest leader you can be by sharing Chapter 5,Never Work A Day In Your Life, of Leadership Gold with you. After nearly forty years of leading, Maxwell has mined the gold so you don't have to. Each chapter contains detailed application exercises and a "Mentoring Moment" for leaders who desire to mentor others using the book. 

NEVER WORK A DAY
IN YOUR LIFE

People often ask me the key to my success. Setting aside for the moment the whole question of what it means to be successful, my answer is usually quite simple. I love what I do! We have all heard the advice: find something you like to do so much that you would gladly do it for nothing; then learn to do it so well that people are happy to pay you for it. That’s what I’ve done in my career. I feel like Thomas Edison, who said, “I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun!”

FOLLOWING MY PASSION

Following your passion is the key to finding your potential. You will not achieve the latter without pursuing the former. I remember well the incident that caused me to make the connection between passion and potential in my own life. It occurred in Hillham, Indiana, where I took my first job. I was the pastor of a small country church there. It wasn’t much to look at. The church building was more than a hundred years old. The roof sagged and the walls bowed. The first Sunday I was there three people attended the service—and two of them were my wife, Margaret, and me! Most leaders would have been discouraged with the situation, but not me.

My passion to grow a congregation in that farming community knew no bounds. When friends came to visit Margaret and me, I immediately took them over to our church for a tour, which took all of about thirty seconds! I wasn’t worried about the location, the old building, the small attendance, or even my lack of experience. I was filled with passion. I wanted to help people.

Over the next several months, my passion spread to the community. The church began to fill up on Sundays. Momentum was increasing, and I could sense...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NEVER WORK A DAY IN YOUR LIFE
• NOTES
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR