April 3, 2011

What Do You Take Pride In?

Monday Morning Match is a short post - maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea - intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.

I wrote a blog post last year that was focused on passion and what it means to be passionate. I feel it was one of my better posts so I chose to pull a piece of it out for today's Monday Morning Match.

I also chose this quote because the man who said it, Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on this date, April 4th, in 1968. As you read it, pay attention to the thoughts in your head as they relate to your job, your family and your life.

"...When you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better. If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

"Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are."


As you work hard to build relationships, solve problems and have fun this week, do it with just a little bit more passion this week.

Below is the video (or click here) from the great U2 tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. called Pride (In the Name of Love)