10 Jan Always Do Your Best | William George Jordan Podcasts
Podcast Excerpt: If we honestly seek to live our best at all times, that determination is visible in every moment of our living, and no trifle in our lives can be too insignificant to reflect this principle of living. The sun illuminates a fallen leaf by the roadside as impartially as a towering mountain peak in the Alps. Every drop of water in the ocean is an epitome of the chemistry of the whole ocean; every drop is subject to precisely the same laws as dominate the united infinity of billions of drops that make that miracle of Nature we call the Sea.
No matter how humble your calling may be, how uninteresting and dull the round of your duties, you should do your best. You should dignify what you are doing by the mind you put into it; you should vitalize what little you may have of power or energy or ability or opportunity, in order to prepare yourself to be equal to higher privileges when they come. By doing so, you will never suffer that weak contentment that is satisfied with whatever falls to your lot. It will rather fill your mind with that divine discontent that cheerfully accepts the best — merely as a temporary substitute for something better.
The individual who is seeking ever to do their best is the one who is keen, active, wide-awake, and aggressive. They are ever watchful of themselves in trivial matters; their standard is not “What will the world say?” but “Is it worthy of me?”
Edwin Booth, one of the greatest actors on the American stage, would never permit himself to assume an ungraceful attitude, even in his hours of privacy. In this simple thing, he ever lived his best. On the stage, every move he made was one of unconscious grace. Those of his company who were conscious of their motions were the awkward ones, who were seeking in public to undo or to conceal the carelessness of the gestures and motions of their private life.
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