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What Is Really Under Your Control?
Ancient Wisdom and The Art of Enough — Lesson 3
In 1992, my wife and I left Fayetteville and bought a home on the beach in North Carolina. Once we got settled, we began looking for someone to do some remodeling and asked several locals we met. Several people told us the guy who did the best work was Steve, but that came with a warning.
While Steve did amazing work, he was notoriously unreliable with time. Knowing that, we talked with and ultimately hired Steve. I loved Steve. He was my kind of guy. He was into Buddhism, loved to talk philosophy and music.
Steve showed up as promised on the agreed-upon date but accomplished very little. When we asked what happened, he explained that he went up on the roof during his morning break and it was so beautiful that he remained there, looking at the ocean and meditating the rest of the day.
At first, we shrugged, but soon my wife was getting annoyed with how slowly everything was going. She began to complain to me — a lot! Until I asked her one important question: “Did she want to fire him and find someone else?”
She replied that she did not want to fire Steve because his work was truly amazing. In fact. he was the best craftsman we had ever worked with.
