Page 80 - Roy W. Rice - CEO Material How to Be a Leader in Any Organization-McGraw-Hill (2009)

You Have Fire in Your Belly • 61

and a sprained ankle and rides out in the dark in 28 degree weather with
the snow blowing sideways to find a lost calf so that it won’t die. Then he
gets up the next morning at daybreak to find another strangler, but with
some frostbite on his fingers from the night before. And he considers him-
self one of the luckiest people alive.)
“Ambition” as I write it is not the negative definition of ambition:
manipulative, unsavory, self-advancement, self-aggrandizement, or self-
adulation.

The work you do. If it truly matters—it becomes a part of you. Like
the mechanic who never really loses the oil stains under his finger-
nails, our work stays with us wherever we go.

ƒ

When I was very young, my father told me, “If you can’t get up and
look forward to going to your job every morning, you’re in the wrong
job.” If you don’t think about it as work and a 12-hour day goes by
quickly, then that’s your passion.

Jim Holt wrote on the work of British psychologist Richard P. Bentall
for the New York Times. “There is consistent evidence that happy people
overestimate their control over environmental events, give unrealistically
positive evaluations of their own achievements, and believe that others
share their unrealistic opinions about themselves and show a general
lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others.... Indeed,
Bentall has proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric
disorder.” Okay, note that Bentall is both British and a psychologist—
some would say neither is exactly known for being jovial or joyful.
Economists David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College and Andrew
Oswald of Warwick University in England studied a person’s satisfaction
in life. From their research, they concluded that going from having sex
once a month to having it at least weekly is roughly equivalent to the
amount of happiness that an extra $50,000 of income would bring to the
average American. (Okay, so this Brit isn’t that bad.)
Other studies conclude that if you make over $100,000 a year,
you’re slightly happier than those making less. (Duh, right?) Another
study determined that Fortune 500 CEOs are slightly happier than their