Showing posts with label Motivations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motivations. Show all posts

Wednesday, 9 April 2008

Inspiring Others Towards Happiness Brings You Happiness

Let me explain - I drink a trendy herbal tea with yoga poses demonstrated on the box, and every little tab on the tea bag gives me a spiritual thought for the day. Today it told me that 'inspiring others towards happiness brings you happiness' and it rang true for me. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not usually an introspective, spiritual person at all, but I've been giving a lot of thought to the nature of teaching and the reasons for its appeal, and I can honestly say that this particular quote sums up my motivation nicely. 

It gives me great pleasure to make people happy. To give you an example, I love to cook, and more importantly, I love to feed people. I do a great line in crowd pleasing food, and I love it when people come to stay. I make sure everyone has enough to eat, that there's plenty to drink and that there's a good mix of people so no one gets bored. I also like to make sure there's dessert, and that it's chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate!

Now, while I'm not sure you can make a direct correlation between being a good hostess and being a teacher, there are clear links. As a hostess it's my job to cater for everyone's needs before mine, to make sure everyone's needs are catered for (i.e. no nuts for a friend who's allergic and plenty of veggie alternatives). Teachers have to ensure that all of their pupils are learning to the best of their abilities and that any special learning needs are noted and dealt with. 

Teaching pupils might not make them happy in the short term, after all, who really likes going to school, but it does help to ensure long term happiness. These young people learn a subject from you which helps them to get the qualifications and life skills they need to hopefully do whatever it is in life that makes them happy. 

You can't ask for more than that out of life.