Book: 37

Generally speaking, we don’t like to be told what to do. If we are told to wear our seatbelts, even if we know it’s good for us, it makes us mad just to be told. If we are told to enjoy eating ice cream something inside us goes, “Don’t tell me to enjoy eating ice cream, thank you very much.”

But we need to see instruction—good instruction, necessary instruction—as a gift, as grace to us, even as lack of instruction would be miserable.

When I started my first job out of college, I was not given a whole lot of instruction, especially at first. I was working in construction, and I kept finding myself assigned to projects were I was way over my head. Projects where I needed help. It seemed as if we had the policy “figure it out for yourself.”

That was really hard of a young graduate. I wanted to do well, I wanted to get things right, I was motivated, but I needed helped more help and guidance.