My grandfather, Walter Thomas Hadley, was a masterful salesman.
He started as a teenager going door to door selling Hoover vacuums, and he had plenty of doors slammed in his face. He grew up in the hills of Kentucky, and like many Kentuckians, he had a saying for everything.
One saying I remember clearly:
“There are three kinds of people. Workers, shirkers, and jerkers.”
My grandfather respected the workers. He taught me to want to be a worker, not a shirker, not a jerker.
What made him a worker wasn’t that he never fell down. We all fall down. He was a worker because of his congruence. What he held in his heart, he also held in his mind. And he walked his talk.
He required himself to get up and not stay falling down.
I find myself thinking about my grandfather’s saying in the context of our spiritual lives. Because every day, we get to choose: are we being the worker of our spiritual life? Or are we shirking it?
Shirking looks like this:
- Collecting more information instead of becoming the living truth
- Reading about mind-training instead of actually doing the mind-training
- Talking about forgiveness instead of practicing it
- Blaming circumstances for our lack of Peace
Here’s a teaching that’s made a real difference for me: reading about mind-training isn’t mind-training and therefore isn’t healing.
Practice is.
Workers show up. Workers hold themselves accountable to what they know to be true.
Workers do the sacred work of healing our mind, even when it’s hard, even when no one’s watching, even when the ego is screaming at us to quit.
And the beautiful part? This isn’t about perfection. It’s not about how often we fall down. It’s about how consistently we require ourselves to get up.
In my Masterful Living Program, we practice this together. We hold each other accountable to what we know to be true. And that togetherness makes all the difference.
TOMORROW: If you’re ready to step into worker energy, to stop shirking and start walking the talk, I’d like to invite you to our FREE Living A Course in Miracles Program beginning TOMORROW, April 30.
STARTS THURSDAY: If you’d like to step into this level of Peace practice with me, I’d like to invite you to our FREE 8 Classes Living A Course in Miracles – Cultivating a Peaceful Mind with ACIM Teachers Jon Mundy, Mark Anthony Lord, Lisa Natoli, Rev. Myron Jones and me! Click here to learn more.
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: The Appointed Friend What if the very thing I love most is the thing that’s hurting me? I sat with Chapter 26, Section 6 of A Course in Miracles this week, and one sentence grabbed my interest. I share the story of my own bottoming-out moment – when something I’d poured years into didn’t go the way I hoped – and what I had to learn the hard way about attachment, illusion, and the friend I’d forgotten I already have. Why does almost everything we strive for eventually disappoint us? And what does it actually take to stop digging up the seed before it has time to grow? Listen with me on Episode 736.
