The Best Co-Worker You'll Ever Have

Work ethic: this was a family value in the Gilliland household. My parents modeled hard work ethics for me throughout my childhood growing up, and I think I’ve carried the family value on. In fact, it caught on for me pretty early. 

I won’t deny that I’ve been blessed with some talents and gifts, but I will say without hesitation that I’ve never been the best at anything naturally. Anything I’ve accomplished, I’ve had to work hard for it. Whether it meant staying up past my bedtime to earn an A on a math test in high school, or spending hours out in our driveway hitting shot after shot so I could contribute a few points for my team when it was game day, I have always been willing to put in the work to make things happen. 

This trend continued as a young adult. I did well in college, but I definitely put in a LOT of extra time prepping for the LSAT to get a score that would allow me to get into a decent law school. And once I got to law school, I realized the material didn’t come to me as naturally as it did to other law students, so I was willing to put in the extra hours in the law library to earn a good ranking in my law school class. 

And even after school, I’ve found myself working really hard in the gym to become a really competitive CrossFit athlete, and I’ve put in extra time and effort into the jobs I’ve had to prove I’m worth making more and carrying more responsibility. 

Now that I own my own business, working hard feels more important than ever. The effort I put in isn’t just about earning recognition, a rank, or even a promotion – it’s about putting food on my table, being able to save for the future, and knowing that everything I put in will be directly reflected in the experience my clients have. And I want those experiences to be special, magical, transformational, and life changing! That can feel like a lot of pressure at times. 

For all the times I’ve succeeded as a result of working hard, there have probably been more failures than I could count before the success happened. And boy have I taken those failures personally. I could give a few examples, but in every phase of life I just described, the theme of failing has felt the same: it feels like I’m not enough, that nothing I’ve done was enough, and I’ll never be enough. And even when I’ve succeeded, the joy was fleeting. After every win, my mind would quickly turn to, “well where will the next win come from? How do I make the success happen again?” And it felt like I was starting all over again. 

This year I’m committed to doing things differently. I will continue to carry on the family value and work hard, of course, but I’m not going to be working alone. It’s not going to be all on me, and the work I do WILL be enough this time. 

Stephanie’s broker challenged them to choose a 1 word theme for 2022, and I decided to do the same. My word: surrender. 

To me, to surrender means to allow. To let go. To stop white knuckling it, and open up your hands to allow for someone or something else to step in and assist you. To me that someone or something is God, and you can call it whatever you want – Creator, Spirit, the Universe, Divine Intelligence, Higher Power… whatever resonates for you. Regardless of what you call it, that higher power who created the Earth, the heavens, the universe… is a master artist, clearly capable of creating magnificent, beautiful, amazing things. When I consider all the beauty in the world around me and the stars above me, it seems obvious that God LOVES to create, and now more than ever I believe God longs to create with us. 

I didn’t choose surrender as my theme easily. I absolutely, 100% took the hard way to get there. Up until recently, I was still stuck in my old way of working hard, and then… working harder when I still felt like I needed to “do more”. And this method was exhausting. Around mid-afternoon, I would find myself feeling so tired, drained of energy, and tapped out on good ideas or any spark of creativity. 

I’m not sure if I was at a breaking point or on the verge of accepting this as my way of being, but when I reached that tipping point is exactly around the time the theme of surrender popped into my awareness as something I really needed to see. The word kept coming again and again, and I even had a few mentors urge me to allow God to co-create with me, rather than continuing to do everything on my own. 

It’s been a work in progress, but one of my mentors gave me some sound advice I’ve been living by when it comes to determining when I’ve done enough and when it’s time to surrender. She said: do everything you can do, and then invite God in to co-create with you and do the rest. That’s the moment of allowing yourself to surrender and trust. 

Now I can start to tell when I’ve changed gears from quality work that’s aligned with my mission and when I’m just spinning my wheels, trying to “make something happen” for the sake of working. I’m learning when to allow God in and take over. And life is becoming easier, energy becoming steadier, and I’m slowly feeling more in flow. 

I’ll admit firsthand that it is hard to let go. It’s hard to relinquish control. And it’s definitely a learning process to trust that when I surrender, I will be fully supported and that the outcome will be exponentially better than when I try to do it all alone. But slowly and surely, I am getting there. And when I’m co-creating with God, the end product always feels like enough.

So work hard my friends. Keep building towards your dreams. Just don’t forget to pause, surrender, and invite God in to work with you, to co create with you once you’ve done all you can. God’s grace will carry us much further than we could ever carry ourselves on our own.