“Such beauty” says Piero Soderini, gazing at the towering marble statue in front of him. “Yet I feel the nose draws the eye too strongly”.

Michelangelo frowns. He's just finished sculpting his four-metre-tall masterpiece, the Statue of David.

And now the Italian statesman Soderini is having his say.

Soderini goes on:

“A small adjustment to the nose could bring the proportions into perfect harmony”

Soderini has just questioned one of the greatest works of art ever made by one of the most gifted artists who ever lived.

But Michelangelo isn’t phased.

“I agree. Let me alter the nose”

As it happens, Michelangelo has a crafty plan.

He sneaks a handful of marble dust and fragments into his hand. Then he grabs his hammer & chisel, climbs the ladder and pretends to start sculpting. As he does, Michelangelo slowly releases the debris from his grip, giving the illusion of fine-tuning David’s nose.

As Michelangelo climbs back down the ladder, Soderini looks up at the statue with awe.

“Mamma mia Michelangelo! Magnifico!”

Michelangelo’s ruse has sealed the deal.

This story from the history books is a prime example of how we don't always see things as they are, but as we expect to see them.

I’m not just talking about marble statues now. 

This is an idea that leaps out of the galleries of Florence and spreads into all corners of life.

When I think back to some of my toughest, most stressful days in v1 of my banking career, there’s a thread that holds those days together:

I’d already made up my mind that it would be a tough day in the office.

The endless hours of spinning plates, dodging fires and waiting for the next email to explode into my inbox weren’t a surprise. The daily cocktail of boredom, overwhelm and running 100mph just to stand still wasn’t a shock. 

It was all a foregone conclusion.

Now I’m in v2 of my banking career and back in the exact same job as v1, I see clearer than ever how it’s not the job which matters.

It’s really not.

What matters is the perspective I bring with me.

I know some people will assume I’m praising the power of positive thinking or flying the flag for the fashionable reframe. But those couldn’t be further from what I'm getting at.

My new relaxed & balanced time at work isn’t because I think positively about my job. Nor have I found the holy grail of reframes to put a glossy spin on a tortuous, soul-sucking few years.

i.e. I haven’t added any trendy self-help style tactics into the mix.

Instead, I’ve subtracted my pre-scripted stories about my job and allowed it to be what it is, rather than what I expect it to be. 

The American essayist Henry David Thoreau once said:

It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see.

This is it in a nutshell.

While I'm on the subject:

If you’d like to find more fun, flow and freedom at work and the strategies you’re using today aren’t hitting the mark, I can help.

You can sniff out all the info here:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com