Are your shirt sleeves rolled up?

The person who is waiting for something to turn up might start with their shirt sleeves.
— Garth Henrichs

I have been frustrated lately with the amount of people I have come across who want everything done for them. It doesn't matter what it is. Many people want to put as little effort into getting things done as possible, but have high expectations on what their return should be.

My oldest son, who is a high school sophomore, decided this first semester to not put in as much effort into his homework and tests as he should have. His school progress report came in and it sucked. I don’t want to reward him for his efforts, or lack thereof. He has three months of not going anywhere to roll his shirt sleeves up and get in and do the work I know he can to raise his grades. He has already started with making the effort to get a weekly progress report from his teacher and he actually started on his community service hours that he needs to complete to graduate from high school.

He had the football coach come up to him at lunch, after he had seen my son play some football at lunch, and ask why he wasn’t on the football team this year. My son had stated to him that because we had just moved here a couple of months ago and he hadn’t trained with the team he was told he couldn’t be on it. The teacher wants him on the team next year badly. I told him that no matter how talented the coach thinks he is, that he won’t be able to play if he does not maintain a certain GPA. I hope that this is the motivation he needs to get going, but the work is up to him. He can’t skate by in life.

When we moved into our house in August, the grass was dead. The tenants before us had not watered the grass for several months. My husband wanted the grass to grow back again. After a lot of elbow grease each week raking out the dead grass after each watering and pulling out of weeds and getting a gardener to come in once the grass started to grow back in, the results are nice. We have a bright green front lawn. Because he had rolled up his shirt sleeves and made the effort, the results have paid off. He could have become frustrated because of the waiting process, but he knew that his work would eventually pay off.

Sometimes the effort we put into a project seems like it is too much for us or like it would just be easier to get someone else to do it all for you, but if we just persevere and accomplish our goal, the reward tastes so much sweeter.