I’ve been looking for the secret to happiness, and all along, it was as simple as that: cleaning fish.

Every day we ask people to do something: join, volunteer, donate, attend, recycle, eat, read, exercise. Sometimes they say yes; lots of times they say no, or don’t say anything at all.

When work gets crazy (crazy hard, crazy sad, crazy busy, crazy mad), and I am digging deep to find a reason to smile, I pull up the Extension Worker’s Creed to remind me why I chose this work.

These are the pillars of our operating procedures and strategic guidelines. They may seem simple but I use them constantly to assess whether we are on the right path, as individuals, and as a team.