Doing a Thing Willingly from Delight

To do a thing willingly from a delight in doing it, will effect a change in you. And when you begin to take up your own "cross"—that is, the burden of some difficult thing in yourself that you have at last come to observe—and do it in such a spirit, then you will get results.

But if you do it heavily, out of the conviction of sin, nothing will ever come out of it, and especially if you show others what you are trying to do, and like to look miserable or grave or sad.

Maurice Nicoll, “Note on How to Work on Oneself" in Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Vol. 5, p. 1743)