You do your best work if you do a job that makes you happy.

The line expresses a core piece of Bob Ross’s public philosophy: that joy and intrinsic motivation are not just pleasant extras but practical conditions for excellence. Read this way, “best work” is less about competitive achievement than about the quality that emerges when a person feels calm, engaged, and unforced—an attitude Ross modeled in his gentle teaching style. The quote also implies a critique of purely external incentives (status, money, pressure): if the work itself doesn’t fit the worker’s temperament and values, performance and creativity suffer. It’s an affirmation of vocation—choosing or shaping work so it sustains happiness, which in turn sustains craft.