The Power of Purpose
How To boost Your Popularity
How to Handle Difficult People
Working Hard for Fun and Profit
The Power of Purpose
Do you ever have one of these attitudes regarding your goals?

"I have too many problems."

"I'm too old."

"I’d rather stay in bed."

"Whatever made me think I could do that?”

"I’m sick of the whole thing."

"I can’t do it."

"I'll do it some other time."

"I don't have enough energy to do it."

"I didn't realize it would be this difficult."

"It seems too hard for me to do."

"I probably can't do it since most people can't."

Those who get into a "can't" mode are on the road to failure. "I can't do the project.” "I can't pay my bills.” "I can't succeed."

Almost all government regulations concentrate on things you cannot do. "You can't park there." "You can't keep that money." "Unless you follow these regulations, you can’t . . . ." Pick up any law and notice how often the words "Prohibit," "Forbidden" and "Disallowed" occur while words like "Encouraged," "Allowed" and "Recommended" are absent.

Some employers like to act like governments and stop things. "You can't leave early." "You can't have more authority." "You can't do things your own way."

Businesses do it to customers. "We can't see you without an appointment." "I can't give you a discount if you pay in full.""Sorry, we cannot help you."

The real damage occurs when you stop yourself. "I can't handle more work." "I can't earn more money." "I can't delegate."

Have You Been Stopped?

When you feel like you have more barriers or stops to your success than opportunities, you are stopped. When all you see are problems, you are stopped. When you decide the forces in the universe are against you, you are stopped. Whenever you feel like giving up, you are stopped.

"STOPS ALL OCCUR BECAUSE OF FAILED PURPOSES.

"BEHIND EVERY STOP THERE IS A FAILED PURPOSE." — L. Ron Hubbard

The sequence goes like this:

1. You have a purpose to _________.

2. You then get the idea your purpose failed.

3. You invent or agree with stops or barriers to your purpose.

1. Remember some of your old purposes? Make $20 million. Raise a happy family. Tour Europe. Get involved in the community. Make a major contribution to society. Help people.

2. When you made some effort to achieve your purpose, you felt stopped. Maybe achieving the purpose turned out to be more difficult than you expected. Maybe you saw someone else fail. Perhaps you became afraid or lazy. Maybe someone got in your road.

3. You then agreed with the barriers. "It's too much work for me." "They don’t want me to do this.” “No one succeeds without lucky breaks." "It’s better to settle for less."

Some people go one step further and begin to oppose solutions: "Don't try to help me as it is impossible." "I tried all the solutions and none of them work." "No one has the answers."

When you have a failed purpose, you stop looking for ways to achieve your purpose. You get tired. Fortunately, you can eliminate your loser, negative attitudes.

The Law Regarding Failed Purposes

This formula solves this problem of failed purposes.

"THERE IS A LAW ABOUT THIS—ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO RESTORE LIFE AND ACTION IS TO REKINDLE THE FAILED PURPOSE. THE STOPS WILL AT ONCE BLOW." — L. Ron Hubbard

A difficult problem with a simple solution. Just fire up that original purpose and the stops or barriers magically disappear!

Example: Jill, an amateur athlete, wants to enter and finish a 25-mile marathon even though she lost a leg in an auto accident when she was a teenager. She starts to run every day with her prosthetic leg, but trips and falls every mile or so. People keep telling her, "You’re so brave!" "I really admire you for trying." "I would have given up long ago." Comments like these make her feel her goal may be too big.

As Jill is leaving to run one rainy morning, her husband says, "Honey, why don’t you stay home today. It’s too cold and wet." She leaves anyway, does her stretches in the carport and starts to run.

Usually, her real leg has a slight cramp, but this morning it feels worse. Jill normally pushes through, but for some reason, she lets it bother her. Suddenly, she falls on the sidewalk and scrapes her elbows and hands. A delivery truck drives by and soaks her clothes while she is down. So she just sits on the sidewalk for a minute. The pain of her leg and her scrapes get to be too much.

Finally, her tears blending with the rain, she slowly walks back home. Her purpose has failed.

She tells her family and friends, "I just didn’t realize how tough it would be." "It’s too cold and wet out there." "I probably should have given up long ago."

Jill then learns the law about failed purposes. She thinks about ways she can fire up her original purpose. "All I wanted to do was enter and finish that stupid 25-mile run! Why did I want to do that? Oh yeah, it wasn’t to prove anything. It wasn’t to make people admire me. I wanted to run that race long before I lost the leg. I remember when I first saw people finishing the race on TV when I was in junior high school. I thought I should do that. It would be a really great thing to do. I would just prove to myself that I could run 25 miles. THAT was my purpose! I still want that!"

Within seconds, Jill feels great! She sees no reason she can’t finish the 25-mile race. She changes her clothes and gets back into training. But this time, she is more determined than ever. "Nothing is going to stop me this time!" The stops have blown off.

Recommendation

What have you given up on? What did you once want, but now think is impossible? What purposes have you had in the past that are now failed purposes?

FIRE THEM UP! Rekindle, renew and revive those original reasons.

Make the purposes stronger. Put more energy into them. Convince yourself that you can accomplish those purposes despite all the barriers. Notice what happens to all the "reasons" preventing that purpose.

Now plan how you will reach these goals. Focus on how you can succeed. Persist until you win.

How to Boost Your Popularity
Many people believe the route to success is to be interesting-to show off or act like someone else. For example, many teenagers can't understand why they are unpopular. They learned as children that to get attention they should act up a little; to be as interesting as possible. Yet acting interesting does not make a teenager popular. To handle their unpopularity, they might decide to despise people or become loners. Or they try harmful acts to gain respect: smoking, drinking, graffiti, shoplifting, drugs, sex, guns and so on.

Acting interesting can ruin your adult life as well. Show-off employees, self-centered managers and pompous business owners rarely do well for long.

The secret to popularity is not to be interesting, but to be interested.

"When a person becomes terribly interesting he has lots of problems, believe me. That is the chasm which is crossed by all of your celebrities, anybody who is foolish enough to become famous. He crosses over from being interested in life to being interesting. And people who are interesting are really no longer interested in life. It's very baffling to some young fellow why he can't make some beautiful girl interested in him. Well, she is not interested, she is interesting." - L. Ron Hubbard

If you are an actor on stage, you are interesting while acting. Seminar speakers are interesting. Comedians, models and magicians are interesting.

Yet in real life, on a one-on-one basis, interesting people are irritating. They only do things to get your attention and admiration. They believe they are on stage acting for an audience of one.

If you want people to cooperate with you, to like you or to open up to you, you must be interested.

Instead of focusing on yourself, you start to focus on others. You notice what makes them happy or unhappy. Your attention comes off of you and onto others.

When your thoughts are more on others than on yourself, you feel little stress. You act and respond with more intelligence. Your production level increases and you have more fun.

When you are interested, people love your interest in them. They want to be around you. You are popular.

Five Ways to Be More Interested

1. Strive to shift your attention from yourself onto other people or objects. This is a great stress reliever.

2. Find things about people that interest you. Force yourself to look for interesting things. Soon you will automatically take interest in people without thinking about it.

3. If you catch yourself acting like someone else, you are being interesting. Simply get interested in the person in front of you and you'll feel more natural. You are most effective when you are simply being yourself.

4. When someone makes you nervous or shy, get interested in them. Take your attention off of yourself and on to others. With practice, you will be calm, even bold.

5. Focus on how you can help others. Let your interest in helping people replace your tendency to act interesting. Your effectiveness and popularity will soar.
How to Handle Difficult People
A bully at your work is difficult for you to face. He is demanding you do part of his job without pay or credit. How do you handle it?

Your neighbors are constantly fighting. They wake you up in the middle of the night with their screams and curses. What do you say to them?

Your father is unhappy about your career choice. He constantly criticizes your work and points out what he thinks you should do. How do you deal with him?

Difficult situations are part of everyone's life. Employers and employees can't get along. Partners clash over money. Spouses cannot resolve disagreements.

If you ignore these situations, they always get worse. Employees get fired, partnerships and marriages break up, everyone is miserable.

Waiting and worrying, the most common "solution," also allows the problem to get worse while giving you stress and shortening your life span.

If you attack the person, at least you are trying to fix the problem. But attacks, rage or irrational anger gives you a bad name, makes people afraid of you and reduces honest communication.

Disconnecting from the problem or from the person is not always wise or practical. Losing employees, supporters and friends because you needlessly disassociate from them may reduce your stress, but you might also become lonely and poor.

The Best Solution Is to Confront and Handle People

"The ability to stand up to and confront and handle whatever comes the way of the organization depends utterly on the ability of the individuals of the organization to stand up to, confront and handle what comes the individual's way." - L. Ron Hubbard

When you face and resolve the problem yourself, you feel wonderful. You are in control of your life. You not only conquer the opposition, you conquer your fear. Few accomplishments are more satisfying than confronting someone who is difficult to face and handling the conflict.

How to Confront and Handle Someone

By getting organized and working out a plan of action, confronting and handling people becomes much easier. The key is your preparation.

"THE SUCCESS OF ANY EVENT IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE TIMELY PREPARATION." - L. Ron Hubbard

Follow these seven steps to prepare yourself for dealing with the difficult people in your life.

1. Make the decision to face up to the person directly and by yourself.

2. Write down the exact problem you need to handle and your goal for the confrontation.

Examples of problems to be confronted that you might write down:

"Joe is refusing to pay me despite our agreement."

"Chris is hurting office morale and causing me stress with her continual complaining."

"Bob is supposedly telling people that my work is inferior and I am dishonest."

Once you specifically name or identify the problem, write down a goal for the meeting. "By the end of the meeting, I want . . . ."

Examples of goals or objectives you might want as a result of a confrontation:

"Joe pays me in full."

"Chris stops complaining or leaves."

"Learn the truth about Bob's comments and if true, get him to stop it."

In some cases, your objective may also state:

"Figure out if I want this person as a partner/employee/boss/friend."

3. Write down a Plan or List of Points You Need to Make to Support Your Goal: Facts, Reasons and explanations you may need the other person to understand. List the points in order of priority or importance.

For example, to get Joe to understand why he must pay you, you might make these points:

A. Joe requested the service.

B. Joe signed an agreement to pay for the service.

C. We provided the service as promised.

D. Joe was happy with the service.

E. Etc.

4. Write down objections, reactions or disagreements the other person may have. Include everything you are afraid might happen during the meeting. Putting specific concerns and fears in writing reduces their impact on you.

For each objection, reaction or disagreement you expect will happen, write a solution of how you will deal with each.

5. Organize your notes and gather supportive documents.

6. Arrange the meeting where you will not be disturbed, preferably in a space you control.

7. Start the meeting.

Look the person directly in the eye.

Explain the specific problem you want to resolve as you noted in Step 2.

Go over your first point on the list from Step 3.

Listen carefully to the other person and make certain they feel understood.

Hold a position on your points.

Use your solutions to their reactions as you worked out in Step 4.

Continue describing your points and listening to the person's side.

Do not give up. Communicate and persist for as long as it takes to reach your goal.

Summary

The more frequently you confront and handle difficult people, the easier it becomes. The amount of time it takes to prepare for a confrontation decreases. You become strong and tough.

When you confront and handle everyone around you, people respect you for your courage, your honesty and your control. Your associates, employees or coworkers follow your example and become more productive. Your enemies either become harmless or become friends.

Taking positive organized action, despite fear, is the kind of courage all successful people must have to succeed.
Working Hard for Fun and Profit
Highly successful people love to work hard. Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and other star athletes succeed because of 12-15 hours of practice per day. Bill Gates and most other self-made billionaires also work hard, long hours for years.

When you can work hard, you can accomplish great things. You have self-respect and pride. You have the horsepower needed to reach your goals.

Employees who work hard are priceless to business owners. When everyone in the group works hard all day long, you have a powerful, profitable, high-morale operation.

Those who cannot work hard are often good at inventing excuses.

Ten Excuses for Not Working Hard

1. "Everyone else is taking it easy."

2. "I thought we're supposed to work smarter, not harder."

3. "I have a medical condition."

4. "I'm a boss and bosses aren't supposed to work hard."

5. "It uses up my rare and valuable energy."

6. "I don't get paid enough."

7. "I don't have the time for it right now."

8. "Once the boss sees you can work hard, you have to do it all the time."

9. "I'm just too tired and don't feel like it."

10. "Hard work leads to workaholism."

Why Work Hard?

"Work is not always pleasant.

"But few are unhappier than those who lead a purposeless, idle and bored existence . . ."

"Morale is boosted to high highs by accomplishment. In fact, it can be demonstrated that production is the basis of morale." - L. Ron Hubbard from "The Way to Happiness"

Ten Benefits of Working Hard

1. No matter how you feel, working hard and accomplishing a lot of production makes you feel wonderful.

2. You make more money if your hard work produces something of value.

3. You are offered more promotions.

4. People follow your example.

5. You can do what most people cannot do and so move ahead of them.

6. You can use your hard work to build a future for yourself.

7. You get opportunities that lazy people do not get.

8. You can drown your sorrows, fears and unhappiness in good hard work.

9. You are not surrounded by incomplete projects.

10. You have unkillable pride.

Ten Ways to Work Harder

1. Decide to work hard for just five minutes to see how you feel. Then another five minutes and so on.

2. Focus on your purpose for the work. If it's a purpose you like, you'll have more energy.

3. Force yourself to get started. Once you have some momentum going, you'll get more done.

4. Consider the results and improvements for your future because of your work hard now.

5. Arrange for a reward for your extra hard work. For example, "As soon as I finish all these reports, I'll buy myself an expensive dinner." "I won't be going to the movies until I clean out the garage."

6. Break large tasks into smaller and smaller tasks until you feel comfortable about doing the first tiny task. Do it immediately. Then the next one and so on.

7. Tell three people you will accomplish a difficult task. This makes it more difficult to admit you failed than to just do the job.

8. Break a personal production record for no other reason than to break a personal production record.

9. Mentally do the entire task before starting so you know how to do it.

10. Realize you will be working for eight hours anyway. Why not work hard?

Summary

No one dies of hard work. In fact, according to an Australian study, hard work is healthy for you. It strengthens your internal organs, lowers your cholesterol and sharpens your mental skills.

Hard work makes you feel good about yourself. It helps you get over personal problems. It gives you something to be proud of.

All successful people can work hard. They push through or ignore their mental barriers. They complete projects as fast as possible and dive into their next project.

Hard work is vital to moral, superior accomplishment and high pay. It's the engine in your rocket to your goals. It pushes you above the average person.

No one succeeds without it.
Copyright © 2003 TipsForSuccess.org. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to L. Ron Hubbard Library for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard. Programmed in the United States.