Improving this attitude affects everyone around you. They believe in you, trust you and want to support you.

This one attitude can change your entire life for the better.

A vital attitude for you to constantly improve is YOUR PASSION.

On a scale of 1 to 10, exactly how excited are you right now? Do you really want to succeed? Are you thrilled with your goals for today?

If not, you must generate some passion for your day, your week and your career.

Leadership

To succeed you must be a leader, if only a leader of one person: you.

“In all great leaders there is a purpose and intensity which is unmistakable.” — L. Ron Hubbard

Remember how former President Reagan had UNMISTAKABLE seniority when he met with Communist leaders? Have you noticed how the best speeches of politicians, ministers or actors always include high-volume intensity? The same applies to the most successful people.

“A man who merely wants to be liked will never be a leader. A broad examination of history shows clearly that men follow those they respect. Respect is a recognition of inspiration, purpose and competence and personal force or power.” — L. Ron Hubbard

Passion is a self-generated tool. You have the ability to motivate yourself; to concentrate on your purpose; to get yourself excited about what you do.

Your attitude sets the mood for everyone around you. They get excited if you are excited. If you are fascinated, so are they. Recommendations you give to others that come from the heart have a greater impact.

You Can Never Be Too Passionate

Everyone can increase their purpose and intensity.

When you organize all of your activities toward one focused goal, you not only feel more joy in what you are doing, you get more accomplished.

Sometimes it helps to find things that make you passionate. For example, for which of these objectives can you generate the most passion and intensity?

* Reaching a specific goal

* Accomplishing a certain level of perfection

* Making a great deal of money

* Going back to an original purpose

* Beating a challenge

* Filling your life with as much happiness as possible

* Fulfilling a duty to yourself or your family

* Helping a great number of people

* Creating a superior reputation

* Building a highly-successful business

* Helping others achieve success

* Becoming the best at what you do

* Hitting a specific statistical target

* Earning enough money to buy something you really need or want

* Making a positive impact on society

There is nothing stronger than a leader with a firm direction and passion to get there.

Copyright © 2009 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

The Question

What keeps you from doing what you say? That was the survey question I recently put out to a wide range of business leaders and solo practitioners. I was quite amazed at one of the responses that kept repeating, “I always do what I say.” First, that was not the question, however quite a number of respondents seemed to feel it necessary to tell me that they were not guilty of my query. Second, I did not believe a one of them. Be it to customers and colleagues or family and friends—even to one’s self; not a one of us ALWAYS does what we say!

Why We Do—Not

Below, I have listed for you my survey results. The first two on the list are one in the same to me; however I listed them separately because they are subsets of the issue.

16% – Poor prioritizing

10% – Lack of time

11% – Fear of failure/lack of self confidence

9.5% – Lack of focus/distractions

9.5% – No motivation/purpose/passion

8.5% – Over commitment

8.5% – Change in priorities

4% – Circumstances beyond personal control

5% – Miscellaneous

18% – Denial (I always do what I say response)

Total equals 100%

A Quarter of the Respondents

As I stated earlier, I believe that poor prioritizing and lack of time are one in the same. Adding them together and that is the reason one-fourth of the folks that responded offered as the key reason for them not doing what they say. Is the answer to hire a productivity professional? I really do not think so. These people need a reason to do better. They are in their comfort zone and are not being challenged. Unfortunately, their attitude is I’ll get to it when I get to it. If something really matters to these people, they will make it priority one and find the time—I guarantee.

What About Denial?

The next to the highest ranking answer category (18%) was what I refer to as denial—they just will not admit any shortcomings. Every one of the twelve-step programs for overcoming dependencies calls for your admission of problem as an early step. How in the world can you fix it if you will not admit there is a problem? Sure, some might be near perfect in doing what they say, in one area: customers, colleagues, friends, family, or self—but come on, we are all human and imperfect.

Pain Verses Pleasure

I believe that, for the majority of the population, pain is more persuasive than pleasure. Simply put, people tend to be more motivated to avoid pain than by the promise of pleasure. Yes, sure—you have examples to prove me wrong; however I will stand with my statement. And, if you really think about the population in general, you’ll surely agree with me—especially in the area of getting things done.

Mechanisms for Achievement

Regardless of the reason behind non-performance, ultimately you want to end the anxiety of lost opportunities and unfulfilled promises and learn how to get the things done that you said you would. In achieving the results you want there are four basic mechanisms for doing this:

1. Do it yourself. You have a “come to Jesus” talk with yourself and motivate yourself to do better. This method tends to be short lived and you will most likely backslide into your old habits of non-performance.
2. Get a friend to be your accountability buddy. If you seek help from a friend by giving them permission to hassle you when you do not do what you say, you will get things done for a while. However at some point your friend will give up hassling you. This is because at some point they will perceive that to push you any harder will damage the friendship and they value the friendship more than your productivity.
3. Get a distant colleague as your accountability buddy. This method will generally last much longer than the first two as long as both accountability buddies are somewhat pushing equally. Since there is much less of a quality of friendship at issue, each will feel empowered to drive the other harder and for a longer period of time.
4. Get a paid accountability advisor. If you are really serious about doing what you say, there is nothing better than a paid advisor. First, since you are spending your money, you appreciate the relationship more. Second, it is your advisor’s job to not accept your BS excuses for non-performance. A paid advisor with whom you communicate weekly, will in almost every situation, help you to go further toward ending your anxiety of lost opportunities and unfulfilled promises and help you to stay focused in the area of getting the things done that you said you would.

Copyright © 2010 Ed Rigsbee http://www.rigsbee.com. All rights reserved. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Ed Rigsbee for permission to reproduce selections from the copyrighted works of Ed Rigsbee

Burt Reynolds had made ten films when director John Boorman cast him in the film DELIVERANCE. Burt asked Boorman, “Which of my films impressed you so you gave me this terrific part?”

“None of them,” said Boorman. “I saw you guest-host the TONIGHT SHOW. You were fearless controlling the five guests. The guy in DELIVERANCE has to control three people in a stressful situation.” Which leads us to the next point:

At that time, Johnny Carson was the king of late-night television. Burt developed a character for the show — a super-cocky, wisecracking, devil-may-care womanizer — and Johnny absolutely loved him. Burt’s TV persona was not the kind of guy you would want to live with, but it made great television.

Their routines would go something like this. Johnny would ask, “What are you going to do after the show?” and Burt would say, “Oh, walk up and down Broadway and try to get recognized.” Then he’d wink at the camera as if to say, “I’m having a good time, and being rich and famous ain’t bad either.”

All guests had strict instructions not to talk to Johnny during commercials, so Burt was chatting with Ed McMahon when Johnny suddenly leaned over and asked, “How would you like to guest-host while I’m on vacation?” No actor had ever been invited to guest-host before, only comedians.

When Burt first hosted the TONIGHT SHOW, he had the staff book his ex-wife Judy Carne. Everyone was astonished, even Judy. They hadn’t spoken in six years and still had unresolved marital issues and a lot of animosity.

However, Burt Reynolds knew what my pal, copy-writing genius David Garfinkel, is always telling me: “People love conflict. They love to see people fighting who, deep down, share affection and attraction.” (Alan Weiss, PhD and I make use of this principle in our “Odd Couple” marketing seminars, describing them as “contentious, conflicting, controversial — see them agree and disagree on subjects that mean the most to you.”)

So Judy Carne came on the show, sat down and said, “Hmm, you look good. ” Burt said, “I hate to tell you, but so do you.” She asked, “What have you been doing?”

“Oh, hanging around street corners trying to sell Burt-and-Judy towels,” he quipped. “They are tough to get rid of.” She admitted that she and her current husband were having problems. Burt said, “Well, I’ve grown up since we were married.” The audience clearly was hoping they’d kiss and make up and get back together. Superb theater.

Have you ever felt that a particular job was beneath you or too trivial to merit your best effort? You never know which of the many things you do is going to lead to your big break. That means you have to do everything well.

- Patricia Fripp

Patricia Fripp is an executive speech coach, sales presentation skills trainer, and award-winning keynote speaker. Improve your public speaking and presentation skills with Patricia Fripp’s CDs, DVDs, books, and downloads. Check out Fripp’s The Executive Speech Coach blog and learn more about public speaking.

But what happens if you’ve been doing the doing thing for awhile after hours and you’re still not successful? You can either give up or keep on creating.

If you don’t absolutely love what you’re creating, don’t bother. The most successful creators are those that can’t help but create because they love the process. If you’re working on your project and it feels like a job more than a privilege, do something else. You already have a day job; you don’t need a second job when you get home.

On the other hand, if you enjoy creating but are getting discouraged because you’re not seeing results, the solution is to keep creating, writing, inventing, building, painting, or pursuing.

Craig Benzine was a waiter in Chicago. No, scratch that. Craig worked as a waiter in Chicago. Serving food was his job. That’s not who he was. In fact, behind his waiter uniform and coy grin was a video producer bursting to come out. Did he complain about having to wait tables for a living? Probably, but he did more than complain. Craig channeled Charles Bronson and decided to take matters into his own hands.

“I was frustrated waiting tables when I knew I could make video,” says Craig. His goal was to ditch his waiter job and get a job producing videos. The problem, as Craig tells it, was that “I didn’t have any professional experience or a portfolio of work, so I decided to make stuff on my own for free.”

Craig started creating short and entertaining YouTube videos that showcased his video production skills under the moniker Wheezy Waiter. Month after month he’d work on these videos in his limited free time. After five months, he was introduced to a firm that needed a corporate video producer. Fortunately, he had put in the time to build his portfolio. “They watched my videos and basically hired me over the phone,” Craig recalls.

So far so good, but it gets better — actually it gets worse before it gets better. Craig realized that his passion wasn’t necessarily video — that was the medium — his passion was to entertain people. So he continued to create hilarious YouTube videos while working a full-time day job. Success was slow to come, however.

The day he uploaded his 100th video to YouTube, he had just 32 subscribers. Each of his two or three minute videos can take between three to six hours to create, so you can appreciate the magnitude of creating 100 of these – it took a year and a half and countless hours of work.

During my interrogation, I tried to break him. “After years and 100 videos you only had 32 subscribers? Wasn’t that frustrating? What kept you going? Didn’t you feel like giving up?” The Wheezy Waiter, while slightly out breath, wouldn’t have any of it. He shot back, “My friends liked it. My family liked it. I thought, ‘If they all like it why can’t everyone like it?’ I knew I could get an audience.”

In fact, he wasn’t discouraged, he was thrilled. “What I always wanted to do is entertain,” he said. “If I can get 100 people watching my work that’s great. I’m going to keep going and keep trying to entertain them.”

Turns out his family and friends were right. He’s hilariously entertaining and now has almost 150,000 YouTube subscribers – that’s more viewers than Jersey Shore gets. Okay, maybe not quite that many, but Craig’s work is far more entertaining. He has such a large and passionate following that just last month he has been able to quit his job and support himself (granted, he saves a ton on razors) through his YouTube videos.

The takeaway? Stop focusing on instant success and reading columns on how to get famous overnight. Instead, create because you can’t imagine doing anything else.

- Robert Pagliarini

Download several free resources (assessment, poster, audio interview, video, and more) at www.other8hours.com and learn more about Robert’s new book, The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose.

Article originally published on BNET.com. Reprinted with the permission of the author.