Chapter Fourteen ~ HOW TO FIND SATISFACTION IN YOUR JOB ~ Pilot No. 14
 

No matter what your job may be boss or employee; plant manager or factory worker; doctor or nurse; lawyer or secretary; teacher or student; housewife or maid you owe it to yourself to find satisfaction in your job as long as you have it.

You can, you know. Satisfaction is a mental attitude. Your own mental attitude is the one thing you possess over which you alone have complete control. You can determine to find satisfaction in your job, and discover the way to do so.

You are more apt to find satisfaction in your job if you do "what comes naturally" that for which you have a natural aptitude or liking. When you take a job that doesn't "come naturally" you may experience mental and emotional conflicts and frustrations. You can, however, neutralize and eventually overcome such conflicts and frustrations if you use PMA, and if you are motivated to gain experience to become proficient in the job.

Jerry Asam has PMA. And Jerry Asam loves his work. He finds satisfaction in his job.

Who is Jerry Asam? What does he do?

Jerry is a descendant of the Hawaiian kings. The job he loves so much is that of sales manager for the Hawaiian office of a large international organization.

Jerry loves his work because he knows his work well and is very proficient in it. Thus, he is doing what comes naturally. But even so, Jerry has days when things could be a little rosier. In sales work, days like this can be disturbing-if one does not study, think, and plan to correct difficulties and to maintain a positive mental attitude. So Jerry reads motivating, inspiring books.

Jerry had read such an inspirational book, and learned three very important lessons:

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1. You can control your mental attitude by the use of self-motivators.
2. If you set a goal, you are more apt to achieve it. And the higher you set your goal, the greater will be your achievement.
3. To succeed in anything it is necessary to know the rules and understand how to apply them. It is necessary to study, to learn, to think, and to plan.

Jerry believed these lessons. He got into action. He tried them out himself. He studied his company's sales manuals, and practiced what he learned in actual selling. He set his goals high goals and achieved them. And each morning he said to himself: "I feel healthy I feel happy! I feel terrific!" And he did feel healthy, happy, and terrific. And his sales results were terrific too!

When Jerry was sure he himself was proficient in his sales work, he gathered about himself a group of salesmen and taught them the lessons he had learned. He trained the men in the latest and best selling methods as set forth in his company's training manuals. He took them out personally and demonstrated how easy it is to sell if one uses the right methods, has a plan, and approaches each day with a positive mental attitude. He taught them to set high sales goals and to achieve them with PMA.

Every morning Jerry's group meets and recites enthusiastically, in unison: "I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!" Then they laugh together, slap one another on the back for good luck, and each one goes his way to sell his quota for the day. Each man sets a goal and he sets it so high that older, more experienced salesmen and sales managers on the mainland are amazed.

At the end of each week every salesman turns in a sales report that makes the president and sales manager of Jerry's organization smile big, broad smiles.

Are Jerry and the men under him happy and satisfied in their jobs? You bet they are! And here are some of the reasons they are happy:

1. They have studied their work well; they know and understand the rules and techniques and how to apply them so well that what they are doing comes naturally to them.

2. They set their goals regularly and they believe they will make them. They know what the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.

3. They keep a positive mental attitude continually through the use of a self-motivator.

4. They enjoy the satisfaction that comes with a job well done.

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"I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!" Another young salesman in the same organization on the mainland learned to control his mental attitude through the use of Jerry Asam's self-motivator. He was an eighteen-year-old college student who was working during his summer vacation selling insurance on a cold-canvass basis in stores and offices. Some of the things he had learned during" his two-week theoretical training period were:

1. The habits that a salesman develops within the first two weeks after leaving the sales school will follow him throughout his career.

2. When you have a sales target keep trying until you hit it.

3. Aim higher.
4. In your moment of need, use a self-stimulator like I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific! to motivate yourself to positive action in the desired direction.
After he had a few weeks' selling experience, he set a specific target of achievement. He aimed to win an award. To qualify, it was necessary to make a minimum of one hundred sales in a single week.

By Friday night of that week, he had succeeded in making eighty sales twenty short of his target. The young salesman was determined that nothing would stop him from achieving his objective. He believed what he had been taught: What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve. Although the other salesmen in his group closed their week's work on Friday night, he was back on the job early Saturday morning.

By three o'clock in the afternoon, he hadn't made a sale. He had been taught that sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman not the prospect.

He remembered the Jerry Asam self-stimulator and repeated it five times with enthusiasm. I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!

About five o'clock that afternoon he had made three sales. He was only seventeen from his goal. He remembered that Success is achieved by those who keep trying! Again he repeated several times with enthusiasm, I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific! About eleven o'clock that night he was tired, but he was happy! He had made his twentieth sale for the day! He had hit his target! He had won the award and learned that failure can be turned into success by keeping on trying.

Mental attitude makes the difference. So it was mental attitude that motivated Jerry Asam and the salesmen under him to find satisfaction in their jobs. It was a controlled positive mental attitude which helped the young student earn the reward and satisfaction he sought.

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Just look about you. Notice those people who enjoy their work and those who don't. What's the difference between them? Happy, satisfied persons control their mental attitude. They take a positive view of their situation. They look for the good, and when something isn't so good, they look first to themselves to see if they can improve it They try to learn more about their work so that they can become more proficient and make their work more satisfying to themselves and their employer.

But those who are unhappy clutch their NMA tightly. Indeed, it is almost as if they want to be unhappy. They look for everything about which they can complain: the hours are too long; lunch hours are too short; the boss is too crabby; the company doesn't give enough holidays or the right kind of bonuses. Or maybe they even complain about irrelevant things, such as: Susie wears the same dress every day; John the bookkeeper doesn't write legibly, and so on, and so on. Anything just so they can be unhappy. And they succeed very well, too. They are decidedly unhappy people on the job and generally elsewhere too. NMA possesses them entirely.

And this is true regardless of the type of work involved. If you want to be happy and satisfied, you can be: you will control your mental attitude and reverse your talisman from NMA to PMA; you will look for ways and means to create happiness.

If you can bring happiness and enthusiasm into your work situation, you'll be making a contribution that few others could equal. You will make your work fun and your job satisfaction will be measured in smiles and in productivity, too.

A definite goal made her enthusiastic. Not too long ago in one of our Science of Success classes, we were talking about this principle of bringing enthusiasm into one's job, when a young lady in the rear of the classroom raised her hand. She got to her feet and said:

"I've come here with my husband. What you say may be all right for a man in business, but it's no good for a housewife. You men have new and interesting challenges every day. But it's not like that with housework. The trouble with housework is ... it's just too darned daily."

This seemed like a real challenge to us: there are a lot of people who have jobs that are "just too darned daily." If we could find some way to help this young lady, perhaps we could help others who thought their work was routine. We asked her what made her housework seem so "daily," and it turned out that she had no sooner finished making the beds when they were dirtied again, washing the dishes when they were soiled again, cleaning the floors when they were muddied again. "You just get these things done so they can get undone," she said.

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"It does seem frustrating/* the instructor agreed. "Are there any women who do enjoy housework?"

"Well, yes, I guess there are," she said.

"What do they find in housework to interest them and keep them enthusiastic?"

After a moment's thought the young woman replied, "Maybe it's their attitude. They don't seem to think their work is confining; they seem to see something beyond the routine."

This was the crux of the problem. One of the secrets of job satisfaction is being able to "see beyond the routine." It is knowing that your work is leading somewhere. This is true whether you are a housewife or a file clerk, a gasoline pump operator or the president of a large corporation. You'll find satisfaction in routine chores only when you see them as stepping stones. Each chore a stone, leading in a direction that you choose.

Use the step-stone theory. The answer, then, for this young housewife, was to find some goal which she really wanted to achieve, and to find a way to make her routine daily housework lead to the attainment of that goal. She volunteered the information that she had always wanted to take her family on a trip around the world.

"All right," the instructor said. "We'll settle on that. Now, set yourself a time limit. When do you want to go?"

"When the baby is twelve years old," she said. "That will be six years from now."

"Now, let's see. This will take a little doing. You will need money, for one thing. Your husband will have to be able to take off for a year. You will have to plan an itinerary. You will want to study up on the countries you will be visiting. Do you suppose you can find a way to let bed-making, dish-washing, floor-scrubbing, and meal-planning be stepping stones toward your goal?"

A few months later the lady in this story came to see us. It was apparent the minute she walked into the room that here was a woman who had succeeded proudly.

"It's amazing," she told us, "how well this stepping stone idea has worked! I haven't found a single chore that doesn't fit in. I use my cleaning time as a thinking and planning time. Shopping time is a wonderful time to expand our horizons: I deliberately buy foods from other countries: foods that we will be eating on our trip.

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And use the meal time as a teaching time. If we are having Chinese egg noodles, I read all I can find about China and its people, and then at dinner I tell the family all about them.

"Not one of my duties is dull or uninteresting to me anymore. And I know they never will be again, thanks to the step-stone theory!"

So no matter how humdrum or tiresome your job may be, if at the end of it you see a goal that you desire, that job can bring satisfaction to you. This is a situation which confronts many persons in all walks of life. One young man may want to be a doctor, but he has to work his way through school. The job he takes will be decided by many factors, such as hours, location, rate of pay, and so on. Aptitude will have little to do with it. A very intelligent, ambitious, young man may end up behind a soda fountain, washing cars, or digging ditches. Certainly the job offers him no challenge or stimulation. It is merely a means to an end. Yet because he knows he is going where he wants to go, to him whatever strains the job may impose on him are worth the end result.
Sometimes, however, the price to be paid on a given job is too high in relation to the goal which it will purchase. And if such a job should happen to be yours, change your job. For if you are unhappy at your job, the poisons of this dissatisfaction spread into every phase of living.

If, however, the job is worth the price but you are still unhappy, develop inspirational dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction can be positive or negative, good or bad, depending upon the circumstances. Remember: A positive mental attitude is the right mental attitude in a given situation.

Develop inspirational dissatisfaction! Charles Becker, president of Franklin Life Insurance Company, says: "I would urge that you be dissatisfied. Not dissatisfied in the sense of disgruntlement, but dissatisfied in the sense of that 'divine discontent' which throughout the history of the world has produced all real progress and reform. I hope you will never be satisfied. I hope you will constantly feel the urge to improve and perfect not only yourself, but the world around you."

Inspirational dissatisfaction can motivate persons from sinner to saint, failure to success, poverty to riches, defeat to victory, and misery to happiness.

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What do you do: when you make a mistake? when things go wrong? when misunderstandings develop with others? when you meet defeat? when everything seems black? when it appears that there is no way to turn? when it looks as if a satisfactory solution to your problem is impossible?

Do you: Do nothing and allow disaster to overtake you? Do you fold up? Become frightened? Run away?

Or, do you develop inspirational dissatisfaction? Do you turn disadvantages into advantages? Do you determine what you want? Do you apply faith, clear thinking, and positive action, knowing that desirable results can and will be achieved?

Napoleon Hill says every adversity has the seed of an equivalent benefit. Isn't it true that in the past what seemed to be a great difficulty or an unfortunate experience has inspired you to success and happiness that might not otherwise have been achieved?

Inspirational dissatisfaction can motivate you to succeed, Albert Einstein was dissatisfied because Newton's laws didn't answer all his questions. So he kept inquiring into nature and higher mathematics until he came up with the theory of relativity. . . . And from that theory the world has developed the method of breaking the atom, learned the secret of transmuting energy into matter and vice versa, and dared and succeeded to conquer space and all sorts of amazing things we very likely would not have accomplished if Einstein had not developed inspirational dissatisfaction.

Now, of course, we are not all Einsteins, and what results from our inspirational dissatisfaction may not change the world. But it can change our world and we can move forward in the direction we want to go. Let us tell you what happened to Clarence Lantzer when he became dissatisfied with his job.

Was it worth it? Now Clarence Lantzer had been a streetcar conductor in Canton, Ohio, for years. And one day he woke up in the morning and decided that he didn't like his job. It was too much the same. He was sick and tired of it. The more Clarence thought about the matter, the more dissatisfied he became. And he seemed to be unable to quit thinking about it. His dissatisfaction grew almost to an obsession. Clarence was mightily dissatisfied.

But when you have worked for a company as long as Clarence had worked for this streetcar company, you don't just quit because you decide that you are unhappy. At least, not if you are interested in whether or not your bread will be buttered.

Besides, Clarence had taken the PMA Science of Success course, and he had learned that one could be happy on any fob if one wanted to. The thing to do was to adopt the right attitude.

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So Clarence decided to take a sensible view of the situation and see what he could do about it. "How can I be happier on the job?" he asked himself.
And he came up with a very good answer indeed. He decided that he would be happier if he made others happy.

Now there were many people whom he could make happy, for he met many folks on his streetcar everyday. He had always been able to make friends readily, so he thought: 'Til use this trait to make each day a little brighter for every person who boards my car."

Clarence's plan was wonderful—the customers thought. They enjoyed his little courtesies and cheerful greetings immensely. And they were happier, and so was Clarence, as the result of his cheerfulness and consideration.

But his supervisor took the opposite attitude. So the supervisor called Clarence in and warned him to stop all this unwonted affability.

But Clarence paid no attention to the warning. He was having a good time making others happy. And as far as he and the customers were concerned, he was making a terrific success of his job.

Clarence was fired!

So Clarence had a problem and that was good. At least, according to the PMA Science of Success course, it was good. Clarence decided that perhaps he had better visit Napoleon Hill (who was living in Canton at the time) and see how and why this problem was so good. He called Mr. Hill and arranged for an appointment the next afternoon.

"I've read Think and Grow Rich, Mr. Hill, and I've studied the PMA Science of Success, but somewhere I must have gotten off on the wrong track." And he told Napoleon Hill what had happened to him. "Now what do I do?" he concluded.

Napoleon Hill smiled. "Let's look at your problem," he said. "You were dissatisfied with your work as it was. You did exactly right. You tried to use your best asset, your friendly and affable disposition, to do a better job and get and give more satisfaction on the job. The problem arises from the fact that your superior didn't have the imagination to see the value of what you were doing. But that's wonderful! Why? Because now you are in a position to use your fine personality for even greater goals."

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And Napoleon Hill showed Clarence Lantzer that he could use his fine abilities and friendly disposition to much better advantage as a salesman than as a streetcar conductor. So Clarence applied for and got a job as an agent for the New York Life Insurance Company.

The first prospect Clarence called on was the president of the streetcar company. Clarence turned his personality loose on this gentleman, and came out of the office with an application for a $100,000 policy!

The last time Hill saw Lantzer, he had become one of New York Life's biggest producers.

Are you a square peg in a round hole? The characteristics, abilities, and capacities that make you happy and successful in one environment may create an opposite reaction in another. You have a tendency to do well what you want to do.

You are called a "square peg in a round hole" when you work or engage in activities that do not come naturally, and that are inwardly repellent. In such an unhappy situation you can change your position and place yourself in an environment that is pleasing to you.

It may not be feasible to change your position. You can then make adjustments in your environment to coincide with your characteristics, abilities, and capacities so that you will be happy. When you do this, you "square the hole." This solution will help change your attitude from negative to positive.

If you develop and maintain a burning desire to do so, you can even neutralize and change your tendencies and habits by establishing new ones. You can "round the peg" if you are sufficiently motivated. But before you achieve success in changing your tendencies and habits, be prepared to face mental and moral conflicts. You can win if you are willing to pay the price. You may find it difficult to pay each necessary installment particularly the first few. But when you have paid in full, the newly established traits will predominate. The old tendencies and habits will become dormant. You will be happy because you will be doing what now comes naturally.

To guarantee success it is desirable that you try zealously to maintain physical, mental, and moral health during the period of such an internal struggle.
In the next chapter, "Your Magnificent Obsession," you will see how to neutralize your mental conflicts.
 

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11
Pilot No. 14
THOUGHTS TO STEER BY
HOW TO FIND SATISFACTION
IN YOUR JOB
 

1. Satisfaction is a mental attitude.

2. Your own mental attitude is the one thing you possess over which you alone have complete control.

3. I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!

4. When you set a goal—aim higher!

5. Know the rules and understand how to apply them.

6. Set your target and keep trying until you hit it.

7. See beyond the routine. Use the step-stone theory.

8. Develop inspirational dissatisfaction.

9. What do you do if you are a square peg in a round hole?

DEFEAT MAY BE A STEPPING STONE
OR A STUMBLING BLOCK
ACCORDING TO THE WAY
YOU ACCEPT IT