Hard Work is Not the Answer: Intention Is

“You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.” –Henry David Thoreau

Hi Persuader,

I have a friend who I’m going to call Joe for anonymity’s sake. He is one of the hardest working men I have ever known. Joe is unbelievably intelligent, talented, knowledgeable on a wide variety of subjects, and physically strong. On top of that, he works long hours and doesn’t seem to mind it. Joe also drives an old used truck and works for a paltry hourly wage-not minimum wage-but close.

Why is a man of such obvious attributes always struggling to make end’s meet?

I operate under the assumption that we all have the capacity to get what we want. The only determination: what are you willing do to make it happen? The “doing”, unfortunately, isn’t enough. If it were, my friend Joe would be very successful because he does a lot.

What does it really take? I can tell you hard work is not the answer. I can tell you who you know is not the answer, although it helps. If you happen to be good buddies with Donald Trump you tend to probably have a few extra deals come your way if you’re in the league to be able to take advantage of them, but I’ll tell you right now that it’s what you know, it’s working smart, not hard, it’s taking the ability to go from a desire to get ahead and a willingness to work, to being able to take what it is that you know and leveraging it for money.

People think that it’s the doing that counts. They think, I need to work really hard. I need to come up with good ideas. What about my buddy who works hard but never gets anywhere ever? What’s wrong? Is he stupid? Does he just have bad luck? Was he born under a wrong sign? No. It’s none of those things in my opinion. If it boiled down to ‘the doing’, my buddy would be rich. What it does boil down to is ‘the being’. That’s the key.

What is it then? Well, if you are a painter and you believe that you are a manual laborer and that you’ll never have the ability to run your own business, guess what? You’ll always be a painter and you’ll never run your own business. How much money can you make? Well, as much money as you can afford to get yourself booked out time-wise until your health runs out, I guess.

Intention speaks to the issue of do, have, be. Most people have it backwards. Your intention needs to start off with who you really are, not with what you do.

Most people have it as ‘do’ what it is that you need to really get ahead in life so that you’ll ‘have’ what it is that you want and then you’ll ‘be’ a success in life. Do, have, be is the order most people put it in and that’s absolutely wrong. It’s just plain and simple wrong.

The correct order is be, do, have. You first must ‘be’ the person who is a business person or who is a successful sales person or who is happily married and once you are that person, then you will ‘do’ what a happily married or rich or successful person does so that one day you can ‘have’ what those people have and you have become one of them.

That’s the proper answer and the first step to all of that is to set your intention to be that person. The key is, though, intention doesn’t just help set things in motion, it helps keep things in motion and moreover when we get good at it, it helps direct us to higher and higher levels of success and higher levels of the use of persuasion skills. That’s why we work so diligently to make sure our intention is set first so that it helps prod our words and our gestures and our behavior to see when we’re missing the mark even before consciously we’re aware of it.

Intention is why I’m so passionate about the ‘universe’ work we do because when we create our universes, when we write down what we are and what we have, we become those things in our visions of the future then we become them in actuality.

I’d love it if you would share your universe stories on the forum. What has been your experience with creating your universes? How has your life changed as a result of setting down on paper your intention to fulfill every dream, wish and desire in every facet of your life?

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland