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Enjoy the Good Life!
The good life! What does it mean to you?
Does it mean you live in the penthouse of a beautiful apartment building in London? Are you splashing around in your private swimming pool? Or are you just eating in better restaurants?
Your lifestyle, also known as your standard of living, is the material comfort of your life: your clothing, house, possessions, luxuries and so on.
What is the ideal standard of living for you? Take a minute to write what lifestyle you would most enjoy.
So how do you get the good life?
Quiz
Check the items below that determine your standard of living: - Your employer
- Computers or machinery
- Your parents
- Luck or destiny
- Big business
- Chanting or meditation
- The government
- Your productivity
If you chose the last factor, you can improve the quality of your lifestyle.
"Products are the basis of a standard of living. They don't appear from midair. They come from work truly done." -- L. Ron Hubbard
When you produce enough valuable products, you earn the standard of living you want.
What Is Your Product?
Everyone needs to produce products. If you build houses, your product is a "house." If you publish books, your product is most likely a "published book." If you cook food, your product might be "a healthy, delicious meal."
If you produce a service, such as a hotel clerk, your product might be "a happy hotel guest." If you are a doctor, your product is "a healthy patient." If you sing operas, your product might be "an emotionally effected audience."
As L. Ron Hubbard writes, the work must be truly done. Employees who exaggerate or lie about their productivity do not stay on the job for long. For example, a lazy computer technician might say, "Don't worry about it, boss. I'm sure those machines work fine. The problem is probably with the software company." The computer technician is not producing a product.
Businesses who do not truly do the work are also on the road to failure. "You will make millions with our guaranteed stock market investment system. Just send $999 for this book today!" "Apply our Super-Duper cream to your forehead every morning and you'll soon feel cheerful." "We can install your new roof at half the cost of your other bids if you give me a check for $10,000 right now."
"Factually one normally has to work fast and expertly and in high volume to bring about any acceptable standard of living for himself and his group." -- L. Ron Hubbard
These three production factors determine your standard of living:
1. Speed: how quickly can you produce your product?
2. Expertise: do you know what you are doing?
3. Volume: how many products can you produce?
Working fast is important. A restaurant whose customers wait 45 minutes for their meals makes less money than a restaurant that prepares meals within 20 minutes. An auto mechanic who can replace an engine in six hours enjoys a better standard of living than a mechanic who needs 20 hours to do the same job.
Your expertise determines the quality of your product. If a computer program you write makes computers crash, your standard of living will crash. A horse trainer who produces a calm, friendly obedient horse earns a higher standard of living than a horse trainer whose horses bite or kick their riders.
And of course, the more you produce, the better your standard of living. For example, if you are a high school teacher, you might decide your product is "an educated student." So to teach more students, you might write books, produce documentaries or create e-learning websites. Instead of producing 30 educated students each week, you produce hundreds or thousands of educated students.
A Little-known Fact about Achieving the Lifestyle You Want
Successful business owners and executives find that you never get back the same amount you produce. You need to produce much, much more than most people realize.
"At a personal level one must produce in excess of his standard of living just to retain and maintain it." - L. Ron Hubbard
To reach the standard of living you desire, you need to work faster and with more expertise than you currently do. You can then produce the amount or volume of products you need.
For example, you want a standard of living that costs $1000 per week. However, you need to earn more than $1000 per week to do this. You need to pay for transportation, work clothes, gas, child care, taxes and other expenses before you can buy the lifestyle you want. So you need to earn $2000 each week to enjoy a $1000-per-week standard of living.
If you own a business, the extra costs you must pay are even higher. Business taxes, insurance, equipment, building rent, supplies and so on means you need to produce many times more than the cost of your standard of living. For instance, an accountant may need to produce $6,000 in services each week to afford a $1000-per-week lifestyle. A toothbrush manufacturer may need to produce $100,000 in toothbrushes each week before the company owner can afford the same $1000-per-week lifestyle.
Five Tips for Improving Your Standard of Living
Because you control your standard of living, you can improve it with these steps.
1. Identify your product. What is the final result of your work? What will people pay you for?
2. Find three ways to increase your production speed. Use your ideas until your speed has increased.
3. Find three ways to increase your expertise. Use these ideas to increase the quality or value of your product.
4. Find three ways to increase the amount of production you get done per week. Use these ideas until your production volume increases.
5. Continue to increase the speed, quality and volume of your production until you have more than enough money to raise your standard of living.
Once you have earned the money for your new lifestyle, go for it! Buy that new car. Move to that new house. Eat at those nicer restaurants.
You earned it. You deserve it. So enjoy it!
Provided by TipsForSuccess.org as a public service to introduce the technology of L. Ron Hubbard to you. Copyright © 2005 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. Take better control of your life with the TipsForSuccess coaching website at www.TipsForSuccessCoaching.org. For permission to copy, print or post this article, go to www.tipsforsuccess.org/reprint_info.htm or click here. To subscribe, buy books, contact us or learn more about TipsForSuccess.org, click here. |
