4 Strategies to Attempt Something You Hate and Succeed

By Nancy Banfield Johnson

I hated crossword puzzles. The hints made no sense to me. I went through all the across and the down clues and could only fill in a few answers. With lots of spaces and no hope of completing the puzzle, I gave up. Without planning to, I recently learned how to overcome my hatred of crosswords. I have managed for the first time in my life to complete one. Here are lessons I learned that can help you if you want to try something you hate.

1. Find the motivation.

This summer a close family member had major surgery. We spent six to eight hours a day, day after day, sitting in a waiting room or at the bedside. I could have worked on my computer or read a book, but that felt selfish and unsocial. I was desperately bored. I completed all the other word games in the paper. So I decided to attempt the dreaded crossword puzzle.

2. Ask for help when you get stuck.

I told myself this would be different. If I just kept at it, I would get it. My hope sank as I skipped from one clue to the next with my pencil motionless in my hand. My niece heard me grumbling and started to help me. After that, every time I picked up a crossword, if I needed help, I asked for it or found answers in a dictionary, thesaurus or internet resource like "crossword heaven".

3. Keep an open mind.

My niece taught me that crossword clues can be misleading. What we thought was a verb turned out to be a noun. Some words we thought referred to one thing actually meant something else. I would be sure an answer was right, but when I could not make it work with the other answers, I was forced to reconsider. Over and over again, I found out what I originally was so sure of turned out to be wrong.

4. Make it fun to stick with it.

Before I was ready to give up soon after I started. As my niece and I sifted through the clues, we each came up with some funny answers. The rest of the family got involved. Soon we were all throwing out possible solutions and laughing at the most ridiculous ones.

Attempting to do something you hate is difficult. You may decide never to do this. (I certainly won't when it comes to cottage cheese. Who invented that rubbery, tasteless stuff, anyway?) If there is something you hate, but you would like to do, you now have some strategies to do it.

Daily Motivations - Simple Ideas Yield Great Achievements

I want you to think about something. When your riding through town. What do you see? You see business. People constantly on the move. Businesses opening up and greeting new customers You witness life. Now take a closer look. Do you see anything that they all have in common? They are providing a service, a value, new products, new ideas, and the list goes on. What are these businesses. They are the typical fastfood chains, department stores, coffee shops, delis, bakeries. Now lets dive in a little bit deeper. Why were they built? Who built them? Where did they originate? Who founded them? When we answer we find some interesting answers. This goes back to what I was saying about seeing through the illusions. It all had to originate from an idea.

A simple idea. If we could travel back into time where these ideas originated we would find that the founder who is very successful was just a person like you and me who had a simple thought that came to mind. The founder of McDonalds ( Ray Croc) was not the founder of the original concept. That concept was derived from two brothers who had a burger stand. Back in the early fourties the nation seemed to be on its way out of war and jobs started booming. People were on the move again. The brothers thought that "what about if we catered to thier needs." They are constantly on the move. Why not have a quick meal. The brothers capitalized on this thought. They opened a burger stand that provided a quick meal( hamburger, frenchfries, and a cold drink) for the customers on the move. The customers loved it and thier sales skyrocketed. They soon generated enough revenue to expand. They opened some resturaunts and they were a success, but they never foreseen how much of a dynamic this business could be. That is where Ray Croc came into the story. He was a franchisee who had joined and opened up his own McDonalds and utilized the assemblyline concept(making go to order fresh food). He visioned many resturaunts utilizing this concept and the success that this would incour. He purchsed the business form the brothers and grew McDonalds into the dynamic it is today.All of this made possible from a simple idea,

Lets look at another resturaunt that is familiar. Taco Bell is found in almost every city and town. Many years ago there was a gentleman by the name of Glenn Bell who started a hotdog stand in San Bernadino California in 1946. He decided to open up a second stand and sell something a little different. He was selling tacos out of a side window. People had been a customed to the hotdog craize, but the tacos was something new and different.

This attracted many customers and started to bring in revenue.This allowed him to open up three taco stands and continue the growth of the business. Since his business was getting successful he partnered with a local resturateur. They named this franchise El Tacos. Glenn decided after a while to open his own franchise.He then sold all of his interest in the previous franchise and opened his own Taco Bell. He utilized his knowledge from years of working in the business. It took only two years to develope and he generated enough revenue to expand. After fourteen years his business was soo successful that he sold it to Pepsico which they merged with non-burger food chains. This all made possible from a simple idea. I want you to see the common denominators. I also want you to look at the money making units.

I want to give you a perspective . So many times do we just let life pass us by. So many things that have so much potential staring us straight in the eyes and we never see them for what they are. We are so busy with life that we don't stop to think and observe. The next time that your driving down the road turn off the radio, observe the environment around you and realize you can create and form complex business dynamics from simple concepts. Realize that you can be successful too. Here is another thought instead of getting up every morning and doing that same old routine(putting money into other peoples pockets) start to bring values to others and watch your life change.