Personality Development: How To Be Popular
By Sardar Joginder Singh ( Former Director, CBI)
Competition Refresher, July 2005 Issue
L. RON HUBBARD says: “When a person becomes terribly interesting, he has lots of problems. That is the chasm, which is crossed by all of our celebrities, anybody who is foolish enough to become famous. He crosses over from being interested in life to being interesting. And people who are interesting, are really no longer interested in life. It is very baffling to some young fellow why he cannot make some beautiful girl interested in him. Well, she is not interested, she is interesting.”
Shift the Attention
Many persons reason that the course to success is to be interesting. It is to show off or act like some celebrity or copy some one’s style. This one tendency is more to be seen in the younger generation, who feel dressing up in stylish clothes or having the hair style of a film star. Some of them believe that having the latest mobile phone or the car, will make them interesting and make people take interest in them. An actor while acting on stage can be interesting. Similar is the case with speakers, comedians, models and magicians. Their livelihood and job depends on being interesting. When they stop being interesting, which is a part of their jobs, they go out of circulation. If you want people to collaborate with you or to be fond of you or to be approachable, you must be enthralling and absorbing. Instead of concentrating on yourself, be interested in others. Observe what makes them happy or miserable. You should shift your attention from yourself to others.
Proper Judgment.
When you focus is more on others than yourself, you experience less stress. You act and react with more shrewdness and judgement. Your quest and awareness level increases, enabling you, to have more entertaining thoughts. If you want to relish life, keep yourself actively engaged in various activities. But do not neglect leisure, amusement and laughter as well as your health and sleep. Do not waste your time, on imaginary and theoretical problems or thinking. Do not involve yourself, with things or situations about which you can not do anything like the weather or lightening or what others feel about you or how you should react if a particular thing were to happen. Life can be, and is totally different, than what many armchair generals or theoreticians have realized. Try to live in the present. Tackle the most unpleasant chore first as putting off unpleasant task will only lead you and simply give you, more time to your way of thinking to make a mountain out of a probable molehill. Any time spent on anxiety will sap your self-confidence. Doing whatever you are to do right now is the best way to overcome tension or worry.
Some people have a habit of pouring their woes and anxieties on other people. I had a neigbour Brajesh, who would always be condemning his colleagues, bosses and even sub-ordinates. He never had a good word for anybody. Apart from this, he was always talking of his ailments and body problem. He would describe his symptoms in great detail. After listening to him for a week, I felt that I had all his health problems. I got myself thoroughly checked up and was declared hundred percent fit. Then I realized that it was the unhealthy exposure of the talk, information and bemoaning of Brajesh, which had affected me. When next time he wanted to talk about his problems, I made a decent excuse to go away from his presence. I repeated the same approach for a month. Then one day he asked me as to why I was avoiding him. I told him equally frankly that everybody has his problems, and I was not allowing myself, to become the dust bin of his negative thinking. I said he was welcome to be with me, as long as he did not talk of his ill health or badmouth others. I told him, not to look for sympathy and not think of his problems as difficulties. Instead, he should consider them as opportunities and to develop his faculties and skills to overcome them.
Another friend of mine, Kaman, is always in a tearing hurry for everything. He told me that he envies my life because I never give the impression of being nervous, though sometimes I may be so. When he asked me as to how I do so, I said that, as far as possible, I try to arrange my schedule, and pad my time, I such a way that I am not late for any programme. Being late and in a hurry can shatter anybody’s poise. Avoid being in a situation here you do not have to hurry. Hurry and worry are closely inter related. Combined together, they can destroy and shatter aplomb, self-assurance, self-confidence and self control.
Tackle the Situation
The basic point here is that we all face problems, and unavoidable situations in life. Rarely or mostly nobody has smooth sailing and trouble free existence. We should be prepared to divide any job simple manageable segments for completion. This is the only way in which we can forge ahead. If worse comes to worst, we should be ready to do our best and in most cases our best will be better than the best we had anticipated.
