Time for an Attitude Check

Got an attitude? Is it helping you, or could it use some work?

Bill’s sitting in traffic – his attitude stinks, so he feels angry at the other drivers for being in the way. He wishes they’d disappear – they’re not even human to him anymore, and he doesn’t remember that they’ve got lives, destinations, concerns, joys, and dreams.

He just wants them gone.

He knows he did this to himself, by leaving too late to account for traffic.

He hates being late, but he’s finding himself late more and more often. But, right before he left, he grouched at his family, couldn’t find his socks, and then decided he had to take a quick peek at email.

So he left no room to spare in his drive time.

And now he’s looking at a sea of brake lights, waiting through several turns of the traffic light.

Fuming.

He can feel his pulse on his forehead, a ticking bomb. Finally, he sees the hold-up – an accident.

He feels awful because of his selfish impatience – for a moment.

OR

Tracy’s sitting in the same traffic jam, even though she left early. But she’s listening to an audio book, reading when she’s at a standstill, or taking the time to breathe deeply and meditate.

She’s counting her blessings, taking time to be grateful for all that she is, has, and hopes for.

She wonders about the other drivers around her, and notices some really grouchy guy in the car to the right. Looks like he might explode – is that his pulse beating on his forehead?

She says a prayer for him and all the other drivers, too.

She knows that when she finally gets where she’s got to go, she’ll be able to cope with any effects of being late from the traffic.

There is a world of difference between these two commutes. And it’s all because of attitude. No big surprise, your attitude affects every area of your life.

• The quality of your relationships
• The health of your finances
• The state of your physical health
• Your appearance
• How long you’ll live
• How effective you’ll be in helping others
• How successful you’ll be in your job or business

An attitude is made of our thoughts, feeling, and ultimately, our actions. It’s formed in that order too.

THOUGHTS -->> FEELINGS -->> ACTIONS

Notice that thoughts come first.

It might seem strange, because it certainly seems like our feelings hijack our thoughts and propel us into actions – not the other way around.

But you’ll see, as we look at how your mind works, that your thoughts are the real powerhouse – the boss, the launch pad that sets everything else in motion.

Each thought is powerful – for your good or your harm.

Feelings can be overwhelming, seemingly uncontrollable, driving you toward inevitable actions. But you’re going to learn how you can control your feelings and actions before anything’s set in motion.

Either way, for good or for bad results, our thinking and feeling determine how things work out in our lives. Our results are just that – the effects of what’s going on inside us.

What a relief not to live at the mercy of emotion!

Before you can really get going in the direction of change, you’ve got to do an attitude check first. You can read until your eyeballs fall out and your fingers get calloused from scrolling, but without the right attitude in place, you’re wasting your time.

With a poor attitude, there’s no information on Earth that can help you change your life. Take a look at your attitude about yourself, your life, the people in your life, your finances, your health, and your place in the universe. How does it look?

“You are the only problem you will ever have and you are the only solution. Change is inevitable, personal growth is always a personal decision.” - Bob Proctor

There are lots of things in life you really don’t have much of a choice about, but your attitude is not one of them. Your attitude is completely up to you. I can tell you right away, that a positive, grateful attitude is the best way to go.

Gratitude - for what you’ve already got, for where you live, who you know, all that you are, and all that you’re not – is the place to start. How can you ever expect to receive more in life, to be more in life, without first appreciating how much you already have and are?

Your attitude is a choice.

Success is all about making great choices, and this is the first one you need to tackle. It might take practice. It might take reminding yourself. It might even take a “fake it ‘til you make it” stance, but you’ve got to do it.

So, what’s your attitude like right now? You can probably “see” others’ attitudes, but it’s a little harder when you’re looking at your own.

Let’s take a look, to start off right, seeing just where we are.

Grab a quiet corner and eavesdrop on your own thoughts.

What do you hear?

Jot these thoughts onto some paper, and then read them out loud. How do they sound?

Negative? Positive? Friendly? Critical?

Your thoughts are very powerful. They shape your mood, your attitude, and even affect your appearance.

Your attitude has a big impact on the people around you as well. With your attitude, you can bless people with a sense of being recharged, revived – just from being around you. It works the other way too, if your attitude stinks, it’s going to either drag those around you down or send them scurrying for cover.

Your negative attitude drains the joy out of the room.

Why is your attitude so powerful?

Can you harness that power and use it for good?

Sure, you can! It’s simple, even if it’s not always easy.

“Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.” - Earl Nightingale

What do you think about? How do you look at life? Are you like Woody Allen?

Given the old question about whether a cup is half-full or half-empty, he said he didn’t even think he had a cup!

You get to choose your focus every moment of the day. If you choose to look on the dark side, you cultivate a negative attitude.

Guess what follows?

More negativity, and then negative results. It’s making the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. You make yourself miserable, and infect everyone else around you at the same time. You pretty much ask for trouble in life, attracting the very things you despise because you’re so focused on them. Your problems seem insurmountable because you feel like you just can’t handle them.

You become small.

You get a free license to complain – although there’s no guarantee that anyone will stay around to listen.

The opposite is true, too.

Aside from a great attitude being conducive to living a healthy life and attracting friends, it also makes life more enjoyable and less stressful. You have a sense of being larger than any problem that comes your way, and know you’ve got a great support system to help if you need it. You feel good about the future, and are energized enough to work toward making things happen. You can picture, with great detail, the life you want to live. You can confidently design the life you want, the life you’ll have.

Everyone’s heard the computer tech phrase – garbage in, garbage out. But how do you prevent the garbage from getting in in the first place?

Take a look around you – the world’s got some problems!

You’ve got to be vigilant, aware, and willing to make some changes.

Your attitude is formed by your thoughts. But where do your thoughts come from? You get to choose! What input will you allow into your mind? Here are a few areas to consider:

• Who do you spend time with?
• What do you read?
• What do you watch on TV?
• What do you do in the car?
• How organized are you?
• What do you do when you’re frustrated?
• How do you spend your day?
• What do you do before you go to sleep?

Everyone’s read the statistics about how much time people spend watching TV. It’s contributed to a whole host of troubles, from obesity to bankruptcy. Laziness, overeating, over-spending, shorter attention spans, ADHD, divorce, promiscuity, cancer… it’s all been blamed on TV at some point!

One thing’s for sure, though. There’s a lot of junk on TV.

There’s a lot of really bad news, a lot of negativity, a lot of people treating one another badly. Is it burying your head in the sand if you choose not to watch this stuff?

No, not at all.

There are many other ways you can stay informed of what’s going on in the world without sitting through long stretches of news broadcasts, and commercials. Most of the news focuses on people doing things that range from foolish to downright evil.

It’s not a call to action – it’s really more like an opportunity to peek.

Why would you allow this into your thoughts?

Did you know that many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs launched their businesses in their “spare” time?

Their money-making machines were built on their own time, not at their jobs. How much time do you waste watching TV that you could spend doing something productive – something life-changing?

Just like any other habit, TV-watching can be tough to limit or eliminate at first. But once you’ve freed yourself, you’ll be amazed by the results. You’ll find yourself having more energy, a more positive outlook, a great attitude. You’ll find time to start a business, learn something new, get organized, and create Your Million Dollar Lifestyle.

“Your mental attitude is something you can control outright and you must use self-discipline until you create a positive mental attitude - your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.” - Napoleon Hill

Be careful about the people you choose to spend time with. “Birds of a feather…” right?

We don’t get to choose everyone who’s in our lives, but there are quite a few where we do have that privilege. If you’ve got negative people in your life, they’re going to be really puzzled when you start to change. Some may decide to change, too – and won’t that be great! But most are just going to stay the course. If you explain to them how you’re trying to grow and improve, they’re not going to get it. Some of them will try to shoot you down; others will just move on to find another grump to hang around.

What about your family?

A bit tougher, right? You don’t just get to dump them! But you also don’t get to all of a sudden change the rules – one day announcing, “We’re going to take this whole family thing in another direction. There will be no more negativity allowed!”

However, you do get to be an agent of change.

What you do, how you live and think and speak will make a gradual difference in your home.

The best approach is to demonstrate it rather than to talk about it. Your family might think you’re nuts if you start quoting motivational speakers, using strange terms and phrases, and asking them to read this passage or that. But, if you start living with a great attitude in a humble and quiet way, they’ll see the difference and want to be like you. It can take time, of course, because you’ve got some negative patterns to overturn. They might even secretly notice that you’re different, but want to wait for the other shoe to hit the floor to see whether the “new you” sticks. They’ll come around eventually, and you will have done a great thing.

If you’re a big reader, words have a strong impact on your thoughts. You immerse yourself in the pages, so enthralled that you don’t notice the time passing. If you read fiction, you find that you feel you know the characters, feel for them, miss them when you’re finished reading. It can be a great imaginary escape. It’s got its place, for sure. But, you should also be diligent in reading books that will add to your development. There are shelves and shelves full of great books about achievement, success, business, entrepreneurship, self-improvement, memory-improvement, marketing, investing, wealth creation, and leadership.

Just as you meet your nutritional needs by eating a balanced diet, it’s important to feed your brain a good variety of books. Audio books are an excellent way to kill two birds with one stone. The time you spend in your car can be transformed from brain-dead robot time to an oasis of self-improvement and growth. Lots of successful entrepreneurs refer to their cars as “rolling universities” because they’ve found a way to redeem what would otherwise be wasted time. If you spend your driving time listening to a good speaker, or quietly envisioning your goals, you’ll find that the time goes by more quickly and pleasantly. You’ll arrive smarter, more pleasant, and invigorated.

A big challenge to maintaining a good attitude is stress.

One common source of stress is being disorganized. Disorganization leads to aggravation, making you late as you rush around looking for those lost keys, your belt, your wallet. It’s a habit, so it’s going to take some concerted effort to change, but you can become much more organized if you apply yourself. The best way to get organized is to develop systems in your life. A system is a set of actions you do, in the same order, in the same way every time you have a certain situation. You do it consistently until you can pretty much do it in your sleep. It’s the way you brush your teeth – you probably have a certain pattern, a certain timing. It’s become so automatic that you’re barely aware you’ve done it at times. If you can develop a single system at a time – say, first for a routine you’ll follow every time you come home. Put the briefcase here, the keys there, check the voicemail, etc. Be conscious to do it the same way every day, and you’ll be amazed at how easy it is after a while. You’ll be able to find your keys every morning (unless gremlins really do come out at night and hide your keys!).

How do you handle yourself when you get frustrated or disappointed?

This is a biggie.

You’ve had times when something didn’t go right, and your attitude was off for days. Stuff happens, and you’ve got a much better chance at making it through with a good attitude intact if you plan ahead. You can create a system for how you handle difficulties. Doing so will help you by giving you a sense of which end is up, keeping you from reacting rashly, and guard your attitude from taking a nosedive.

The first key is to stop and think before you react. Take a deep breath.

Focus on thinking rationally. You can handle this. You’ve got all the resources you need, right at your fingertips to get through this difficulty. Take a moment to reflect on that fact and to be grateful for the help you’ll receive. Remind yourself that if you’ve got such great help, you’re actually much larger than your problem. It’s just a matter of time before you find a great solution. Be thankful for all the positive aspects of the situation. If you have a fender-bender, you can be thankful that you have a car, that you’ve got insurance, that nobody was hurt, that you’ve got an opportunity to demonstrate grace and mercy. Approaching any situation from this calm, grateful mindset ensures that your attitude will help rather than harm.

How you spend your day greatly affects your thoughts, which form your attitude.

If you’ve ever had a day when you were really busy, in a good way, productive, and purposeful, you know how good it felt. Your attitude was great, you treated people well, you were grateful for every blessing that came your way, and you slept well at night. On the other hand, if you spend a day doing nothing – and not nothing like on vacation! – you probably grew a little cross as the day went by. You were more tempted to overeat, to watch junk TV, to be crabby. You went to bed unsatisfied, grumpy, glad the day was finally over. It’s important to plan a good, meaty day everyday. You need to be engaged in purposeful activities, balancing time alone and time with people. You need time each day to do something creative. You need a little challenge every day. Orchestrating one productive day after another leads to great results, and leaves you with a great attitude, which brings even more results.

Finally, the last 15 – 20 minutes of each day are really valuable.

Don’t waste them.

This is a great time to spend a few minutes expressing gratitude for the day, for the people you saw, the things you did, the help you received. Spend some time reading words that continue to change your heart and mind, nurturing your spirit by drawing you closer to your creator. Use the time to enjoy picturing your goals, fleshing out every detail before you fall asleep. Your brain keeps working while you sleep, so right before bedtime is an excellent time to give it something great to work on all night. You’ll sleep better when you go to bed with a good attitude, and you’ll wake up inspired and ready to jump into another great day.