It’s really important that each one of us acknowledges that we own our attitude. This means that each day we have a choice to either have a good attitude or a bad one. Attitude is not a skill, but it is a decision and it works in our favour when we have a good one. Your attitude will literally determine your altitude. Here are three points that helped us to examine our attitude and assisted us in creating awareness around how we behaved on a daily basis.

Association

It is imperative to judge the company we are keeping. So often parents are very concerned about who their kids are hanging around with but they seldom check to see what their circle of friends looks like.

We are very familiar with this scenario as once we started to focus on self and our growth we realised we were hanging around a bunch of negative people. This didn’t mean they were bad people but just people who had got into bad habits. Do you find yourself in a friendship circle where everything is bad, the economy, the politicians, the weather, the job market, the teachers, the sports teams and even the kids? They are the kind of people who are willing to point out all the things that are wrong in the world but they seldom focus on the solutions. Our experience is that complaining seldom works to improve a bad situation.

We personally believe, we cannot lead unless we are lead, so one day we were given incredibly wise counsel by a personal mentor and that was to get rid of toxic relationships in our lives and this included our family. Now this statement may seem a bit extreme but none the less it is a very valuable principle. Do you need to take this literally, no, but it does mean that you don’t need to spend copious amounts of time with people that don’t add value to you or your family. It is after all negative people that contribute towards your negative attitude.

Another statement that stands true is “the person that you will become in five years from now, will be determined by the books you read and the people you associate with.” Charlie Tremendous Jones.

One of my all time favourite stories relates to twins growing up in a family where alcohol was a problem. The one son grows up to be a very successful business man and his brother becomes a drunken bum. When approached to see the difference between the brothers, the first brother attributed his success to the fact that his father was an alcoholic and the the the other brother attributed his failure to the fact that his father was an alcoholic. Same situation, different attitudes.

The question is how do your change your friendship circle overnight? It is easier said than done but what we chose to do was to listen to lots and lots of CD’s and Podcasts of people whom we aspired to be like and we drew from their input into our lives. Some of our all time favourites are Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Andy Stanley……..

A bad attitude can steal your dream

Who do you know that won’t fly because there have been so many air crashes? Who won’t try working out because they are overweight and won’t put on gym ware? Who won’t go sky diving because they are to old? Who won’t public speak because of a past experience? Who enters the job market with a negative attitude and expects to get a great job? Folk with an attitude of entitlement and a negative attitude.

We limit ourselves when we choose to focus on the negatives in our lives. We need to adjust our attitude and look at all the benefits that we will get if we are willing to get out of our comfort zone.

Who has done what you want to do? Who can help you to take steps, even if they are baby one towards what it is you are wanting to achieve?

Choose the happiness habit

There are three critical attributes to happiness:

Appreciating what you have
Continued Personal Growth
Responding effectively to adverse situations

Appreciate what you have

So how do we get to appreciate what we have? We develop an attitude of gratitude. What do we have that others don’t? It is very easy to develop a negative attitude when we look at our current circumstances, we never seem to have enough money, enough time, our kids always have to much homework, we constantly seem to be working overtime…….

Well let’s see how we can look at just a few of these negatives and change our perspective. We probably have way more money than the family where the the husband has just lost his job, we also probably have more time than the doctor who is working double shifts. We could look at how grateful we are that our kids are at a decent school that will provide them with a good education and even though we are stressed about the amount of overtime we are working, we could choose to focus on how fortunate we really are in terms of the large number of people who cannot find employment.

If you are distracted by what you don’t have, you are almost not grateful for what you do have.

Continued Personal Growth

As you start to work on yourself and as you read more you will catch yourself when you realise you are being negative or when your behaviour is destructive. You will literally stop yourself in your tracks when you want to display bad behaviour. You will learn to bite your tongue when your understand that what you want to say will not benefit anyone, let alone you. You will learn to pause and to think before you speak. You will become aware of other peoples feelings.

You may also benefit from seeking assistance from a coach to help you raise your game.

Responding effectively to adverse situations

This is a whole new topic for a future blog but in short there are just those people who seem to perform well under duress. They are objective. They look for solutions. They don’t go into panic mode. They don’t create chaos around them. They don’t insult others. They appreciate that all blame is a waste of time. They create harmony. They build relationships. The have even temperaments. The good news is they have Emotional Intelligence, which is a learnt skill. Calmness of the mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom.

We raised our three children with a dominant statement – “Everything in life is a choice, you are where you are because of the choices and decisions you make.” This holds true to our attitude. We looked out for who we associated with, how our attitude could hold us back from Realising Our Full Potential and how a good attitude could contribute to our happiness.

We would suggest you start today to examine your life and how it could improve if you chose to adjust your attitude. A positive attitude does not guarantee you success but a negative attitude will lead to failure. Look at all the things you are grateful for and look at what would happen if you could look at life through a positive lens. Every step forward is a step in the right direction.