Developing Positive Attitude

Developing positive attitude us expressed well in the best selling talking record of all time (you remember those vinyl, long-playing — LPs — of days gone by) which was written and recorded by Earl Nightingale and titled The Strangest Secret. In it, Earl describes, what he considers to be the most important aspect of success and achievement—that is, “we are what we think about.” Among other topics in The Strangest Secret, Earl talks about the critical role of attitude in our journey toward success. And he should know. Success was Earl's specialty, and he researched, wrote and spoke on the topic for more than 40 years.

What does it take to prosper in an ever changing world? Earl Nightingale provides these answers in this updated program of his time-honored, success building discoveries. Through Earl's collected wisdom…

Earl’s other groundbreaking audio recording, Lead the Field, contains a section titled, “The Magic Word.” That word? You guessed it: Attitude. I would suggest that if Mr. Nightingale considered a good attitude as an important attribute for those success-seekers, you should heed his advice, and discover now how to improve your attitude.

Hundreds of thousands of people have profited from the wisdom and savvy of Lead the Field. In fact, it has often been referred to as the "Program of Presidents" because so many top executives have incorporated Earl's guidance and wisdom into their management philosophies.

Attitude Adjustment #1:
Developing a Positive Attitude

My son, who incessantly parades around in a baseball cap, couldn’t care less about his hair. But his attitude that morning was that he was going to have a bad day. And he did.

Unlike hair, attitude is one area of our lives over which we have complete control. We each make a decision every morning — whether we’re aware of it or not — to either have a good day or a bad day. We control our own attitudes. But we also control the attitudes of others. How? Our attitude determines how others will act toward us, because our environment is nothing more than a mirror of ourselves. Whatever we reflect into the mirror will come right back at us.

It’s no wonder Earl Nightingale called attitude “The Magic Word.” Attitude can do wonders for us, or it can bring us down. It’s a simple matter of cause and effect. If we have a good attitude, we’ll have a good day. If we have a bad attitude we’ll have a bad day. It sounds so simple, but it’s a basic success principle that few people grasp.

Two Important Choices
You have two choices when you awake each morning to face another day: You can be a chameleon and exhibit “reactive behavior,” reacting to every new situation in a new manner. Or, you can possess “expectant behavior” and expect that things will go your way. Successful people expect to succeed more often than they fail. And since the law of cause and effect governs success, they do indeed succeed.

I heard a story once of a man who sat in front of a wood burning stove, cold and shivering. He said to the stove, “C’mon, give me heat.” But what the man didn’t realize was that he first needed to put wood in the stove before the stove could produce any heat. Cause and effect. If you provide the good attitudes in everything that you do, you can get nothing but good attitudes radiating back to you. And since a good attitude has to start somewhere, why not let it start with you?
Wear your rose-colored glasses…every day. Click here to find out how.

Attitude Adjustment #2:
Have a Magnificent Obsession

What made this day different from any other day? I had a magnificent obsession. I had a project to dwell upon, a challenge to meet. And it made all the difference in the world in my attitude and my mood.

What about you? Do you ever go to work feeling unguided or misdirected? Do you ever come home after a day at the office and take up your position on the couch in a half-slouch and begin stabbing the remote control in an endless flip-flop of bad programming? Do you find yourself going to bed early because there’s “nothing else to do?”

There’s no quicker way to destroy your self-confidence and hold yourself back both personally and professionally.

Turn Everything You Do Into An Obsession
Not only do you need to remain excited about your profession, you need to have other diversions that you can sink your brain into. Maybe it’s getting fit, or lowering your cholesterol. It could be something as simple as a craft or a hobby that you enjoy. I’ve heard of people getting excited about something as mundane as spring cleaning. I was all fired up last week when I decided to re-organize my home office. From a minor task to a major, ongoing project we each need something — anything — to focus on. Humans are at their best when their striving for the brass ring. We like to collect the rings to be sure, but when we finally grab one, we need to begin striving for the next and the next.

Here's How It Works
Let’s take my office cleaning project as an example. I could have commiserated over the fact that I had some cleaning to do, or I could have used it as an opportunity to make my office more efficient and uncover some work I may have let disappear into the clutter. So I turned my little project into a two-hour “obsession.” I started thinking about how I’d rearrange the furniture when I woke up in the morning. (Having a new goal actually helped detach me from my pillow.) During the work day my mind was curiously drawn to ideas and articles that helped me in my organizational planning. On the drive home from work, I visualized a more efficient filing system for my work. But best of all, I KNEW WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO THAT NIGHT AND IT DROVE ME, KEPT ME EXCITED, AND MOTIVATED ME ALL DAY.

It works the same whether we’re doing something for pleasure or for work. If you can’t get excited about what you do, don’t waste your time doing it. If you aren’t committed to doing it well, don’t bother.

When you challenge yourself to do something the best that you can, the sense of accomplishment automatically drives you on to the next task and helps you keep a positive attitude. When you begin building successfully accomplished tasks, you can look back with pride on a structurally-sound and successful life.
Learn how to develop an obsession for success. Click here.

Attitude Adjustment #3:
Build Dynamic Excitement

You see, when I put to rest my previous business, I also put to rest my goals, my focus, and my action plan for that business. Not only did I not have a purpose any more, I had NOTHING TO DO, NOTHING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT. Fortunately, my new small business kicked in almost immediately, and soon, focus and productivity were once again mine. There was something for me to get excited about again.

You may have experienced similar feelings when you started a new job, accepted a new challenge, or first thought of starting a business. You had plans, dreams, and desires. The excitement began to build as you thought of a company name, had a logo designed, and a business plan prepared. The excitement probably continued as you put together your home office, leased or purchased equipment, and got the phone company to install that new line. And, if you’re like me, you even got excited about that new box of paper clips and number two pencils you just bought from Office Max. Why?

Because in the early stages of your business, true motivation is wonderfully exciting. We have a purpose — a reason for being — and this manifests itself as true excitement. Charles Buxton once said, “Success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work, body and soul.”

When you’re attitude is one of dynamic excitement, you literally leap out of bed each morning in anticipation of what the day might bring. You greet people enthusiastically and face your challenges with purpose. When you’re excited, relationships are meaningful and you accomplish much. There’s no time for moping around, being depressed, or watching bad prime time TV. You’ve got a job to do, and you’d rather be doing it that almost anything else in the world.

So how can you keep this zeal? How can you hold on to the attitude of excitement that you experienced when you started something new?

Find Your Glory
There’s a story of an old tugboat mechanic who, for one with such a menial job, went about his chores with amazing vibrancy and excitement. He kept his engine room sparkling, every nut and bolt was tightened, every moving part well oiled. When the ship’s captain asked why he went about his work with such diligence and enthusiasm, the mechanic replied, “Cap’n, it’s just this way — I got a glory.”

The tugboat mechanic had found his glory in a simple task that brought him great energy and excitement. Even if your challenge is a relatively minor one, that’s OK. As long as you can see — like the tugboat mechanic — that what you do provides a sense of well-being and accomplishment.

What do you take pride in? Find something that you do very well, then use it as your motivational cue — your glory — to keep you energetic and excited.

In the Company of Eagles
I’m sure you’re familiar with the expression, “I’d rather soar with the eagles than scratch with the turkeys.” This statement is especially true in terms of creating and keeping a dynamic excitement. Soaring with eagles is fun. It’s exciting. A little bit risky perhaps, but exhilarating nonetheless.

Scratching with the turkeys, on the other hand, is boring. The view never changes, and your horizons are limited by all that surrounds you at ground level. The moral: associate only with people who will keep you excited, people that will help you soar — people with positive attitudes. It’s so easy for negative types to bring you down. You don’t need that kind of pressure. Find yourself an exciting, motivated group and let them inspire you. Draw emotional strength from this enthusiastic crowd and you’ll keep your excitement level flying high.
Never, never stop. Click here to find out why.

Attitude Adjustment #4:
Developing a Long-Term Perspective

Well-known sales trainer and motivational speaker Brian Tracy, in his popular audio book, Getting Rich in America, tells of the importance of long-term perspective as it relates to success. Tracy notes that in studies of successful individuals, one attribute common to all of them is their ability to think well into the future. These super-successes plan not day by day, allowing themselves to be subjected to every push and pull of the tide, but they plan their lives and their goals around dreams and visions of the future.

Yes, you can become rich. No, it's not easy, but it's not as difficult as many people imagine-and it's definitely not impossible, as many cynics would have us believe.

When a young couple has a baby and they rush right down to Cambridge or Oxford to register their new child for college, that’s long-term perspective. When a young boy of nine or 10 begins saving his paper route money for a car when he gets his license, that’s long-range planning. And when a small-business owner uses an entrepreneurial perspective to plan and grow his or her business, that’s long-term thinking too.

Having the attitude of long-term perspective — looking at the big picture — propels you toward your goals like nothing else can. You can see how this works in your own life by breaking down the long-term into a single day. Have you ever woken up on a Saturday morning with no plan in mind, no goal to accomplish? You sleep late, roll out of bed mid-morning, and wander aimlessly like a piece of driftwood in a wind-tossed sea. You allow boredom to creep into your day, you scratch your belly and wander from room to room. You channel surf, and pantry surf, and before you know it, it’s time for bed. You haven’t accomplished a thing. The day might as well have never happened.

Now, stretch out that day into the long term — 10 or 15 years. Since you build a house one brick at a time, and build a life one day at a time, you can easily see how a succession of nonproductive days can lead to a life of failure and unhappiness.

How about you? Do you have an overall plan? Do you have long-term goals? What’s your primary purpose in life? These can be tough questions, but they demand answers, because to accomplish something, you must plan to accomplish something.
Learn how to become a long-term thinker here.

Attitude Adjustment #5
Control Your Emotions

Like most things in nature, you have emotional attitude cycles. Like the moon which waxes and wanes, the tides which rise and fall, and the seasons which come and go, your life is made up of complex emotional cycles. But there’s the basic difference between you and other natural things. A tree, for instance, must wait for the weather to turn from gloomy to sunny. You, however, carry your weather — your emotions and attitudes — wherever you go. So you’re responsible for being “sunny.”

If you’re going to meet a client, for instance, and you’re in a blue funk or a bad mood, you’ll be bringing that emotion into the office of your client and presenting it to him or her along with your sales presentation. Not a productive way to sell your product or service. If, however, you walk into your client’s office radiating sunshine and positive emotions, you’ll be spreading that sunshine and its goodness to all with whom you come in contact.

Understanding and controlling your emotions will also help give you an insight into others. Recognizing that all life is cyclical, you might figure out why your client was so receptive to your pitch yesterday, but acts so aloof and cold today. He or she has emotional cycles too, giving you another good reason to be persistent and never give up trying to make a sale to a good prospect. If you caught your client on a “bad day,” there’s a good chance you’ll catch him or her on a “good day” tomorrow.

Become Aware of Your Patterns
Knowing your patterns of positive and negative emotion will reveal a great deal about yourself. You might discover, for instance, that your blue periods are very short, lasting only a day or two, and come infrequently. On the other hand, you might also find out that near the end of each month, you fall into a depression lasting several days — maybe even as long as a week. You’ll have to learn to intercept these blue periods before they arrive, forcibly changing your patterns of behavior to avoid your unpleasant feelings.
Here’s how to make your actions control your thoughts. Click here.

Attitude Adjustment #6:
Learned Optimism

A View from the Top is the next chapter in Zig Ziglar’s ongoing personal journey of self-discovery. In this exciting mix of studio and live recordings. Zig will share with you his most intimate discoveries as to what he personally has discovered to be the most important elements of a truly significant life.

That’s one definition of an optimist, but you may be more familiar with a different example of optimism, demonstrated by someone who’s “more cheerful than thou, a look-on-the-bright-sider who’s always in a good mood and drives you nuts because he or she never seems glum.” Overly optimistic people can grate on your nerves after a while, but there’s no denying that having an optimistic attitude can help you along the road to success.

In fact, if you have little or no reason to be optimistic — if your glass is always half empty — then you have little chance of becoming a success or achieving anything of significance in your profession or your life. That’s because...

Optimists refuse to accept failure. They EXPECT success, and therefore achieve success. Optimists also EXPECT to be the best, to accomplish the best, and they feel they deserve the best. SO, they often end up with the best.

Optimists look for the proverbial silver lining in every cloud. For every dark situation, a person with an optimistic attitude can find the challenges buried within. Some are so optimistic, they actually relish the opportunity to have their faith, their intelligence, or their ingenuity challenged.

Optimists understand that the only way to fail is to give up. So they simply don’t quit — and they realize that their attitude is more important than the problem or the difficulty itself. In other words, it’s not the storm. It’s how you weather the storm that matters.
See the Optimist’s Creed here.

Attitude Adjustment #7:
Be Confident, Not Cocky

On the other hand, people who are just plain cocky, are often trying to cover up some personality flaw and are actually insecure and afraid under their mask of over-confidence.

Two Sluggers
Although I’m not much of a baseball fan, I remember watching a major league game with my son once. One of the players strutted to the plate and he had such a look of presumptuousness on his face that I instantly disliked him. He glared at the pitcher as if they had been lifelong enemies and then looked over his shoulder at the catcher and umpire with a combative, cock-sure smirk.

I was actually glad to see him strike out. And, as you might guess, this adult — this supposed role model for kids — had a fit, first throwing his bat to the ground, then getting right in the face of the ump and screaming his side of the story.

A few innings later, I saw another player confidently stride to the batter’s box. He carried himself with an air of self-assuredness and aplomb. He smiled at his opponents — not in a cocky way — but the look on his face just spoke volumes about this player’s self esteem and how he must’ve felt about being a part of the team. I’d like to tell you that he knocked one out of the park, but he didn’t. As I recall, he whacked a base hit into left field, but I’m sure you get the point.

Someone who has a cocky attitude is usually overly self-assertive. Instead of believing in themselves, their talents, and abilities, they cover over their shortcomings with a false bravado. Cocky people are not fun to be around, and don’t make friends easily, although sometimes they may seem to succeed for short periods of time through shear intimidation. But success built on that type of foundation is fleeting at best.

People who have true confidence have trust and faith in themselves and other people. Confidence is also the feeling of being certain about the outcome of something.

Brian Tracy shows you how to: control your confidence level by controlling your thoughts ... stop self-defeating behaviors and begin self-confident ones ... see yourself as others see you and easily change their perceptions.

How Do You Know You Have "Enough" Confidence?
Some people don’t have enough confidence because they continue to fall back on flimsy excuses like, “I don’t have enough money,” or “But she’s better educated than I am,” or “He is so good looking compared to me.” But confidence is not about money, education, looks, clothes, skin color, or any other external factors. Confidence is about conquering feelings of worry and inadequacy in your life and replacing them with attitudes of certainty and conviction.

Let’s say you had to make an important presentation to a new client. If you knew you could not fail, if you knew that it was impossible to look foolish or say the wrong things, and if you knew — right up front — that your presentation was going to be a success, how would you feel? I can guess that you’d probably walk into the room with a genuine smile pasted to your face and an excited sense of anticipation. I can also figure that nagging worries would not consume you during your presentation. I also believe you’d be confidently assertive and state your opinions succinctly. Your outlook would certainly be positive and that would further fuel your success.

That’s what being confident is.

Confident people...

• Don’t cover up their insecurities with masks of cockiness.

• Have faith in themselves and their abilities.

• Aren’t afraid of failure and don’t use the fear of failure as an excuse not to act.

• Pay no attention to naysayers and others who try to drag them down to their level.

• Are not afraid of confrontation because they feel strongly about their feelings.
To learn how to build confidence, click here.


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