How To Improve Your Attitude

Before I share with you how to improve your attitude it is important that you are aware of the benefits of improving your attitude both in your business and your personal life. The attitude you hold about yourself or towards others determines the quality of relationship you have with yourself and others. Your attitude towards your job, your team, your partner, your children, your friends and even your attitude towards objects in your environment and your environment as a whole effects not only you but everyone and everything you are connected with or seek to be connected with.

We all have moments or even days when our attitude is less than positive. When that happens what you need are some effective methods of improving your attitude. When you have a positive attitude you are happier, easy to be around and you have a positive influence on your environment and everyone in it.

Simply put yourattitude is the position that you hold or the behaviours that you express towards another person, group of people, a specific place, an object or a subject. Your attitude comes about as the result of the concept, belief or precept that you hold regarding a person, place or thing. These concepts, beliefs and precepts can be and often are false,misguided, or riddled with misunderstandings and lack of knowledge in the area. The attitudes you take determine the experience and outcomes of your relationships with another or others, a specific environment or place, a particular object or an area of study. As the attitude of an aircraft to the horizontal plane determines whether it is ascending or descending; so too do your own attitudes in and towards life. Therefore it is essential that you are aware of the attitudes you take, the positions you hold and the concepts that you have.

Socrates is said to have stated, “An unexamined life is not worth living.” It is of vital importance that you make yourself aware of the attitudes you have that more often than not operate in your life below your conscious awareness.

It is impossible to function at all in life devoid of attitudes. Good or bad, positive or negative, known or unknown, you do hold a position. In fact you take and hold many positions in a single day. Our attitudes determine whether we have a good day or a bad day, a good time or a bad time, a good life or a wretched life and all manner of in between. Your attitude can bring you closer to something or someone that you need or want to be closer to; it can distance you from someone or something that you need or want; and it can bring you closer to  someone or something that you do not need or want.

Every time you get into communication with another or others your attitude towards that person or group of people is transmitted, loud and clear. It speaks so loudly in fact that it can often negate your words. We have all done it at one time or another. Such things as acknowledging someone for an achievement while holding the attitude that the other was less than deserving of it; complimenting someone on a new outfit or hair style while at the same time perceiving that it is unbecoming to them; telling someone you are glad to see them when in fact the opposite is the truth of the situation. When you are at the effect of such communications you can feel the unspoken attitude and it more often than not drowns out the words being spoken. Your attitude plus your emotion equals your mood leveland it is the music that our moods produce that we set our words to.

Your Learning Attitude

When you set about to learn something new or to acquire an new skill your attitude sets out how successful you will be a doing so. If you hold negative precepts about the subject, the skill or the instructor your chances of success are dim. Worse than that, you may well have entire areas of existence that you cannot experience of or participate in at all because your attitude prevents you from doing so. Blanket beliefs such as teachers are stupid, the subject is stupid, school is stupid, the boss is stupid, my co-workers are stupid, do not even allow you to approach the area. When you put your attention on an area what happens to your attitude, to your mood level? Does it raise or lower your mood when you put your attention on a specific person, place or thing? Pinpoint the attitude and you can predict your future outcomes. Pinpoint the attitude of another and you can predict their future too. You don’t need to have psychic powers in order to forecast the future, you do need to have a clear understanding of how it is that attitude effects outcomes.

Your Having Attitude

Many of us are held back from having what we really, really need and what we really, really want because we do not have the correct attitudes. We view the objects of our dreams and desires through a warped lens of incorrect beliefs, concepts and precepts. Remember, your attitude is the position that you hold or the behaviours that you express towards another person, group of people, a specific place, an object or a subject. You want a new red car but salespeople are crooks, I’ll never have enough money, so and so doesn’t like red, and on it goes and the chances of looking out the window to see a shiny new red car parked in your driveway are nil. You want to be rich? Examine your attitudes about money, towards rich people, towards work, towards commitment, towards responsibility. If they are less than optimum then you will want to examine them, release them and adopt new positive attitudes that will lift you closer to your lofty dream.

Attitude Exam

There are consequence to the attitude you take including good consequences, mediocre consequences, bad consequences and downright awful consequences. In order to predict your  future you must first examine the consequences of the attitudes that you hold. Changing your beliefs or doing positive affirmations until you choke will not change a thing if you do not change your attitude. Find the attitude and exam in it by doing the following:

(Note: This is best done with a partner – one acting as “coach” to ask the questions and the other the “client” answering the questions.

What have been or could be the consequences of having (name the negative attitude)?

Answer

Acknowledge the answer with a simple “Thank you”.

Then ask:

Have there been or could there be any other consequences to having (name the negative attitude)?

Answer

Acknowledge the answer with a simple “Thank you.”

Repeat the second question until all possible consequences have been examined.

Next select the new positive attitude you wish to take towards the person, subject or thing and ask questions one and two until you can visualize the consequences of your consciously selected attitude. It is important to get a vision of the future your new attitude will contribute to as it is your vision that provides the software for your mind. From there you will be able to formulate a plan and put that plan into action. The outcome should match your vision. If it does not then something is out somewhere along the line between You, your vision, your plan, your action and your outcome. Find it and get it handled!

“Everything can be taken from a man but ... the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” (Victor Frankl)