Attitude: the Gold in Your Bank

If you want to improve your chances of success in any endeavour, then make sure you’ve got the right attitude. Attitude is the key to getting everything right.

1. The One String We Have. Many of the things that happen to us in life sometimes come at us out of the blue. We may be struck by natural disasters or treated badly by others. Sometimes it feels like we are reeds in the wind, at the mercy of fate. But there is one thing we always possess and can always control even in the worst of situations. And that is our attitude.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on my life. Attitude, to me, is more important than fact. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearances, giftedness or skills. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past; we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.” (Charles Swindoll)

2. 100% Success. Here is a mathematical way to demonstrate that your attitude accounts for 100% of your success.
· On the left-hand side of a piece of paper write down the letters of the alphabet, A to Z. Against them write down the numbers 1 to 26, ie A = 1, B = 2 and so on.
· Now, find a friend and ask him or her what the main ingredient of success is. Let’s say they suggest “Money”. Write this down somewhere on the page and with your friend calculate the values for each letter in this phrase. You’ll find it comes to 72 or 72%.
· Now try a few more. Knowledge? Not quite, that comes to 96%. Love? That only shows at 54%. Luck does even worse, at 47%. Leadership? 97%. Hard Work? Closer, 98%. But not quite there.
· Now, show your friend that of all the qualities that go into success, only ATTITUDE comes out at 100%.

3. Pure Gold. Attitude is the key to achieving success in your life. It is pure gold. "What I am giving you is gold. Mothers, fathers, managers, bosses, superintendants, company presidents, everybody, heed this: raise your own self-esteem to where it belongs and good things will happen, both for you and others. How do you do that? You do it through your self-talk. You must think well of yourself. You must know you're good. Start by controlling your own self-talk. From here forward, it is out of place in your life or your business to be devaluative, belittling, or sarcastic. Such junk has no place in a high-performance organisation just as it has no place in a high-performance individual. What you will do is start looking for ways to boost your morale with your self-talk. You are going to do it regularly. You are going to do it every day: morning, noon and night." (Louis Tice)

Many of the gifts we have been given have been distributed unfairly. We all wish we had the ability of the talented, the money of the rich, and the luck of the beautiful. But none of these matter. When it comes down to it, the real difference in life is something we all have equally: our attitude.

© Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com 2009