Choose Your Attitude

Have you ever read Attitude is Everything?

It serves as a constant reminder to me that I get to choose who I am and how I feel. Too often society tells us to blame someone or something for our lot in life. “It’s the economy”, “my mom was mean”, “cold calling doesn’t work”, “if only my employee’s worked harder and longer”, “”If only my prospects and clients would ___________”(I could fill in that black with a few dozen excuses) “If traffic wasn’t so bad I could see more prospects”, Positive or best of all “Everyone around me is negative, it’s hard not to be”. All of these excuses play on our attitude. So, what to do?

  1. Choose to be optimistic. Jack Canfield, in his book The Success Principles, calls it “inverse paranoia”.  Simply put, believe that the world is out to do good for you and you for it. The sky is not falling, your boss doesn’t hate you, customers WANT to buy, etc. This comes with creating the habit of starting every day with a decision to have a positive mental attitude or a foundation. A positive attitude should drive your beliefs, behaviors and ultimately dictate your outcomes.

  2. Believe that people are your strongest resource and source of accomplishment. Technology puts us into our cubes, walking with our head down, our nose in phone, picking up our devices instead of engaging with the world around us. We were created to be a community and to interact. Most people inherently want to do good and help one another. Find your allies, invest in them and shed the negative people.

  3. Know that your past does not dictate your future. Whether you’re overcoming a bad childhood or overcoming a streak of ineffective cold calling, you get to decide where to go next. Get the help you need to get better. But you need to chose to do it!  Help comes in many forms and from many sources. Especially if you BELIEVE that the world is out to do you good…you inverse paranoid!

  4. Fear nothing! Do you remember when you were little and afraid of the dark or what was under your bed? Silly when you look back on it, right? Well it’s mostly the same with today’s fears; there’s usually not much to be afraid of. It’s the games we play in our head, it’s the irrationality of our imagination. Folks, I’ve made hundreds of cold calls and door knocks and I still have all my teeth. If I had a nickle for every “No” I’ve heard, I’d be retired. Shed the fear and replace it with persistence.

  5. Act as if! What does that mean? A great mentor of mine, Joe Murzanski used to tell me; “Jim, act as if you have a million dollars in your pocket, that you haven’t a care in the world and that you have the solution to your customer’s problems” (at the time I sold advertising for the Tribune Company’s spanish language papers). That bit of advice allowed me to not worry about closing out of desperation because I told myself I wasn’t desperate, and it also gave me great confidence in what I sold. As my customers businesses were positively impacted and their sales rose, I only became more emboldened to sell more. The result was, 4 consecutive years of award winning highest production in both revenue and column inches sold.

The bottom line is, as Dr. Charles Stanley said, I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me, and 90 percent how I react to it.

And so it is with you… We are in charge of our attitudes.