Is your attitude akin to Eyore or Tigger?
What attitude did you bring to your day today?
One of the most important steps you can take toward achieving your greatest potential in life is to become more aware and observant of your attitude and its impact on your work performance, relationships and everyone around you.
In truth, we generally don’t have a high level of attitude awareness. Sure we know if we are hungry or if our feet hurt, but we usually don’t have a good handle on how our attitude is influencing our outcomes. From the drive needed to be more resourceful and adaptive to the unconscious way we put phrases together and unknowingly undermine our opportunities. Attitude is everything. It governs the way we perceive the world AND the way the world perceives us.
Observing your attitude in motion might be just the reality check needed to create those high impact results you are craving. For instance:
An Attitude of Determination; learned as a toddler when you got up after each stumble.
An Attitude of Fortitude, discovered as you learned to wipe your tears and continue after each hurt.
An Attitude of Courage; which you acquired as you learned to cope with the hazards of your environment, and your experiences
An Attitude of Sociability; which you begin to acquire as soon as you talk and communicate with others but one you might ignore from time to time when you invest too much time with the familiar folk vs the unfamiliar.
To quote positive psychology: The seed of success lies within you. This means we need to get a grip on our own perceptions and responses to life’s idiosyncrasies.
It is no secret or surprise that we are all going to have incredible highs in our lives – great opportunities and amazing adventures. And with those adventures, our enthusiasm will soar. Yet, the universe has a sense of humour and just as we embrace all those fabulous adventures, life will bump us up against some pretty sobering lows (designed to keep our inflated egos in check perhaps). In these low moments, our attitude will matter the most.
Like it or not, our lives are unlikely to ever go completely as we planned them – law of attraction enthusiasts or not…..bad stuff will happen…..
o Our Mom or sister might get cancer or another rare disease
o Our spouse may one day not love us anymore
o Our memories may fail us in a critical moment
o Or… Our headache may turn out to be just a little more serious than we thought it was
In those moments, we can twist and churn and ache (like we do about the weather, traffic or not being chosen for that promotion). Or…
We can choose to regroup, be more resourceful; adapt; dust ourselves off and start again.
It has been said that sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you are the bug! Sometimes we feel like Eyore in Winnie the Pooh and sometimes we feel more like Tigger! The gift of maturity is that we can choose how long to pause in either place.
So what attitude did you come to today with? Is it working for you?
You don’t have to decide right now…
….imagine the clock isn’t ticking…
…..imagine that this moment isn’t fleeting…..
……imagine you have all the time in the world…..
Imagine 100 years. That’s what we have. We all have 100 years to enjoy this adventure…to fill our lives and our relationships with a sense of awe and wonder or of griping and complaining about situations and moments which we have no influence or control over.
…..100 years to make excuses; procrastinate; delay or
……100 years to embrace an attitude willing to take a gamble – to risk it all.
You will never again be exactly where you are right now (even those who always sit in the same chairs week after week – Yes….I see you).
You will never be as young as you are right now.
You will never have this moment to say No or to say YES or …..Even to say MAYBE.
May you approach this day…this week… this month… with a childlike sense of awe and wonder –
To listen and notice life like you are seeing and hearing for the first time.
And then…May you deliberately choose an Attitude that truly inspires you!
