
14 Aug The importance of a Positive Attitude
Your attitude either helps, speeds up, and assists you in your career or it can hinder, slow down, and hurt your progress in your career. Attitude is how we think, feel, or act. It is reflected in how we choose to behave as we do things in our career. Attitude is a choice.
A characteristic is an attitude you have chosen to practice and embody – so that it becomes part of how you act; how we act as we progress in our career.
The one constant throughout your career is your attitude and how you act throughout your career. No matter what your purposes or goals are for your life, your attitude is the one thing that is always there. Others see it. Others feel it. Others are either inspired by your attitudes or discouraged by them. Attitude may be the single most important factor in a person’s career.
Your career is not a “solo” activity. It involves the people around you. Your peers, your leaders, your staff. Your attitude impacts how you are perceived by all of them. Your attitude either attracts them to you as someone they love working with or repels them. Your attitude either makes people want to work with you or avoid working with you.
To make your career successful, highly successful, it’s worth inspecting your attitude and if it could bear some improvement. This is why we talk about attitude. This is why people spend years studying and seeking inspiration from highly successful people in all fields: sports, humanitarians, leaders, organizations, teams, groups, and more. Their intelligence, knowledge, expertise, wisdom, and leadership vary greatly. It is not always the smartest or more experienced person that wins or succeeds. It is the person or group with “winning” attitudes that succeed.
What is a “winning attitude?” It is the attitude and characteristic that highly successful people and groups use to succeed. These are the attitudes that motivate teams and bring them closer together to succeed. These are the attitudes that influence others. They influence whether others want to work with one professional or company versus another. These are the attitudes that make you want to buy from one company versus another – how they act or treat their customers – their attitude toward others. A winning attitude is the key distinguishing factor between success and failure throughout history.
There are certain attitudes/characteristics that all highly successful people use to succeed in their careers. In addition to these attitudes, there is one additional attitude that is “foundational” or “essential” to any professional’s success in their career: A Positive Attitude.
Quite possibly the most important attitude of all is a “positive attitude.” It is simply a decision to make the best of things to succeed in your career. It is worth going over this again. A Positive Attitude is a decision to make the best of things. With a positive attitude as your foundation – you can accomplish anything in your career.
Don’t confuse a positive attitude with “being happy” or “being nice” or even “being friendly.” We are talking about how we act and how that impacts our success in our careers. A positive attitude is a determination to never give up. A positive attitude is shaking off failure or confusion because you are focused on succeeding. A positive attitude is believing something can be done even when you don’t know how.
You may have heard that attitudes are contagious. They “rub off” on those around you. Every successful professional in every field talks about the importance of a positive attitude and how that inspires everyone around them. A positive attitude is an attitude that wins games or allows groups to rise to achieve great success. Universally, every highly successful person openly talks about how a positive attitude was essential to their success.
You have most certainly experienced situations in life where you or someone around you is in the middle of a challenging situation. You’ve been the person or seen a person “make the best of it” with a positive attitude.
A positive attitude attracts others with a positive attitude. A negative attitude attracts others with a negative attitude. A team full of professionals with a positive attitude will always beat a team full of professionals with a negative attitude. Those you work with will enjoy being around you more because your positive attitude encourages and inspires them.
With a positive attitude as your foundation, you can work hard to practice the other attitudes that achieve success. These attitudes are specific and take practice.
Twelve attitudes are common among successful people. You could name them many different things, but they are presented here in a simple and easy-to-grasp way. They are as follows:
1. Care
2. Understand
3. Make it Simple
4. Be the best
5. Do the impossible
6. Do it right
7. Create the future
8. Work hard
9. Win
10. Be kind
11. Be thankful
12. Have fun