The late Dr Wayne Dyer often stated: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This means that the attitude you are wearing at any moment pre-determines how you influence and experience everything that’s going on.
We live in an age where problems seem to proliferate around the world, all the time. They are frequently reported, feasted upon by the media and given massive air time. They are exacerbating the mental health challenges we see in societies all over the world as we experience a global obsession with complexities and bad news! Seven billion attitudes are at risk! What can we do?!
I don’t have all the answers. There are a myriad of problems facing our world but I know you can start changing some of this today by challenging yourself to explore the ways you retell your own story. Where you focus and place emphasis defines who you are today and you can control it – it’s your story after all. Speak the good and uplifting. Rewrite, quieten and clear the negatives. Your personal history defines who you are, you can’t change it, but you can change the way we interpret and relate to it.
As you do this, you may need to accept the old adage – Sh*t Happens! (chapter 42 of “The Attitude Book”). How you respond to what happens maintains or dents your attitude. In the early phases of your attitude improvement journey, if ‘it’ happens, ‘it’ can hit hard. When your attitude-resilience is still low ‘it’ may deflect you from your course and into ‘it’ you’ll fall. ‘It’ happens, that’s the truth, and, on most occasions, ‘it’ has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Like many, I’ve been there. Through my life things have happened that have knocked me off my path, sending me into self-doubt, experiences waves of pointlessness and diving into hard searching and questioning. Doubt still visits, but now, eventually, I have shifted the relationship with it
Your attitude resilience may need reminding that ‘Sh*t Happens’ – mine did. So what can you do?
Start by:
a) Noticing it.
b) Disengaging from it - it has nothing to do with you.
c) Working through it.
Bad things happen – select neutral before it takes hold and affects your attitude.
This could be the first step in flipping your attitude and re-setting your future impact.
This is what I do – as a coach, speaker or facilitator – flip peoples’ attitudes and shift their impact and performance. One-on-one or working with teams we can begin to affect change. Remember, seven billion attitudes are at risk!