We’ve heard much of this before — most of us. If this is new news for you, I am more than pleased to be making you aware of this before you get too far in your life.
Like so many other “words of wisdom”, though, we may need a reminder or we have a tendency to get off track. The troubles and attitudes of society and others can be subtle “gravity” that pulls us down. We need regular refresher energy boosts — just like avoiding dehydration or electrolyte depletion. Hopefully, this can serve as such a “boost”.
How Do You View:
Others?
Your girlfriend, spouse, kids, parents?
Job? School?
World situation?
Yourself?
Have you started looking primarily at their faults, shortcomings, failures, offenses, and/or bothersome habits? Are you thinking about what’s wrong 80% of the time and what’s right 20%? Have you subtly fallen into the “one mistake cancels out 100 attaboys” camp?
Does one setback in your own life loom so large in your mind that you brood over it and blow it all out of proportion? Are you holding a big grudge against your girlfriend, buddy or parent based on one small mistake? Do you take the billions of positives required to sustain life for granted — or even acknowledge that it is a miracle that we even have life at all?
Have you become more of a critic than an encouraging coach?
Living on a Higher Plane of Hope, Encouragement, and Positiveness
You may have heard some of the sayings and quotes: “Your attitude determines your altitude.” “As a man thinketh, so is he.” “Faith, hope and love — and the greatest of these is love.” “Change your thoughts and you can change your world.”- Norman Vincent Peale. “Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.”- Michael Jordan. "Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will." - Zig Ziglar.
All of these are true. What we need to do is apply them to each aspect of our lives, however, or they don’t make a difference. We need to chose the positive thinking attitudes of joy, hope, faith, love, positiveness, and encouragement toward ourselves, our souls, forgiveness, girlfriends/wives, children/parents, jobs/careers, environment, the world situation and eternity.
We can live on a higher plane if we choose. The results in your life will be amazing.
How Do We Do This, Though?
Here are a few ideas. Some may “hit home” with you more than others. The key here is to adopt the techniques that make the most sense to you or develop your own tools. Create you own personal tool bag or backpack full of good attitude tools — and carry it with you everywhere into every situation and relationship.
Habit. Make a habit of positive prayer, self-talk, or meditation at every key point in your day. Wake up with something like, “This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it.” Find something that expresses thankfulness and possibilities. Make it a habit to repeat this whenever you change over to the next activity, are feeling challenged, feel yourself slipping/tempted, etc. Stop yourself for a few seconds if you are feeling nervous or worried about a meeting, speech, test, next play, etc. — and encourage yourself positively like a good self-coach.
Lists. Make lists of positives and opportunities. For every situation or person you find yourself challenged with, make a list of 20 (or so) positives and/or how that could possibly be turned into an opportunity. Force yourself to come up with the positives about the person or situation — even if you aren’t “feeling it”. Develop this as a key life skill. Post these lists where you can see them or carry them with you. The “world” will provide you with plenty of negativity, “can’t do”, criticisms, and downsides. These lists are an effort to counterbalance. This “opportunity mindset” vs. a “we’re doomed mindset” can be the difference that wins you a promotion, allows successful completion of a project, or wins your team a championship. Making sure you give others credit for their positives via a list like this can make all the difference in the world with your key relationships. Make sure you haven’t accidently become more of a critic than an encouraging coach and supportive friend!
You. The first list and most active list you need to make is about yourself — what do you do right and good? Turn some or most of your self-talk into positives. Don’t just look at your mistakes. If you are shooting free-throws, think about the fact that you can make ten-in-a-row in practice. If you lost your temper with someone, remind yourself of the times when you kept it together and give yourself credit for your willingness to apologize. “As a man thinketh, so is he.”
Balance. Keep the news and gossip in perspective. Some people may advise you to put your head in the sand and never even read the news or listen to people having problems with their jobs, family, health, etc. A better approach, I believe, is to just be aware of the nature of things like the news and gossip. These are, essentially, all the negatives wrapped up in one neat little package for you — all the bad stuff they could find after scanning the whole world (or, maybe, your company or school) for “your benefit”. The other 99.9999% of everything may be going fine. You will want to be aware of the key issues so they can be addressed, but you just need to remember that they are the exceptions (in most cases, anyway). They call this “management by exception” — but some managers only seem to see their employees’ mistakes. You want to be the good coach, dad, husband, or boyfriend that encourages and lifts. It is tempting to be in a “pity party” and see how much sympathy you can get — but it isn’t really that much fun compared to a joyful and hopeful attitude.
Opportunities. Become an opportunity mindset “machine”. Get really good at taking any situation and look at the bright side. The quote from Michael Jordan above was, “Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.” While everyone else is focused on the “disaster”, try to think about how the situation can be turned to your advantage. Think “outside the box” to come up with solutions vs. just being one of those who is wallowing in the possibility of a setback. If you are put on a weak team for a project, it may be an opportunity for you develop your leadership skills or learn how to bring out the best in others. If you are the coach and your team has been badly beaten in a game, this may be the opportunity you needed to really get your team’s attention. The problem-solver is worth far more in an organization than those less resilient and creative.
Ecosystem. Surround yourself with positivity as much as possible. If you were a fish, poisoned water would eventually get you. You need to make sure that you are breathing some “clean attitude air” — getting some Oxygen. There are many free videos on YouTube by leaders like Zig Ziglar and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. You can make a habit of listening to people like them. You can find lots of self-help positive thinking books and podcasts. Most important, however, is the crowd you hang out with. What is the tone of the message “your people”, team, friends, siblings, or work unit are dwelling on every time you get together? Are they looking at the possibilities and opportunities? Are they encouragers or “put down artists”? Are they looking for ways to succeed or bring everyone down? How about you with yourself and your best friends?
Values. Make sure your deepest values aren’t tied to short-term worldly successes in areas that could be largely out of your control — such as wealth, popularity, or, even, your health. What!!!??? You might find it hard to believe you are reading this, but…. Let’s say you have your entire self-worth tied to your girlfriend and she dumps you. Maybe you have been telling yourself that winning the starting position on your team is all-important and, then, you are benched. Maybe you get injured. Maybe you ignore your family because you are so focused on corporate success. Your base values should be deeper than a specific short-term worldly goal. I won’t get into the specifics here, but deeper spiritual and soul goals allow you to see the positives where others can only see the defeat.
Your Backpack of Life Tools
An attitude of gratitude, hope, belief, encouragement, and positive outcomes can do wonders for any of us.
Whether you realize it or not, we all carry a backpack full of life/survival tools around with us wherever we go. Some people fill their backpacks with heavy bricks, crap, drugs, unhealthy food, temptations, anger, resentment, trolls, or, even, their enemies. Don’t be “that guy”.
Instead, fill your backpack with wisdom, knowledge, people skills, resilience, etc. Specifically, I hope you will take some or all of these attitude tools “to heart” and make them a permanent part of your backpack (tool kit) contents. You can start now, and the benefits will start flowing. Start with a list focused on yourself — positives and how any challenges might be turned into opportunities. Then produce lists focused on the next two or three areas of your life that are most challenging for you right now. These lists can be your first three or four new attitude tools for your backpack.