The importance of a positive attitude cannot be overestimated. John C. Maxwell, a prolific author and speaker on attitude and leadership, has called attitude “the difference maker”. Similarly, Winston Churchill summarized the importance of a positive attitude, stating that “attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” Likewise, Edwin Louis Cole is quoted as saying that “attitude determines the altitude of life.” As you can see from these quotes, having a positive mental attitude is one of the greatest assets you can have.
If you have grown lax or complacent in life and your career, perhaps you have developed a bad or negative attitude that needs to been changed. The following are some ideas that will help you maintain a positive attitude:
1. Develop Attitude Awareness
The first step towards developing a positive attitude is to develop a better understanding of your current mental attitude. You might ask yourself questions assessing your attitude like “is my attitude my greatest asset” or “why do I have the attitude that I do?” You might even keep a journal where you record how your attitude changes over a few weeks, noting the things that improve and detract from your attitude.
2. Proactively improve your attitude daily
You should seek to change your attitude for the better by feeding your mind with inspirational stories, audio programs, and good books for at least 15 minutes every day. Other ways to develop a positive attitude include spending time with uplifting people, relaxing in nature, listening to relaxing music, exercising, helping other people, volunteering, or doing other activities that help lift your spirits and boost your mood. You might even search the internet for quotes about maintaining a positive attitude.
In addition, you should eliminate any attitude-draining thoughts, words, or actions from your life. Sometimes this might mean separating yourself from a person or group that consistently has a bad or negative attitude as people with bad attitudes can poison your own.
3. Develop Optimism and Positive Expectations
Optimism and positive expectations are so powerful because they become self-fulfilling prophecies. As an experiment, tell yourself each morning for a week something wonderful is going to happen to you. Chances are that either something will happen, or you will notice the great things that were already in your life. As you maintain positive expectations, you will find that you literally attract opportunities to you as people are always attracted to people with positive attitudes. Even if setbacks come, your optimism will help you overcome them more effectively.
4. Developing Self-Confidence
Gaining self-confidence is crucial to maintaining a positive attitude. It is hard to maintain your attitude over the long-term unless you believe that you have the personal attributes necessary for success. You can gain more confidence by concentrating on positive, self-affirming thoughts and eliminating self-limiting beliefs. Additionally, one way to gain self-confidence is to “fake it until you make it” by dressing and acting as if you already have great confidence.
5. Embrace Your Goals and Dreams
When it comes to dreams, people either embrace their goals in life, shrink their goals, or that shirk their life goals. Which are you? Give yourself permission to have and pursue smart goals and to encourage the goals of others. Pursuing your goals and dreams is critical to maintaining a great attitude. It is a good idea to have goals in each area of life – career goals, personal goals, and so forth. Very often those who have attitude problems have already given up on their dreams and want others to be unhappy like they are. It is important, however, to pursue your dreams in a thoughtful, deliberate way in order to increase your chance at achieving them.
