Attitude
You're right... Attitude Is Everything.
Recently, I was in Texas teaching a custom class for a company owned by two friends who are also Empower U graduates. At the beginning of this class we give out elastic bracelets with the initials "HBS" on them. The bracelets are used as a way to become aware of all the powerless words, thoughts and un-resourceful talk - both internal and external - that we use. Whenever somebody uses the "try" word, or says or thinks something un-resourceful, they are supposed to pull on the elastic bracelet and snap themselves. This, of course, is to make them aware of the way they think, so that they can start to change the pattern if those patterns are not getting them the results they want. This is a great technique that has been used for years. Pavlov, Freud and others used this method. Today we call it Neuro Associative Conditioning (NAC).
On our break someone was admiring the bracelets and said we should add the initials AIE (Attitude is Everything) to the bracelets, since our class is Mega-Cognitive (Thinking about thinking). I heard this and replied with the customary, "That's a good idea," then continued to focus on the class I was delivering. Things were starting out with less than positive possibilities. This class had started with an audience that was in a very "un-resourceful" attitude and it hit me..."You're right - Attitude is Everything." We were about to live an experience where the effect of attitude was so strong, that it became the focus of the training.
Our attitude is the frame that we choose to put around our experience. This statement is exactly right; attitude IS everything... or at least 70, 80 or 90 percent of everything. To quote Charles Swindoll...
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important that the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude...I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our Attitudes.
All of us have probably heard those words before; this is nothing new to anyone, kind of like our training. But something happens when we actually get a chance to LIVE these words. What was once a saying now becomes a life experience. Remember, they're just words, and words are just a whole bunch of letters put together without the energy to back them up. All the sudden these words took on a new meaning. And I thought of Helen Keller's powerful words....
When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so longingly and so regretfully upon the door that closed, that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
We could see this as an, "Oh no, what are they doing to us?" situation. We could see this as an opportunity to take a perceived negative situation and turn it into a positive one. We could choose to see it either way – it was our choice. We had a new door open up, the opportunity to change our approach and give that team a great communications class and we could all get to do some learning. We were going to have an opportunity to LIVE "Attitude is Everything" during that class.
Good money was spent bringing us to Texas. The desire of the owners was to give something back to their team members, and become a more cohesive Company. On the first night when the training began there was a stench in the air. The feeling in the classroom would make even Stephen King squirmy. Arms crossed, scours on the face, anger and fear in some of the audiences eyes... let me just say the attitude in the room was not a real positive one. People wouldn't even make the commitment to fully participate. We quickly realized that if we did our "planned" training, we would not be able to get our usual outcomes, and we would probably lose 10% of the class. As a training team we talked about the situation. We came together and considered the question, "What do we want?". We focused on our answer and started changing the training to be congruent with that outcome. We adopted NASA's 3-point plan of attack:
Consider, what is the worst thing that can happen.
"We don't get invited back and this company no longer does any training with Empower U."
Accept it.
"We remain friends with the owners and we continue to build Texas without them as clients. We have enough of a graduate base to continue to build this region without them as supporters, if we had to. So nothing that happens this weekend will effect our vision in a big way."
Expect the Best!
"We will provide a powerful communications class- it will be educational and fun. At some point they will realize the power of the information they are hearing and they will become willing to learn the information. They complete the training and we impact this company's culture in a positive way. They also take this training to their families, communities and churches being better communicators with their friends, families and co-workers and build better teams! They see the benefit of this 'soft skills' training."
If you are a graduate of ours, then you know we delivered a great training; we shared some powerful information, had some fun, and built some trust. When it was all said and done, most people were really positive, a couple still weren't. It took us 2 days to really change some people's attitude. Some never changed their attitudes, they wanted to be angry, closed off, "on-guard', and what usually happens is we get what we want. Most of the team became responsive and allowed the learning to take place; I believe 2 or 3 never did allow for it to take place – at least at the level that it could have taken place. So what was the difference, why did some choose to do it and others were never willing to "buy in"? Why did we change our training and handle things the way we did? You're right... Attitude is Everything.
There is an epidemic going on in this country, in this world. This epidemic is called, "Unresourceful Attitude." Think back to the training I just talked about. The owners ofthis company spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 plus to GIVE these employees an opportunity to grow as individuals, spouses, employees, parents, church members.... They spent all this money and time – paid them to sit in a fun training class, paid them to have better personal lives. With all that "Giving" going on, I would think that people would be excited, thankful, loyal, trusting...some were, others weren't. So what was the difference...You're right... Attitude is Everything!
There's a great saying:
In other words, how far you go in life is determined a lot by how you see life, that "frame" that you put around the experience. Your attitude is the filter or lens, which you use to view your life. We can sometimes get so caught up blaming our lives on situations, environment and/or people, that we put our attitudes on autopilot. When the mind is left alone it tends to naturally go negative. We have to be in control of the self-talk in our mind – conscious and unconscious – and direct the thoughts and explanatory system that governs our life. John Wooden, the greatest basketball coach of all time says that one of his greatest strengths was his ability to keep negative thoughts out.
The victim is the person that is helpless – someone who literally can't help himself or herself. Unless we pay attention, we can become a victim to our attitude. We can give great reasons/excuses for the things happening in our lives.
- I was raised in a poor family, I didn't have the opportunities that others had so I....
- My boss isn't nice to me so I do...
- My spouse does this, so it makes me do this.
- I have to go this training....
- It's because....
- I am doing my best...
- It's not fair....
- It's not my fault!
- He/She made me....
When we blame other things or other people for the things that happen in our lives, at least two things happen. First of all, we have no control in our lives. We are at the mercy of people or "things" that will or won't happen to us, we cede control of our very life. Secondly we have a pity part for ourselves and get ourselves emotionally worked up, sometimes we become "Emotionally Hijacked". We CAN take control of this and the first step is to realize that we are truly in control of how we respond to things and how we "replay" situations in our minds.
Let me quote you from the book, 'Learned Optimism' by Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. (Pages 9-10):
Starting around 1965, the favored explanations of psychologists began to change radically. A person's environment was considered less and less important in causing his\her behavior. Four different lines of thought converged on the proposition that self-direction; rather than outside forces could explain the human action.
In 1959, Noam Chomsky wrote a devastating critique of B. F. Skinner's seminal book Verbal Behavior. Chomsky argued that language in particular and human action in general were not the result of strengthening past verbal habits by reinforcement. The essence of language, he said, is that it is generative: Sentences never said or heard before (such as "There is a purple Gila monster sitting on your lap") could nevertheless be understood immediately.
Jean Piaget, the great Swiss investigator of how children develop, had persuaded most of the world-the Americans last- that the unfolding mind of the individual child could be scientifically studied.
In 1967, with the publication of Ulric Neisser's Cognitive Psychology, a new field captured the imaginations of the young experimental psychologists fleeing the dogmas of behaviorism. Cognitive psychology argued that the workings of the human mind could be measured and their consequences studied by using the information-processing activities of computers as a model.
Behavioral psychologists found that animal and human behavior was inadequately explained by drives and needs and began to invoke the cognitions-the thoughts-of the individual to explain complex behavior.
So the dominant theories in psychology shifted focus in the late 1960s from the power of the environment to the individual expectation, preference, choice, decision, control and helplessness.
...For the first time in history—because of technology, mass production, distribution and for other reasons—large numbers of people are able to have a significant measure of choice and therefore of personal control over their lives. Not the least of these choices concerns our own habits of thinking...
Our attitude controls so much of our lives. We all have a captive audience; someone that is always listening to us, that captive audience is ourselves! True success occurs in life when we choose to resourcefully live our life and not just respond to it as things happen "To Us." Abraham Lincoln once said, "I am not concerned that you fallen down, or get knocked down; I am concerned that you arise. In Empower U's words, " Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and hit it again, and again, and again... " It is not what happens to us that make us who we are; it is how we deal with it. It is our Attitude! Let me give you an example, to prove my point. This is one example of one million possible examples. Here is one man's deck of cards, see if you can tell me where this man wound up in life.
Most people would figure that this man became a bitter, angry person. By the way, in this same time frame he also lost a son. Did this man become a hermit, did he quit his job, did he blame society... did he give up and say, "What's the use?" No, he chose a different attitude. In 1860 he became president of the United States! Abraham Lincoln is considered to be one of the greatest Presidents that ever occupied the White House. He governed at a time when this country was being ripped apart by civil war. He had the attitude that he would do whatever it takes to keep the Union together!
You're Right... Attitude is Everything
Victor Frankl put it this way:
Everything can be taken from man except the last of the human freedoms, his ability to choose his own attitude in any given set of circumstances-to choose his own way.
You might be saying to yourself, "Those words sound pretty, but what does he know?"
Dr. Frankl spent years in Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp and lived to tell about it. He has LIVED IT. If you want to see the power of attitude, study prisoners of war. Our attitude is really our explanatory system; it is the way we talk to ourselves. In the Book, Whatever it Takes, Attitude is described this way:
Attitudes are habits of thought that predict or perpetuate our performance. We aren't born with them- they are acquired. Notice that the most interesting and successful people have acquired the habit of talking about what they are for, rather than, what they are against. Their optimism pulls and propels them forward. They lean into life rather than away from it. How about you? Do you see the difficulties behind every opportunity, or opportunities behind every difficulty?
Your attitude decides the way you will see the situations in your life. It is how you choose to frame your experiences. Dr. Seligman, Ph.D., explains it this way.
Our thoughts are not merely reactions to events; they change what ensues. For example, if we think we are helpless to make a difference in what our children become, we will be paralyzed when dealing with these facet of our lives. The very thought of "Nothing I do matters" prevents us from acting. And so we cede control..."
In other words energy follows thought. Your attitude that you have in a situation, will dictate your physical responses and the energy you put into those actions.
Habits of thinking are not set in stone, they need not be forever. The reason we do what we do today is because it has been done before. We are creatures of habit; we can have the tendency to live life on autopilot. One of the great breakthroughs in the science of Psychology has occurred in the last 20 years. What is this significant breakthrough?
This is not some new age thinking, this is actually "old age" thinking. The Bible, one of the oldest books, says to only focus on those things that are good and pure.
I also want you to understand that we can choose how we react to the situations that happen in our lives — we do have a choice!
Freud believed that unresolved childhood conflicts drove us to do what we do. Everything had to do with our parents and a lot of our problems had to do with human sexuality. Many people believed that we were merely products of our environment, Environmental Determinism, or a product of our genes, Genetic-Determinism. I am not downplaying any of these concepts; they can play a part in our self-talk and our behavior. I also want you to understand that we can choose how we react to the situations that happen in our lives — we do have a choice!
Some people have been abused, neglected and some other things that I don't even want to consider in this article. It is wrong, unfair and disgusting. Man's inhumanity to man is well documented over the ages. So someone can be absolutely correct to focus on all the unfairness, pain and misery in their life. I just have one question for you...WHAT DO YOU WANT? I know you have been abused...What do you Want?...Your right that your ex-spouse did this to you...What do you want?... I believe you when you say you weren't given the opportunities that others were...what do you want?.... You could be factually correct, but what does it get you? You are living in a cesspool of vile bitterness, whether you are right or not. Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy, to live a life that honors your children, your family, your God, yourself? What do you want?
You're Right... Attitude is Everything
The great news is that there are people and classes that can help us change our attitude, our explanatory system. What do you want?
At Empower U, we continue to learn new techniques and concepts that can assist our team members, both internal and external, to be more resourceful in their personal and professional lives. Our trainers are certified in the Communications Psychology called Neuro Linguistics Programming or NLP. NLP is the science of how the brain codes learning and experience. This coding affects all communication and behavior. It affects how you learn and how you experience the world around you. It is a key to reaching goals and achieving excellence.
Empower U regularly offers it's NLP: Advanced Communications class. The next classes are March 1-3 in Reno and May 3-5 in Dallas. In this class you will learn how to, "Use your brain for a change… and keep the change".
Our graduates will have the benefit of years of research into how we are wired and how to use this information to Live a life that honors who we are and what we do.
This is a powerful three-day class that allows people to take their lives to a whole new level. Our graduates will have the benefit of years of research into how we are wired and how to use this information to Live a life that honors who we are and what we do. To realize that we never have to accept "Good Enough", and that we can live a life that truly makes a difference in the lives of those around us. You will not want to miss this incredible class. This will be a powerful tool/weapon to have in your arsenal, to use on your journey to become the "Best of the Best"!
As I said earlier there is an epidemic of Unresourceful Attitude in the world. We have become a world of pessimists. Look at all the dying, misery, bitterness and pain in the world. People have such bad attitudes about life that they kill themselves at an alarming rate. By the way, one of the consequences of negativity and bad attitude is suicide. Dr. Seligman explains that severe depression is ten times more prevalent today then it was 50 years ago. This depression, this negative self-talk takes as many lives as the AIDS virus and is more wide spread. It gets so bad sometimes that people give up.
The great news is we can win this battle. If we are even to consider winning this battle we need to first acknowledge it's existence. We must first acknowledge that our attitude is a choice. Sometimes we make the choice by 'not choosing", but we do choose. It can become the ultimate battle in our lives. It is the ultimate WIN–WIN.
You can live life unconscious and let that CD, record or that 8-track tape that is in your head continue to play over and over and over...
You can choose to break that CD, scratch that record, pull on the tape in the 8-track cassette... what do you want? You can choose to lose the battle, or worst yet, not even "fight the fight", or you can choose to be an active participant. I would consider the conscious choice of being aware of your attitude a victory by itself. The outcome is less important than the commitment to participate in the opportunity of taking conscious control of your life. You choose whether you are a winner or a loser in the great battle within. To quote from the EDGE keynote:
Losers always have an excuse;
Winners always have an idea.
Losers fix the blame;
Winners fix the situation.
Losers make promises;
Winners keep commitments.
Losers let it happen;
Winners make it happen.
Losers say, 'Why don't they do something?'
Winners say, 'Here's something I can do.'
The 3-steps to becoming your dreams are Want it. Create it. Live it. We can help you with the journey, if you want it. We can help you create it in our NLP classes in March and May. Only you can choose to Live it. Will you choose to allow Empower U to better equip you for this opportunity? Will you choose to be a winner... or will you choose to be a loser?
You're Right... Attitude is Everything
With Passion - Heart, Body and Soul
Scott V. Black
The Empower U Leadership Team
February 2002
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