HOW TO CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE

You probably agree that having a winning attitude is crucial to success but have no real clue about how to change your attitude.  Most of us don’t.  One of the problems most of us have is that we have been conditioned to believe that we cannot reach our dreams.  Even if we set goals, we may set poor goals or the wrong ones because we don’t really believe we can ever make the dreams that are written on our hearts come true.   As children, we probably were convinced  that anything was possible.  Some wise and loving adult may have  told us at some point that we could do anything we wanted to in life if we would just set our mind to it.  And we really believed that.  And we dreamed about what we would do when we were all grown up.   But somewhere along the way, we lost our faith.  Ok, maybe we just got a healthy dose of reality. Maybe our belief in the magic of the future was childish and naive in the first place…  Maybe.  … Maybe God really didn’t  give us all the abilities we need to accomplish the things we dreamed about…Maybe…    Of course, I don’t really believe that and I doubt that you do, either.

So what happened?  And how do we fix it?  How do you change your attitude this late in the game to  re-gain that child-LIKE– NOT childish — belief that anything is possible?  To have the courage to reach for the stars that we really want to reach for and to find our own personal magic ship that will get us to those stars, we may have to work on ourselves as well as working on our goals.  Scary, huh? Yes, it is. But you are worth the effort.  Remember, if you shoot at the moon and miss, you still land among the stars.  That’s a cliche, I know, but still a very accurate one.   And I  believe in every one of you. That’s right.  EVERY one of you.  Even  any of you poor lost souls who have been told much of your lives that you were losers  and you are convinced you  have proven people right because you have not been much of a success at anything you have tried thus far.   I know you have made a commitment to yourself just by being here.  And I know you will step out of your own comfort zone and have faith that doing something different might be necessary if you are to succeed in changing your life — discovering what is important to you, and then setting and achieving your life goals.  But you must change your attitude.   God did not make an imperfect product.  You have the tools.  They may be buried at the bottom of the toolbox but I can tell you how to look for them.  The digging is for you to do.  I will just tell you how.

SPACED REPETITION AND ITS EFFECT ON OUR LIVES

Life can be overwhelming without direction.

Throughout our lives, we have gotten input, both positive and negative.  Much of that input has been repeated over and over with little spaces in between, like we get radio or TV commercials.  After so many repetitions we begin to adopt the input as our own.  We internalize it.  Through spaced repetition of the input, we have been changed.  We are conditioned toward certain attitudes and because we have those attitudes, we adopt habits which affect our behavior in life.  This behavior affects everything we do.  The results we achieve from our behavior may be desirable or not desirable, as seen through our own personal prism.  Sometimes we are not happy with the results we have gotten in life, but just don’t know what to do about it.

The input we have gotten comes from all around us – our parents, our friends, our teachers, our ministers, our spouses, from TV, from the books we  read, even from computer games we play and  from Facebook and other online connections.  Input comes from everywhere.  The mother-in-law I mentioned in another post certainly has to make her opinion known.  Heck, even your dog has to get his say. And you are still playing tapes in your head from what your parents said years ago.  Our internal replay system is saying  things like, “Don’t you ever do anything right?”  “Why can’t you be like your brother?”  “You just need to find a good man and get married.  You don’t need to go to college.”  “You can’t get rich, anyway.  So why try?”  “The rich folks have it all rigged.”  “You need to get a good education so you can get a good job.”  “Don’t take chances.  You have a family to support.”  “Uncle Sam’s just going to take everything, anyway.”  “The government’s out to get you.”  “You ain’t gonna forget your friends when you’re rich, are you? Ha, ha.”

HOW TO REVERSE COURSE

You may be pleased with your life and the results you have gotten.  In that case there isn’t a lot you will want to change.  But if you are not happy with the results you have gotten thus far, the good news is that you can consciously change the results by changing the input.  We either plan our future or we are victims of our lack of planning.

Spaced repetition works for negative input or for positive input.

You will sometimes find that you have to change your attitude  in order to reach your goals. YOU may be your biggest obstacle.  If that is so, you will need to reverse the process of negative spaced repetition that got you to this point.  You can use positive spaced repetition of the desired input to change your attitudes and habits, so that you can get the desired results.

If you do not think you have been successful so far and want to change that, then you should be looking at the input you are getting on a daily basis and finding ways to change the negative to the positive.  What type of people do you hang out with?  Are they positive successful people, or are they negative about life and just never quite get to where they want to go.  Or worse yet, they have no idea where they want to go.  According to Jim Rohn,  over time you will become a combination of the five people you spend the most time with.   Let me repeat that.  Over time you will become a combination of the five people you spend the most time with.  Wow, what a concept!  If your friends are not good for you,  maybe you should get some new friends.  I am not suggesting that you have to abandon the old friends. And you certainly still need to be there for your close friends and family when they need you.    You just start spending less time with the old friends and spend more of your time around more positive people.  And people around you are not the only sources of negative input.  You will probably need to adjust your life in other ways as well.   How much TV do you watch?  How much time do you spend playing computer games?   Do you read motivational and self-help books?  Do you listen to self-help tapes?  Do you think SUCCESS?  Or do you think FAILURE?

You really can take control of your life.  You can change your attitude and your future.   Your success really is up to you.  It is your life and you are responsible for it.

I WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU!

Let me know about your success or lack of it in the past and what you have gotten from this blog so far to set you on a new path.  Please  leave a comment.  I would like to hear from you.  And if you leave your contact information at the top right corner of this page, I will also send you notification anytime I update the blog.

For those ambitious types who want to jump ahead I would also like to recommend an article by Ann Sieg called The Attraction Marketers Manifesto that might provide a new perspective on marketing and give you some ideas on how to be more effective, no matter what type of business your eventual life goals success vehicle might be.