Attitude and Belief by Sue Courtney

I’ve been thinking recently about how my life changes according to the attitude I am holding at the time. It seems that when I am happy, friendly and positive things go well. If I am gloomy, pessimistic and negative things get even worse! Have you noticed that? So I thought that I would investigate further and see what I could find out.

It has been said that your attitudes and beliefs are the software driving you every day on life’s journey. Interesting. We’ll tackle attitude first. You can choose your attitude to everything, though it may not seem that way when, as soon as you walk into your place of work, a huge, dark cloud of negativity descends. But, according to current wisdom, if you allow that to persist, the situation will never get better. So what can you do about it?

To begin you could ask yourself

“What new attitude would move my life forward?”

Then

“How can I develop that new attitude?”

What would you need to do? Is there anyone at your place of work that has the attitude you would like? Could you ask them how they do it, or watch them to see exactly what they do?

Zig Ziglar once said

“Your attitude determines your altitude”. (Actually, I expect he has said it hundreds of times.) I am sure that it is absolutely true, but it isn’t always easy to develop a positive attitude to doing a job you don’t like, to get a promotion that you don’t really want!

So what is the answer? Well, there must be at least one tiny aspect of the job that is OK. Focus on this and be grateful that something is working. It may be that your colleagues are great and you enjoy the company, or you enjoy the challenge of selling to customers. It may be that the office is modern and clean or cosy and comfy. It may be that the breaks are good or the shift pattern works well for you. Find something that you could call a positive and work on that. Then ask how you could improve one aspect that you don’t like.

Don’t make complaining the centrepiece of your conversation. Instead of being the first to complain in the morning, find a positive thing to say – difficult but not impossible! If you can do this every morning for a month you will be on the way to a new, more productive habit.

I once had the experience of living in a house I didn’t like, in a place I didn’t want to be. I was not at all happy. On the first evening there I sat in the lounge, surrounded by packing cases and disarray in deep gloom. I looked around and the only positive comment I could make was that the door handles were nice! It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

It’s not just outside circumstances that we are critical of. Often we reserve the worst criticism for ourselves. Whatever your brain hears it believes, so every time you tell yourself, or someone else how awful your life is or how stupid you are it diminishes your self esteem. Pretty soon you will start to believe it and also believe that there is nothing you can do about it.

I once read about a no complaining rule which intrigued me, though I don’t pretend to be able to live by it. Basically it says that every complaint represents an opportunity to turn a negative into a positive.

It sounds good, but I know it isn’t easy to do.

 It may help to ban the phrase”I can’t” from your vocabulary – it shuts the brain down. ”I don’t want to” might be more honest. “How can I ?” is more helpful as it opens the brain up to possibilities. You can ask yourself “What do I need to do?” “What do I need to learn?” “Who do I need to talk to?” Or a favourite of mine – “Why not?” If someone else has done it then you certainly can if you are willing to do what it takes.

So now you are beginning to develop a more positive attitude towards the life you want it is time see yourself living the life you want and believing it is possible. Visualisation is part of this process.

Denis Waitley, has said that

“Successful individuals see the act of achieving in advance”. They make the pictures vivid, multi-dimensional and clear.

In personal development circles there is a strong belief in the saying

“What you see is who you’ll be.”

But it isn’t enough to visualise it and think positively about it. This will work to a certain extent, but it also needs belief – you must believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is possible, possible for you and that you deserve it. Ouch. Now we have hit a problem for many people. It can be difficult enough to decide what you actually want (much easier to know what you don’t want) and visualise having it in detail. Asking that you believe it is possible for you to have it and believe that you deserve it? Dream on!

If you are struggling with the concept of deserving the great life you want you are not alone. Since birth we are bombarded with messages about what we can and cannot expect to have. It isn’t that our parents set out to give us limiting beliefs, they were doing their best and giving us sound advice as they saw it. Teachers, family, friends, colleagues and the media have all contributed their bit until we are firmly of the belief that other people do that, live that life, eat there, wear those clothes. What we must all realise is that this may have seemed true in their time, with the information they had at the time. But now we know there is a better way.

Within reason – I long ago came to accept that I will never break any athletic records for speed, but I don’t want to so that is OK – we are each capable of achieving whatever we want, if we are prepared to do the work required. If you aren’t prepared to take action to achieve your goals you should ask yourself why. It may be that the goals don’t excite you that much – so why have you got them? Are they goals that you feel you ought to achieve because society expects it or is it a goal that would make someone else happy? Stop ‘shoulding’ on yourself and develop a goal that you feel passionate about, for you.

It may be that you are passionate about your goal but you have limiting beliefs about whether you can achieve it. Write all these beliefs out and for each one, develop as many  counter arguments as possible. The aim is to knock the legs out from under the belief. Then develop a positive belief and find as many supporting statements as you can. Write them down.

A limiting belief may be that you will never achieve your dream because you are ‘useless with money’. Once you have got this out into the open write down as many ways as you can think of to prove you are good with money. Ask friends and family how they see that you are good with money and create a new, empowering belief – ‘I am great with money’ or ‘I work miracles with money’ and write down all the supporting statements you can – then read them every day for a month or two, adding to the list as ideas and evidence  come to you.

Once you believe your goal is possible and you are thinking positively about its achievement the time is right to visualise it. You can do this while lying down, commuting to work, walking or any time you don’t need to be concentrating. See yourself living the life you want from within and really feel it. But only visualise positive outcomes. If you visualise dropping something or forgetting your lines then that is what will happen. Relax and visualise you living your ideal life as often as possible. Ideally you want to visualise every morning as soon as you wake up and every evening just before sleeping, when your mind is most receptive to positive thoughts and visions.

All this will take time and sustained effort. It may be worthwhile hiring a coach for a while to kick start the process and hold you accountable for taking the actions you know you need to but keep putting off. Once you are on your way to the achievement of your goals you will find you can more easily keep up the momentum and use a coach occasionally for a short boost.

Good luck.

When will you start the process?

Exactly which day and what time would work best for you?

Prioritise it and write it in your diary. Visualise yourself writing it in and see yourself using that time to start your new life. Stop procrastinating – you deserve the life you want!

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Success & Image Coach