Attitude Isn't Everything
Attitude Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing
Staff Article, Written by Don Wilde
I've paraphrased Vince Lombardi's famous line about winning to make a point. You can't win unless your attitude is in top shape. Even luck can't really help you win for long; most lottery winners are poor in a year or two.
Your attitude has everything to do with your daily happiness, your resilience in the face of change, and your success. Many engineers don't apply the discipline that makes them excellent engineers to their own minds, so this is the place to start.
Here are some suggestions for things you can do to stay in the game so you can win:
- Spend five minutes first thing in the morning being present only to how glad you are to be breathing. Feel happy and feel your breathing, don't intellectualize! If your thoughts run away, disengage and let yourself float in your feelings.
- Spend the next five minutes being glad about everything that is going well in your life. You can always find something, even if it's only that your car radio still works and your dog hasn't run off.
- Spend another five minutes being grateful for everything in your life. Whether you are grateful to a deity or to yourself, practicing gratitude is a way of reinforcing the good in your life.
- Spend a minute being grateful for your challenges because of everything you are learning. Spend the next four minutes visualizing yourself being past those challenges.
- Finally, spend ten minutes working backwards from 'being past' and figuring out what you have to do to get there. It's best to look at the situation as though it's not yourself you're working on. Don't be urgent about it, just let ideas bubble up. You will get better at this, keep practicing!
Now, I'm not going to claim that I actually manage to DO all of this everyday -- my mind is so excited about life that it puts itself in gear before I realize I'm conscious -- but I'll put it to you that whatever quantity of these quality minutes I actualize makes my day go better.
Make sure you have a yellow pad and a pencil beside your bed. You will come up with great ideas and inspired actions, along with a much better attitude.