At present I am sitting in my hotel in Blantyre, Malawi. This, like so many of the countries in Africa, is a beautiful country with wonderful people. I really consider myself extremely blessed to be able to travel to so many of these wonderful countries and meet and make friends with so many great people.
This state of gratefulness is what I once heard referred to as having an “attitude of gratitude”.
What Is Attitude
Attitude has often been described as “our most priceless possession”.
Way back in 1990 Harvard University researched what it was that determined people’s success. They defined success, for the sake of their research, as “achieving the desired results.”
What came out of their research astounded the academia, for their research unveiled the fact that 85% of the reasons that people achieved their desired results was simply because they wanted to…15% was because they knew how to.
How To vs Want To
Now, with this information, it is very easy to determine that the “how to” is a result of acquiring knowledge and skills. The “want to”, however, is purely a result of ATTITUDE.
When you want to, you find out how to. When you want to, nothing can stop you from achieving your desired outcome.
There is no human being alive who cannot develop the “want to.”
Unfortunately, however, most of our education, be it our informal, schooling, tertiary or on-the-job training is all about the “how to” and the world abounds with people who know how to. We have a lot of intellectual derelicts.
What we don’t have, however, are enough people with the desire and passion to really “want to.”
How To Be Negative
Don’t do ANYTHING!
You can sit on your butt all day and it will fly at you. Switch on the radio, turn on the TV, open up the newspaper – they are all full of negativity.
Negative people want to know that others are worse off than them. They love to focus on the negative because it helps validate their reason for living in their comfort zone.
As a result, most people sit back, expecting someone or something to make things happen for them. They allow their minds to be controlled by the abundance of negative input that flies at them day after day.
How To Be Positive
CHOOSE to be!
The beauty about attitude is that you are in control of your attitude. Not the government, media, church, school, university, weather, spouse, dog, cat, etc. YOU have the power to change your attitude in a split second.
Only YOU possess this power. YOU can change your life by changing YOUR attitude.
YOU can choose to:
- focus on the positive
- read positive and uplifting material
- associate with positive people
- change the things that you want to change in your life
- become the kind of person that you really want to be
- love
- let go of the emotions that hold you back
- develop the habits that allow you to respect and love yourself
This is a wonderful gift – the gift of choice.
I encourage you to choose a positive, good, pure uplifting and dynamic life. Choose to live the life that you were created for. Choose to become extraordinary!
Your friend,
Dave Boreham