Keys to a Positive Attitude

By Nancy Friedman, Telephone Doctor
November 2005

Why do some people have such a great attitude and others a negative one?  Well, we wondered the same thing and through our research we found seven keys that those with a positive mental attitude all share.  How do you rate?

1) Choose Your Attitude in Advance: When you wake up, you have a choice.  You can be in a good mood or a bad mood.  You also choose your attitude.  You can wake up and mutter to yourself, "This is gonna be a cruddy day," or you can tell yourself, "This is gonna be a great day!"  This choice is the start of a great attitude.

2) Visualize Success: Runners in the Boston Marathon picture themselves crossing the finish line.  Picture yourself having a successful day.  Self-visualization is a key factor in having a positive mental attitude.  Will it work 100% of the time?  I wish it would.  However, by visualizing your success, you'll be able to have a better handle on what does happen, and having a better chance of making it happen.

3) Demonstrate Humor, Energy, and Enthusiasm: We call these three items the magic ingredients.  Without them, creating a positive mental attitude will be difficult.  There is normally humor in every situation.  Finding it is key.  Sometimes you'll need to stretch and dig a little deeper to find the humor in a situation.  But once you do, you'll feel so much better.  Energy is important because without some energy in your attitude, you'll be dragging behind everyone.  Energy is closely related to the third ingredient, enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm is contagious; let's start an epidemic!

4) Resist Negative Influences: It's a fact.  When we have a negative experience with a company, we'll tell more people about it than if we have a good experience with the same company.  Many times, when you hear that someplace wasn't very good, you'll believe the person who told you and choose not to do business with that company.  However, you may only be hearing half the story.  Check things out for yourself.  Especially if the negativity involves a person you work with or know.  We've all heard negative things about someone we didn't know and then when we had the opportunity to meet them ourselves, we find that they're not as bad as someone had alluded to.  In fact they might be nice, but you need to be the judge.  Take negativity out of your life.  Steer clear of those who drag you down and say negative things.  Being around other positive people is a good start.

5) Be a Whatever-it-Takes Person: This means, be a problem solver.  Life is going to put obstacles in front of all of us.  How we go around those obstacles is key.  There's normally a good answer to every problem put in front of us.  Dale Carnegie said it best.  Ask yourself, "What is the worst thing that can happen here?"  Then move up from that.

6) Embrace Change; Expect it and Accept it: Some people are very good at handling change and some resist it.  The major key to handling change is to accept it; deal with it.  In most cases there's little we can do to stop it anyway.

7) Be Grateful for What You Have: Many people have so much and yet those same people are often the ones that constantly complain.  Why wait for some life-altering experience to be grateful?  Be grateful, now. 

These are the seven keys to having a positive mental attitude.  Put them into practice and you will be amazed at the difference they can make.

This article is based on the Telephone Doctor's video program "The Seven Keys to a Positive Mental Attitude."  Nancy Friedman is President of Telephone Doctor, a customer service training company in St. Louis, MO.  For more information, visit www.telephonedoctor.com or call 314-291-1012.

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