I have been ranting, I mean speaking, about the importance of attitude for most of my career. In the last three years I have done more programs on attitude then all my other topics combined, which tells me that managing our attitudes is more important now than ever. For several weeks I collected a sampling of headlines from newspapers, magazines, and blogs that reference attitude just to see how the rest of the world views the impact of attitude on life. The results were surprising, even to me, covering everything thing from sports teams to the economy as you can see below:

– Success in life may depend on your ‘attitudes’
– A Positive Attitude Can Go a Long Way After a Layoff
– On the brighter side: Can Attitude affect economy, health?
– How to Deal With an Employee With an Attitude
– The Attitude That Will Save Your Job
– Attitudes That We Can Do Without
– Old age is about mental attitude and spirit
– Coach wants Sounders to be ‘more aggressive attitude’ around the goal
– Change your body language, attitude

Even more eye-opening was realizing it’s a worldwide problem from the USA to Malaysia to Russia to India to Australia, meaning we are all in this together. Certainly the economic slow down and recession has had an impact on people’s attitudes but then I wonder how our attitudes of the past impacted the onset of our current economic condition? We are a global community and what we do and the attitudes we have can eventually affect someone half way around the world.

As individuals we can only be responsible for our own attitude, but what a source of power that attitude can be for those around us! How many of us have started out the day in neutral, meaning it can go up or down, and encountered something or someone that tipped our attitude toward the negative? It might be congested traffic, bad service, a rolling of the eyes, a forgotten appointment, or the rainy weather that flipped our internal switch, but we can usually pinpoint what made the difference. Often we might be the negative force, (who me?), that pushes a family worker, co-worker, or fellow commuter to the dark side of attitude! So what do we do about it?

Day in and day out there will be experiences that frustrate us and leave a lot to be desired. You can make a difference in your day by choosing to be aware and personally responsible for your own attitude at all times. Taking control of your attitude is the best way to influence the attitude of others and involves desire, practice, the courage to feel uncomfortable until you get it right, and focusing on the moment at hand rather than getting caught up in mistakes of the past or perceived problems of the future. It isn’t easy and I know from experience some days it’s very hard to keep my rotten attitude to myself, and I’m an attitude expert! If you must have a bad attitude then please go into your personal cave and inflict as little pain as possible on those around you.

If you have any question that attitude plays an important role in the quality of life, consider the words of this young girl who faced obstacles far worse than our struggles:

“Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is! How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world… The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” • Anne Frank