Showing posts with label attitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label attitude. Show all posts

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Do You Want To Be Successful & Wealthy? The Right Attitude is All You Need!


A famous quote says "Your attitude today determines your success tomorrow". The most valuable asset you can possess is a positive attitude towards your life. Your attitude determines how much success you can achieve in all aspects of your life. Your attitude is also one of the first things people notice about you, and impacts on all the business and personal relationships you will have. Positive attitude is not a product of heredity; but with proper training, anyone can acquire this important trait.

If your attitude is not positive, then you can use some tools to do an "attitude tune-up".

1. You must understand the power of attitude
Your attitude is the most powerful tool for positive action that can help you become successful, so you will need to understand this before you can work on the following steps towards adjusting your attitude for the better. Your attitude impacts on everything you do, the way you think and your motivational levels. In order to turn your attitude around and get into action towards your goals, you need to be able to consistently fight any negative or pessimistic thoughts that you may get. You need surround yourself with positive things and people, and you need to keep on your ultimate goal of achieving the success and wealth you want.

2. You must make a choice to be in command of your mind and attitude
Taking full responsibility for what goes on in your mind by monitoring your thoughts is the first step towards being in control of your attitude. The power of choice is very influential in our lives. In order for you to be successful and wealthy, you must first choose to be successful. While you are working your way towards your goals, you will encounter some hurdles, you may experience some failure; but is very important that you control how you respond to whatever that happens, and keep your attitude positive, while working towards your goals.

So, what will be your choice? A positive or a negative attitude? It may be easy to make this choice, but what tends to be a challenge is to actually stick with this choice no-matter what setbacks you face. "Program" your attitude by training yourself to be always positive, maintain a positive inner dialogue, and keep your focus on your long term goals. Choosing to have the right attitude will help you become successful in all areas in all areas of your life.

3. Identify and stop the negative attitude that holds you back
Assess your present day attitude and identify aspects of which may be holding you back from becoming successful. What are the underlying causes of your negative attitude? What attitude do you need to propel yourself towards success and wealth? Do an attitude assessment and work an all the attitude that is keeping you away from being successful and wealthy. Rid yourself of any debilitating attitude, and focus on the positive attitude which will help you attain your optimum potential in all areas of your life.

4. Turn your attitude into action and find your purpose and passion
After you have identified what it is that is holding you back, you will be ready to take on the next step of looking ahead and analyzing where you want your life to go and what you want to achieve. In order to be successful, you must understand the importance of living your life with purpose and passion, and having a personal vision of what you want in your life. If you do not have a vision, you have nothing to work towards, and therefore you can not be consistently motivated. Once you have your success goals specified, then you can easily turn your attitude into action as you work towards these goals.

5. Develop strategies for maintaining the right attitude
For you to be successful in your life and in your business, it is important to be able to maintain the right attitude at all times, regardless of any setbacks you may face. You will need to prepare yourself for handling any challenging situations that may threaten to provoke negative attitudes that will throw you off course. You must develop some self-motivation techniques to help you maintain the right attitude towards your goals; namely affirmations, visualization, positive attitude talk, enthusiasm etc. By using these tools, you will be well prepared to achieve professional and personal success. It is also important to build supportive relationships that will get you through challenging times.

By simply following the steps outlined above, you can have the right attitude which will help you transform your life and achieve any success you want.


Sunday, February 12, 2012

Can Businesses Learn from the Military?

A few years ago I left the forces after serving a full 22 years. I joined the Army straight after leaving school; it still seems like yesterday when I walked into the careers office in Barnsley as a spotty eek. After numerous test, medicals and a 2 day assessment I was told I was going to be a vehicle mechanic ‘B’ in the REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), a right mouthful when I was full of beer and attempting to chat up a young filly. Funnily enough when I enrolled in the REME I was not told I would be spending the first year after basic training in a technical school, if I had known this prior I would defiantly have tried something else. During my career I became knowledgeable in a host of subjects, some unmentionable, the ones that are printable include; vehicle engineering, health and safety, human resources, general management. During my career I worked in some fantastically well organised, well managed places and unfortunately some not so good places. This leads me to the question; can a business really learn from the military? Since leaving the forces I have been involved in a few business ventures, generally poor unsuccessful ones. Looking back I honestly believe if the management of these businesses employed a more military type attitude they would have not failed so easily. So what do I mean by a military type attitude? I certainly do not mean acting like the cast of Bad Lads Army. This is what I mean: In normal business life the main motivator is money or the fear of the boot. This is probably why so many people nowadays change job so frequently. These should not be the only motivation tools a company employ. The Army uses the best motivation tool there is ‘Time Off’. Of course having your workforce at home most of the time is counter productive. In the early 90’s I managed a small vehicle workshop in Berlin. I had one military worker and one civilian. During the quiet periods I would call for the dice to be brought out, sometimes as early as 8am. The dice were thrown by all of us, the lowest combined score from 2 throws meant that person had to man the telephone all day, whilst the winners disappeared either home or to the local golf course. This management tactic as well as others ensured I had a happy workforce, production statistics don’t lie they showed an overall output increase. Other methods in different places included production meetings in the local pub, rewarding my hardest worker by giving him 5 days off; this certainly spurred the rest of the lads on and a host of other methods. Of course there were times when I worked with unmotivated, self opinionated, lazy soldiers, on these occasions I adopted a sterner approach. I then look at the majority of workers in everyday business life; I see they are generally unmotivated, unless they are self employed. I wonder if this is because they are not well managed. My guess would be they are not managed at all. My cousin works in a very busy establishment as soon as his boss leaves the office, everyone logs on to EBay. How counter productive is that? To conclude in my opinion many lessons can be learned from the British military in how to manage and run organisations. I should send my article to the BBC maybe they will run a programme on it, now that would be funny. About the author - Peter Arkwright recently retired from the military, he is now the Managing Director of www.bizseller4u.com A new portal that allows people to list their Business for Sale This article is free for republishing