Attitude and Motivation – 2 keys to success

I always remember the quote from Zig Ziglar, “It’s your attitude, not your aptitude that determines your altitude.” And it’s true! Shear guts and determination, particularly in the face of adversity, is what has made so many of our leaders so successful.

And we can only achieve our goals if we have the motivation – the burning desire – to do so. And this is why it is so important for your goals to be personal – let personally desired outcomes or goals be your motivation to achieve success. Just apply that “go get’em” attitude to power your way!

You too can be successful at what ever you set your mind to. All you need to do is:

• Empower Yourself – have confidence in yourself and believe that you can achieve!
• Set a positive mindset and use the power of positive thinking - and a daily dose of goal visualisation will keep you speeding down that highway to success.
• Try some alternative methods for motivation – if you dare!
• And don’t just visualise success - IMITATE success!

Use the power of positive thinking and the fuel of personal motivation to achieve your personal success – it’s all about attitude!

There are many examples of optimism and a positive attitude breeding positive outcomes - in sport, massive swings of power are determined by positive and negative emotions. The same exists in everyday experiences - but the scoreboard is not as defined. Of course, blind optimism is dangerous too – and that’s why effective goal setting is so good. It gives you the direction and the PLAN to achieve your personal success, and combined with a little motivation and a positive mind-set – there’s just no stopping you! Think of goals as your destination, action plans as your road map and motivation and attitude as the fuel for your car.

But HOW does attitude make a difference?

Quite simply, if you believe in something enough – so it will be! It's called the law of attraction, which I’m sure you’ve heard flogged on every DIY self-help channel. But you don’t need to spend any money on any ‘Law of Attraction’ system to understand how it works and how to apply it to your own life.

How does it work? Well, I’m sure you’ve heard of the placebo effect – a doctor gives a patient a sugar pill, but tells them it’s a cure for their ailment. And what do you know, the patient gets better! Why? It’s not because sugar is a magical cure for everything, but it’s because the brain is so powerful, it can cure the body – but only if it believes it can.

This is known as the expectant power of the brain – if it expects an outcome, it will make that outcome happen. If your brain expects you to succeed – you will!

I remember writing a paper for a conference. There was a prize for the best paper and I initially thought to myself – I’m going to write the best paper and win that prize. So I wrote the paper. After presenting the paper at the conference, my confidence waivered – there were lots of good papers and mine just didn’t seem to stack up.

But despite my last minute jitters and doubts, my paper won – because I wrote the paper with a winning attitude [my doubt only crept in after it was all done and dusted]. So as far as I’m concerned – self-belief and a positive mind-set really works!

But you need to really believe – not just pretend to believe. You can’t trick your brain into expecting something if at the back of your mind you don’t think it will happen. You need to do more than just say it to yourself, you need to convince yourself – and this isn’t always easy to do.

Help! I need an attitude adjustment

Just think about the way to react to things that happen or even things you see on TV – what’s your first reaction? Is it a positive reaction or a negative one? This should give you a clue as to whether you attitude needs an adjustment.

To help create a more positive attitude, try the following:

• Surround yourself with positive influences – seek out the positive people in your circle of friends and work colleagues and get energized by their energy!
• Avoid the gossip sessions around the coffee machine, instead seek out inspiration work colleagues and strike up a conversation with them.
• And change the channel during those bad news stories and movies. TV is OK though if you stick to the good-news stories and inspirational movies. Watch “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey for some inspiration!
• Keep check of your attitude – we all feel a bit down from time to time, but it’s important to keep check of when you feel negative. And if you notice yourself sliding down that way – do something about it! Have some inspiration quotes handy to arrest that attitude slide.
• Use visualisation techniques – visualise nice happy scenes to stay positive. And more importantly, visualise the idea of success and how you feel when you achieve it! Not only does this boost your positive attitude, it’s great for motivation towards your goals – and gives you a licence to day-dream!
• Speak with a positive mind - start saying “I can”, instead of “I can’t”; “yes“ instead of “no“, “I will“ instead of “I’ll try“. Again, I recommend watching “Yes Man”

And always use positive affirmation – positive affirmation is just telling yourself [out aloud and repeatedly] that you can do it. It works on the theory that if you tell yourself something enough times and with enough conviction, you’ll eventually believe in what you are saying.

Try it for a week and see what happens – on a piece of paper, write down a message to yourself. It might be something like “I am a good mother/ father” or “I am a confident public speaker” – what ever you need to improve. Always use positive language – like you’ve already achieved what you want to achieve.

Then read it out aloud 10 times every morning when you wake up, and every night as you’re going to bed – and say it like you mean it, like you believe it already.

See how different you feel by the end of the week!

It can be difficult to convince yourself, so an extension to positive affirmation is self-hypnosis and sub-liminal messaging through recordings. These condition the brain into expecting the outcome of whatever message you’re sending – and this can be quite an effective method of positive affirmation and self-motivation.

You can download recordings from a number of sites, and play them to your self through your iPod. Set on repeat and listened to overnight can have quite astounding effects – but you still have to believe in the process and believe that you too can achieve.

You can also record your own messages on a hand-held recorded and play them back

The secret of ‘The Secret’

More specifically, the system of ‘The Secret’ is:

Step 1: Ask – ask the “Universe” what you want. Whether it’s a promotion at work, a new house or even a better car park [as claimed by proponents of ‘The Secret’]. This step requires you to define exactly what you want.

Step 2: Believe – this is the crux of ‘The Secret’. You need to really and truly believe that you are going to get what you want. There’s no point pretending to believe to trick the universe [actually, your brain] into giving you what you want. You need to truly and honestly believe that this is going to happen.

Step 3: Receive – once you believe, then you will receive what you want!

Sound familiar?

But whether you believe the hype of ‘The Secret’ or not [I still can’t quite swallow being able to get a parking space using this system!], it does highlight the power of positive thinking and the expectant power of the brain – believe and you will receive!

Well, that’s it for another edition of the Goal Kicker. So think positive, be positive and have a positively successful future.

Best regards

Sam Sander
Achieve Goal Setting Success
Your Money and Finance
The Success Squid

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