ATTITUDE: OURS SHOULD NOT SUCK!
People say attitude is everything.
You’ve heard that right? Sure. But what are they really saying? And what exactly
is attitude?
An attitude is a favorable or unfavorable evaluation, disposition or
judgment that represents our degree of like or dislike, or positive or negative
view for someone or something or some event or some idea, notion or belief. That
someone, something, idea, notion or belief can be referred to as the attitude object. We can also say that attitude is one of the ways we
communicate our mood to others, for example, through smiling or frowning or
shrugging our shoulders. When we are optimistic and anticipate successful
encounters, we transmit a positive attitude and people usually respond
favorably. When we are pessimistic and expect the worst, our attitude is often
negative, and people tend to avoid us. It is the way we look at things
mentally. We can add a bit more to our definition by saying that attitude is an
inward feeling expressed by outward behavior. To some extent or other, we always
project on the outside what we feel on the inside… about other people about ourselves,
about all sorts of things. And, yes those projections of ours drive our
behavior. So attitude determines behavior… that’s why attitude matters so much.
Complicating matters a bit, we can
be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object, meaning that we simultaneously
possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in question. Isn’t
that nice, this is just one more part of the confusion of normal life.
Now then, no one wants to be a
victim of anything ever. And undeniably we have the capability to live the life
we want. We may not get everything we want but we can get a lot. If we believe we
can and if we behave appropriately. And belief and most of our behavior is a
matter of choice, our choice, choice we get to make every moment of our
existence.
Here’s the thing. We can design a
whole lot of our own life experience. I hope you believe that because it’s true.
As a start, we can actively improve our life experience by managing and
directing our attitudes… and yes indeed we can do that. We can set our daily
mood through attitude. Of course I recommend setting a positive mood and a can-do
attitude because going the other way would be silly. This daily mental SET UP activity
helps us get into FLOW and live in the ZONE, helps us live proactively rather
than reactively.
What are FLOW and the ZONE? We’ll
let’s get to that next.
Born
in 1934, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi is a Hungarian psychology professor who immigrated
to the United States at the age of 22. He’s he is the former head of the
department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of
sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College and now teaches at Claremont
Graduate University east of Los Angles.
Csíkszentmihályi
is noted for both his work in the study of happiness and creativity and also
for his notoriously difficult to pronounce name. He is best known as the
architect of the notion of FLOW and for his years of research and writing on
the topic. He is the author of many books and over 120 articles or book
chapters. He is the world’s leading researcher on positive psychology. He once
said “Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out
of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen
discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.” Proactively
adopting a desirable set of attitudes about ourselves helps make this happen.
So
FLOW, what is that? FLOW is the mental state of operation in which a person in
an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full
involvement, and success in the process of the activity. And the ZONE is a
place where mind and body work in perfect synch and decisions and actions seem
to happen without conscious effort. For a very happy life, you want to get into
FLOW and the ZONE and stay there.
Once
in FLOW and the ZONE, should you have a disappointment of some sort, you need
to immediately ask yourself why did I not perform well today? Was it poor planning
and preparation? Was my focus and concentration off? Was it a mistake in
execution? Figure that out, and then get yourself to a place of peace with that
situation. Don’t get down on yourself. Achieving that place of peace is the key
to avoiding a full-fledged slump. A slump—that downward spiral that only gets
worse the harder you try—is familiar to, well to everybody.
Professor
Csikszentmihalyi identified nine elements of FLOW that he saw repeatedly in his
research:
1.
There are clear goals every step of the way. In many everyday situations, there
are contradictory demands and it’s sometimes quite unclear what should occupy
our attention. But in a flow experience, we have a clear purpose and a good
grasp of what to do next.
2.
There is immediate feedback to one’s actions. When we’re in FLOW, we know how
well we’re doing.
3.
There is a balance between challenges and skills. If a challenge is too
demanding compared to our skill level, we get frustrated. If it’s too easy, we
get bored. In a flow experience, there is a pretty good match between our
abilities and the demands of the situation. We feel engaged by the challenge,
but not overwhelmed.
4.
Action and awareness are merged. We are often thinking about something that
happened – or might happen – in another time or place. But in flow, we’re
concentrated on what we’re doing.
5.
Distractions are excluded from consciousness. Because we’re absorbed in the
activity, we’re only aware of what’s relevant to the task at hand, and we don’t
think about unrelated things. By being focused on the activity, unease that can
cause anxiety and depression is set aside.
6.
There is no worry of failure. In a state of FLOW, we’re too involved to be concerned
about failing. We just don’t think about failure. We know what has to be done
and we just do it.
7.
Self-consciousness disappears. We often spend a lot of mental energy monitoring
how we appear to others. In a FLOW state, we’re too involved in the activity to
care about protecting our ego. We might even feel connected to something larger
than ourselves. Paradoxically, the experience of letting go of “the self” can
strengthen it.
8.
Our sense of time becomes distorted. Time flies when we’re really engaged. On
the other hand, time may seem to slow down at the moment of executing some
action for which we’ve trained and developed a high degree of skill.
9.
The activity becomes “autotelic” (an end in itself, done for it’s own sake).
Some activities are done for their own sake, for the enjoyment an experience
provides, like most art, music, or sports. Other activities, which are done for
some future purpose or goal – like things we have to do as part of our job –
may only be a means to an end. But some of these goal-oriented activities can
also become ends in themselves, and enjoyed for their own sake.
Csikszentmihalyi
concludes his list by saying that “in many ways, the secret to a happy life is
to learn to get flow from as many of the things we have to do as possible.”
Big
True Fact: the biggest predictor of behavior or of our performance is MENTAL STATE.
If we feel good then this positive mental state will be reflected in the
quality of our performance. So, it’s a wonderfully good idea to spend a few minutes
before every performance getting ourselves into a resourceful mental state to
dramatically increase our chances of performing well. EMOTIONAL REHEARSAL is
one way to do this.
So where do attitudes fit into FLOW
and the ZONE? Well, it turns out that programing our attitudes is a powerful
form of EMOTIONAL REHEARSAL. See where I’m going with this?
Why does this matter so much, because
ATTITUDE DRIVES BEHAVIOR.
That outward manifestation of action that’s driven by the inward feeling (or attitude)
is expressed in what we do or do not do, and that’s behavior. Behavior has to
come from somewhere and attitude is a BIG determinate of it. Even our body
language is a result of our mental attitude. And this is great to understand because
it gives us some choice. We can choose our attitude. We get to do that every
moment of every day. And by deliberately choosing our attitude we get ourselves
into a mood and then we automatically send out a message that everyone
understands, consciously or unconsciously. Then, our action (behavior) and the
actions of others (their behavior) can be made to flow or follow from that act
of deliberately choosing an attitude and an associated mood. Isn’t that
something? Indeed, we have more control over our environment (meaning the
people around us) than we might think… neat huh.
A
positive attitude also enhances our creativity. Being Positive helps our minds think
freely. Sounds like FLOW huh? Yup! When we do the daily SET UP the emotionally forecast
our activities for the foreseeable future, fresh ideas and solutions rise to
the surface. Obviously if we SET UP a negative attitude that would have a
stifling effect and our creativity would be suffocated. That would be stupid.
Now
we understand about positive attitude, EMOTIONAL REHEARSAL, FLOW and the ZONE it
follows that we ought to understand how to control our minds and thus achieve these
desirable states that help us live happily. So let’s do that next.
And
our friend Jeffrey Gitomer, the sales guru, has something to say about this. Gitomer
discusses the importance and a YES Attitude and a NO Attitude.
He
says have a having a YES! Attitude is Fundamental…
·
To
sales
·
To
service
·
To
employee loyalty
·
To
customer loyalty
·
To
success
·
To
family
·
To
life itself!
And he says that
having a NO! Attitude is Fundamental…
·
To
time sinks
·
To
energy sinks
·
To
complexity
·
To
insanity
·
To
stopping
·
To
stupid people
·
To
bad habits!
To
survive and thrive we need both a YES Attitude and a NO Attitude. And NO needs
to come first.
I think Gitomer is stating the
obvious. It’s a good idea to be proactive about our attitudes, to focus on two
simple categories, YES and NO, and to make a list of people, things, events,
habits and such to avoid attaching mental energy too, and another list of people,
things, events, habits and such to embraced with positivity, optimism and confidence.
Let’s pull all this together. Every day,
when we get out of bed we get to decide a few things. Will this be a good day or
a terrible day? It’s a matter of choice folks. We get to decide.
What attitude will I project and
carry with me today? Optimism, pessimism or what? Yup we get to set that up.
What’s on my plate for today at work
and how will I experience those activities emotionally? Will I be triumphant or
down in the dumps and sad or depressed? Will I roll with the punches and have
as happy a day as I can? More decisions, more of how our day will develop that
we can manage at part of our SET UP.
Doing this SET UP requires discipline
and practice, lots of practice. But the rewards are substantial. FLOW and the ZONE
await us.
“Today
is your day; your mountain is waiting, so get on your way.” ~Dr. Seuss
“The
future belongs to the common man with uncommon determination.” ~Anonymous
“Thoughts (our daily SET UP time) which are mixed
with any of the feelings of emotion constitute a ‘magnetic’ force which
attracts other similar or related thoughts.” ~Napoleon Hill
So there we are. We get to determine
how we live and what we feel, neat huh. And attitude plays a huge role in this.
I welcome your opinions, comments and feedback.