MANAGING YOUR ATTITUDE
I grew up in a small-town rural Adoni, and there were plenty of farms nearby. I once heard a farmer say that the hardest thing about cows is that they never stay milked. A similar thing can be said about a good attitude. The hardest thing about having a good attitude is that is doesn’t stay that way on its own.
If you’re like most people, just getting to work in the morning is a test of your attitude. I live in the Atlanta area, which is notorious for its bad traffic. The latest report I read stated that we had the fourth-worst traffic in the nation behind Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. So every time I get my car, I remind myself, Today I am going to have a great attitude!
That doesn’t mean I always succeed. I have to remain sensitive to my personal attitude indicators. If I notice myself getting impatient — which is by far my greatest attitude challenge — I try to remind myself to have a good attitude. If I hear myself making cynical remarks, I check my attitude. If I find myself wanting to throw in the towel and stop developing people because they’re not catching on quickly enough, I make an attitude correction.
In one of John C Maxwell books Today Matters, one of the concepts he wrote about is that most people overrate decision making, and they underrate decision managing. It’s pretty easy to say to yourself, From now on, I ‘ m going to have a great attitude. It’s much harder to actually follow through with it. That’s why I believe one of the best things you can do for yourself makes the daily management of your attitude one of your objectives.
