15 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR ATTITUDE & THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE AROUND YOU
15 Ways to improve your attitude can be a very beneficial topic! Changing your personal and professional attitude starts by changing the way you think about the situations, the people and the world around you. The attitude we exhibit can also play a large roll in how others see us. Typically people either see you as having a positive and optimistic tone to life or a negative and pessimistic world perspective. Even more important, this decision can be made within the first 7 seconds of meeting someone. I have been a keynote attitude speaker for nearly a decade and there is nothing more important in the workforce today than a positive can do attitude.
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A positive attitude is a mindset that can be learned and mastered over time. Once learned you can use these tips on a daily basis to bring a positive outlook to your life. This, in turn, creates a ripple effect, with your positive attitude impacting those around you to create ever widening circles of positivity rather than negativity.
Learning how to tap into the positive side of your emotions and outlook on life starts with developing some simple habits. The more of these you incorporate into your own life on a daily basis, the more positive your attitude will be. You will also improve the attitude of those you encounter and spend time with throughout the day. Below are 15 ways to improve your attitude, choose what works best for you and start to improve your attitude and the attitude of those around you today!
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1. 15 Ways to Improve Your Attitude Begins with Using Positive Inspiration
You don’t just have to look internally to find the motivation to be positive. The internet makes it easy to find inspirational quotes, articles, websites and even short YouTube videos to get yourself into a positive state of mind. Try starting your day by listening to a motivational video to help set the tone for the day.
It is also a good idea to look towards motivational speakers, authors, poets and business leaders or other individuals that focus on providing positive messages and inspirational quotes. Connect on social media or through daily emails and read the messages, incorporating them into your day.
2. Front and Center
It can be easy to be thrown off your positive game by a negative interaction. To avoid this pitfall, link an image in your mind as well as a physical image in your space with your positive thoughts.
For instance, if you find yourself feeling positive and inspired when you are around your children, when you look at beautiful art or when you listen to specific music, use that as a self-prompt if you find your attitude turning to negative and pessimistic. Visualize the beauty of the art, your child’s smiling face or play your favorite song in your head to prompt a positive perspective.
3. Make Mini Goals a Part of Your Life
There is an old saying about the fact that you don’t really know if you have arrived if you don’t know where you are going. People that have a positive attitude know where they are going in their personal and professional life and they set small, manageable mini-goals to help them to stay on track.
While large goals are necessary as well, set mini goals to accomplish over a day, week or month. Write them down and check them off as they are completed to see your personal and professional progress and growth. When you feel you are growing and improving consistently your attitude improves. You start to see yourself as better than you were before, which boosts your confidence and attitude.
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4. Become the Solution Guru
One way to start thinking about positive outcomes and options is to avoid focusing on the problem and start looking at the possibility of a solution. By choosing the solution focus, the brain’s creative energy is utilized, and possibilities will emerge. If you only focus on the problem, it is more likely that the obstacles and challenges seem to get bigger, creating a negative cycle.
This is effective in both your personal life and your professional life. People like to be around problem-solvers, not around those that make problems larger than life. When you solve problems for yourself and others you will gain more respect which in turn will boost your attitude.
5. Know You Are In Control
One critical factor for a positive attitude is to understand that your attitude, or how you perceive things around you, is all up to you. How you choose to think about something is entirely your choice.
By listening to the internal dialogue that goes on in your head at all times, it is easy to spot when the negative “that won’t happen, that is impossible, that’s too hard” type of statements start creeping in. Once you recognize a negative thought, replace it with as positive thought such as “I can creatively solve that, I can take on a challenge or what do I need to make this a reasonable task to complete” to change your attitude.
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6. Don’t Let Negatives Drag You Down
Having a positive attitude doesn’t mean that you ignore real world challenges or negative events in your life. Rather, it means you don’t let them overtake your life and drain your emotional energy. Life is too short to let negative events control your attitude.
Having the ability to recognize a negative event, debrief it mentally and then see the next event in the day as something completely new and different from the negative issues is key. An example of this might be having a small disagreement with your spouse in the morning. This could ruin your entire day if you let it! So it is key to mentally debrief and move on so that your attitude/mood improves and allows you to have a great day.
As an attitude speaker, I believe this is essential to those people who have high-stress jobs and should be implemented right away.
7. Develop a Positive Sense of Self
It can be easy to be discouraged if you hit a string of challenging events, people or things in life. To avoid becoming negative, develop a set of positive messages about your abilities. This can be a private journal or even a list, but keep adding to the things that you feel good about yourself and review it often.
Being positive and having a “bounce back” attitude means being in touch with the abilities, skills, and talents you bring to every interaction with other people in your life. When you are more in tune with your skills or any part of your mental or physical body/mind you have more control over your thoughts. This gives you the ability to improve your attitude more easily when it is most needed.
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8. Look for the Silver Lining
The 8th of 15 ways to improve your attitude is to look for the good in the bad. There are two different ways to look at all events that happen in your life. One way is to see everything as a problem just waiting to happen, and the other is to see things as an opportunity that is yet to be realized.
The secret is to turn from the negative everything is a problem mode into the positive, start to look for the silver lining in things that happen. What did you learn, what made you stronger, what did you learn about your resilience or abilities you didn’t know before? By looking at things as potential positives rather than possible or even probable negatives you will feel your attitude shift.
9. Choose Your Friends and Colleagues Wisely
It is hard to stay positive and have a solution focused attitude if everyone around you is negative. While you may not be able to control who you have to work with, you can control who you choose to engage with socially. Move negative, “can’t do” people out of your life or at least minimize your interactions. Look for people who are encouraging, positive and upbeat in your professional and social relationships.
10. Talk the Talk and Walk the Walk
How you talk and behave can trigger both positive and negative attitudes. If you get up in the morning and are feeling negative, staying in that negative mode by thinking about all the things that will go wrong that day is going to prescribe just how bad your day will become. Additionally, holding onto the negative thoughts of yesterday can cause your attitude to continue to suffer.
On the other hand, if you wake up in a bad mood, you can also choose to do something you enjoy, make your favorite breakfast, read a positive or uplifting article or maybe call a friend or loved one who always makes you feel great about yourself.
Look for ways to express positivity to set yourself up for a great day. Smile at the people you meet, hold a door for someone or do a random act of kindness to get into a positive mode. You can’t always control how you feel in the morning, but 90% of the time you actually can. If your employees could benefit from an improved attitude, consider working with a keynote attitude speaker to show them how to talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to attitude alignment and positive thinking.
11. Don’t Personalize “No”
In personal and professional conversations, the word “no” is frequently used. People that have a positive attitude see “no” as an answer to a specific question, not as a personal rejection. Rather than allowing this to create negative feelings or self-doubt, think of ways to creatively approach the issue or to learn from the experience for the future.
12. Count Your Blessings
It can be very easy to get into the habit of comparing what you have or what you have achieved in life with other people. This is never helpful as everyone has different starting points, circumstances and opportunities in life.
To stay positive, focus on what you have achieved, what brings you pleasure and the blessings you have in your world right now. Being content and satisfied in life leads to a positive attitude while constantly envying others only brings about negativity.
13. Have a Positive Path in Life
One critical factor to having a positive attitude in life is having a purpose you believe in. Make the daily choice to be positive and to take one step forward to reaching your short and long-term goals. While having goals is important, so is having a way to get from where you are to where you want to be. So create a strategy to make those goals become a reality.
This is also a personal path. It is not the path of your friends or your coworkers, but it’s a path that makes you personally happy, satisfied and content with the choices you have and will make in life.
14. Be Happy for Others
One way to obtain a positive attitude is not just to feel great about yourself but to celebrate the achievements, accomplishments, and milestones of the people around you.
When you can feel happy for other people, it can be just a positive of a feeling of being happy for yourself. This feeling intensifies if you have played a part in helping that person achieve their goals. It is also something that is genuine and that can be felt by those around you.
15. Celebrate Achievements
Celebrating your personal achievements is also a positive way to boost how you feel about yourself. By celebrating your personal and professional achievements you are taking the necessary time to actually feel good about what you are doing and accomplishing. If you fail to celebrate your achievements and completing your goals you will burn out.
Just make sure that you are celebrating responsibly. Being able to celebrate responsibly means that you don’t put others down due to your achievements. It also means that you don’t get completely wasted on the following Friday and ruin your opportunity to develop personally because you are too hungover or sick.
The key to changing your attitude is to focus on how you see your professional and personal life and the world around you. Changing your thoughts about these issues from dwelling on negatives to setting goals to make positive progress will have a definite and measurable change in your attitude and the attitude of those around you
There are many other ways to create and maintain a positive attitude that will benefit yourself and those around you. Choose the actionable items that work best for you and use them as often as possible. Make sure that you don’t only use the methods of improving your attitude that are easiest to use, but also the ones that are most effective.
It takes time to learn how to change your thoughts and your attitude so don’t expect this to be an overnight transformation. It takes practice, continuous effort, discipline and the ability to fail and continue to try. By having a plan and an arsenal of actionable items you can put in place to create a positive attitude for yourself you are setting yourself up for success. Learning to use different tactics at different moments and in different settings will improve your ability to control your attitude. The above 15 ways to improve your attitude are only a few options, you can always find more ways to improve your attitude if you just look for them.
As a keynote attitude speaker, I preach and teach my audiences the importance of a positive attitude. Check out one of my latest attitude speaker videos on The Balance of Your Power where I discuss the importance of balancing your positive and negative thoughts.
Cheers to your future success!
Boaz Rauchwerger
Keynote Attitude Speaker
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