Attitude Influence or be Influenced

I was visiting with a client today and we entered into a conversation about attitude. For most people, attitudes happen by accident. We just don’t think about them, but they occur as the result of things that we think about over and over again. When lots of bad things happen, we tend to have negative attitudes. When lots of good things happen, we tend to have positive attitudes. Let’s take it one step further. Just like other things that we do over and over to form a habit, habits occur with our thinking. When we are around negative people we can be influenced by their negativity. It seems to be human nature to look for the bad in a situation. That might be because we are conditioned to think that way. Many times we’ll see a group gathered in the break room gossiping about something bad that has happened to themselves or a coworker. Or when someone makes a mistake, the word spreads like wildfire. When these types of incidents occur, we have a choice. We can choose to influence or be influenced. We can choose to be influenced by the negativity or we can choose to influence the negative person to be more positive. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone that came in contact with a negative person would make the choice to help that negative person become more positive or at least make the choice to keep themselves positive rather than be influenced to be negative.

OK, we all have bad days. We can’t be Pollyanna all the time. There are times when we want to wallow in our self pity. Well, let me ask you, “How’s that working for you when you have that pity party?” It really doesn’t get us anywhere does it? We need to remember that yes, we will have down times, but they will get better. If we didn’t have the low times, we wouldn’t appreciate the good times. Think of the low times in your life when you didn’t know how you were going to deal with a situation. Eventually that down time was followed by a wonderful event or time. When you have a down time, think of the good times that will follow. They will. Just be patient, look for them, and be prepared to receive them through your actions.