Great Attitude Part Two: Own it.

What do these collected words have in common?

Optimism
Cheerfulness
Enthusiasm
Eagerness
Hopefulness
Positivity (not in the dictionary, but I like it)
Half–Fullism (for Starbucker, but really for all of us)

The answer is that they are the hallmarks of Great Attitude.

Another question: How many of those words describe you?

In an article I’d done for Lifehack.org last week, I wrote about what managers need to do in the workplace to keep their staff in the goodness of great attitude. Tom Bailey pulled one of my quotes, and added to it;

“I do agree that it’s far better to start with someone who already has a great attitude”

“If they dont have it already it is one very long uphill battle creating it for someone. Almost never worth it. Even if you do help create it, it vanishes as soon as you stop providing the fuel for it.”

This story by Verna Wilder for Coachamatic reminds us of the personal responsibility we each have to own our attitude; she called it Why Your Attitude Matters. A snippet;

“…one day when I was standing at a recalcitrant copy machine running 50 copies of a 5-page document that would have to be stapled and hand-delivered, I groaned and thought, “What could be worse than having this job?!” and a little voice inside immediately answered, “Doing it poorly could be worse.”

Verna’s own blog is called Out of the Cube, and it’s a gem to add to your subscriptions, for she writes with such intellectual honesty. A recent favorite for me is called Stranger or Friend? (it also hits home with the blog tagging we’ve been doing in getting to know each other better) ... It starts like this;

“Here's a thought: Is it possible to hide who we are in our writing? I already know what I think about this, but it has come up a lot in the few months I've been blogging, so I'm thinking it over. I read a lot of blogs, but my favorites are the ones in which the blogger lets her or his personality shine through. I feel like I know these people, so what would happen if we met? How would the real person be different -- or not -- from the blogger person?”

Verna did meet someone; Read the rest here and find out what happened.

Great attitude counts for a lot when you have it. We all need to own it for ourselves, and when we do, we benefit as Verna does.

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This was Part One: Getting Great Attitude

Comments

[Terry Starbucker]

Yes Rosa, we have to WANT to be positive. It can't just happen. And thanks for the "Half-Fullism" plug! All the best.

[Rosa]

You’ve gone straight to the heart of the matter Terry, we have to want it. I’m always left bewildered by those who will say, “I admit it, I’m a pessimist.”

There is one young manager in my history I’m thinking of as I write this, who was immensely talented, but his talent was rarely seen because he didn’t want to overcome his pessimism at all. I could never figure out what he gained from his view, and when I asked him to explain it to me he couldn’t. Problem was that he accepted his pessimism and allowed it to live within him, even when he didn’t have to.

Wasted talent is so terribly sad.