INTRODUCTION
When I was working in BHEL, a young engineer was posted with me. I found him to be quite intelligent, hard working and sincere. For the growth of a person in the Organization, it is essential that he/she accepts challenging assignments and obtain positive results. So, I offered him a task for which I was sure that he could accomplish the same. And, of course, I was there to help and guide him. He accepted and started working on it. The initial progress was good but after a few days, I observed that he was lagging in his intermediate targets.
At this point, I called him to discuss the reasons for his slow down. And I found that he had reduced his actions due to having doubts about the success. If only he had taken actions as suggested to him, his progress would have been much better. I just assured him that results would be positive, provided he overcome his doubts and keep taking action. This means having positive attitude even in negative situations. Ultimately, with belief replacing the doubts in mind and positive attitude, he could succeed and in long term he became a successful engineer. But it was a difficult journey for him to have strong positive belief and positive attitude.
WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE NEGATIVE / POSITIVE ATTITUDE?
A small doubt in mind can have a strong negative impact in life. The negative doubt or positive belief is mostly planted in the mind of a person during his childhood. As a child he may receive messages viz. you are small, you can’t do it, don’t try you may fall, you will not be able to do it, dreams are dreams only, you can’t get everything in life etc. When he grows with these messages, he develops negative attitude towards everything.
But, when a child grows with positive messages from childhood, viz., I love you, you are growing up, you can do it, help others, be humble, you can succeed; he develops healthy thought process and positive attitude. And, the attitude of a person determines that whether he will be a failure or a success in life. The following exercise may help you to identify your attitude in life.
EXERCISE:
As an adult, today, just think about your own nature. You can find out yourself as whether doubts rule your life or your positive belief, which is mostly responsible for your results. Whenever a challenging situation comes in your life, what is your response:
- Do you start having doubts and think about all possible negative outcomes? or,
- You believe that you can definitely overcome the situation and start taking action?
Good chances are that in a similar situation, a person with a) approach will fail, whereas a person with b) approach will be successful.
People with negative attitude normally think that they are not negative, they are just realistic. Think and decide what your attitude in life is?
Take help from your spouse, parents, friends or children to reach a conclusion. It is great, if it is positive. But a person with negative or so-called realistic attitude has to learn to develop positive attitude to ensure success in life.
PREPARING FOR A CHANGE:
You cannot change your attitude overnight. There is no switch that can change your attitude from negative to positive in a single click. But with constant efforts this can happen. Following steps may help:
- Think about: Do you reach most of your goals and achieve what is expected from you in your profession in-spite of experiencing setbacks on the way?
- If not, then think as whether you are mostly occupied by positive thoughts or negative beliefs. You will observe that mostly your thoughts are negative about achieving your goals.
- Now, try to locate the sources of your negative disbeliefs. And, you will find that such beliefs are deeply rooted somewhere in the messages you received during your early life. Recall your early life memory and write down the messages you used to receive at that time and separate the negative ones.
- Understand that your present attitude is based on these negative childhood messages which were received by you at a time when you were not able to judge their trueness. But today, as an adult evaluate these messages one by one, and discard the ones that are creating a roadblock on your way to success.
Take a note of the messages you want to discard and practice to keep them away in your upcoming life.
ACTION STEPS TO CHANGE ATTITUDE:
- You might have been negative in many life situations, earlier. But, let us now resolve to stay positive at-least for next six months under all situations.
- Whenever you start working on a new dream, goal or project, start with positive expectations. Never allow even a tiny doubt to spoil the game.
- To meet the project targets, make a plan and follow it rigorously. Write down what new habits are required to reach your goals.
- Work a little bit every day to build new habits. Every day action, without any break is quite important.
- Don’t expect results immediately. A seed also takes time to grow but it needs proper water, manure and protection on a daily basis.
- Don’t get carried away by minor road blocks on the way. These are sent by the Almighty to test you before rewarding you (This is how I take them normally).
- Consistency will ultimately pay and you will start getting results. Thus your confidence in positive attitude will slowly increase.
- Stay focused. Never bother even when you do not meet your intermediate targets. This may be an indication of working more on your new habits with more consistency.
- Ultimately you will get success from one project to another and your attitude will become strongly positive.
- Guidance from a successful person or mentor will quicken the process of success.
THE TAKE AWAY:
An assured way of failure is to expect failure. A majority of people who don’t get success in life is because they always have a doubt in their mind. If you start your easy journey with some negative doubt in your mind, there are good chances that you will meet with an accident. But if you start your tough journey with positive thoughts, you will enjoy it and finish it without having any critical challenge on the way. Even if a challenge pops up, you will know how to deal with it.
So, stay positive always especially when the situation looks to be unfavorable. And you will definitely get whatever you aim at.
Yes! It is true that just by thinking positive things will not happen. But keeping a positive attitude is the first and foremost step. If you don’t take this first step, then your journey has not started. Begin with positive attitude, make plan, work on it, develop new success habits, and the goals achieved will be beyond your expectation.
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