Posts

Intentional Leadership — D4, W2, M9 — Attitude

Today, let’s spend some time in visualization. Give some thought to where your life will be in one month, three months, six months, and one year, if you follow through on the actions you outlined yesterday. How will others be impacted if you choose a positive attitude rather than a negative one? Write out your thoughts, connected with specific people.

One Month

Three Months

Six Months

One Year

Remember, this is a journey and a process. Don’t set yourself up for frustration with the expectation you must be perfect and respond perfectly to the events that happen in your life. The idea is to experience the experiences, feel the feelings, and make a choice in how you will respond and move forward. My yoga mentor, Diamond Dallas Page, advises us to “live life at 90%,” meaning that 10% is what happens to us in life and 90% is how we choose to deal with it. He focuses on the 90% and strives to make the most and best of that…essentially, choosing one’s attitude.

What will you choose?

/by

Intentional Leadership — D3, W2, M9 — Attitude

Do you have your journal handy? We’re going to follow-up on yesterday’s exercise.

Review your answers to the questions from yesterday. When you’ve done this, do you find your attitude is most negative in your personal or professional environment?

Once you’ve determined that, write down three specific ways you can choose to respond (remember, responding to something is thoughtful and intentional, rather than immediate and emotional) positively, instead, in those situations.

For greater accountability, make a copy of this list and share it with someone close to you. Ask that person to check in with you from time-to-time over the next month.

Remember, you can answer them anyway you like, but the proof is in the pudding, as they say…and if you aren’t actually doing what you say, it will be evident in your behaviors!

/by

Intentional Leadership — D2, W2, M9 — Attitude

Let’s spend some time on a personal inventory today. Get out your journal and list three people in your personal and professional lives that have impacted you; include both positive and negative influences.

Make two columns on a page, one headed Personal Life, one headed Professional Life.

List three people in each column and place a – (minus) or a + (plus) next to each name, based on their influence on your life. Then answer the following questions:

What common threads do you see among those who were positive influences?

What common threads do you see among those who were negative influences?

When you evaluate your current circumstances, in both your personal and professional lives, is your attitude the same, or different, in each aspect? Describe your current attitude in both areas of your life.

As we’ve discussed, there are times when the only thing we can control is our attitude. When you look at the areas above that you marked as negative, wht choices can you make to be more positive in those circumstances?

One of the more positive influences in my life was Mac Bledsoe (if you’re a football fan, you might know him as Drew Bledsoe’s dad). Mac was a teacher when I was in high school, as well as the football coach. He taught a few classes, but the one that made the most impact on me was a class he called “I Can” and it was based on the philosophies and teachings of Zig Ziglar. It’s been 30 years since I was in school, but I can still remember Mac and the many lessons he taught me, as if they were just last year. Thank you, Mac!

I look forward to hearing what you’ve come up with through this exercise.

/by