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Intentional Leadership — D3, W4, M9 — Attitude

We all know someone who is currently having a hard time with some aspect of their life. Spend some time today thinking about someone specific who is in this situation…discouraged due to difficulties they face.

Ask them how they are doing. Spend some time and energy in encouraging them in their areas of strength, giftedness, and passion.

If you have the opportunity, encourage them by sharing one of your stories about a tough time you went through and the lessons you learned as a result.

I know, it makes us feel better to share stories of our successes, but the truth is, we learn more from others when they share stories about the times they have stumbled and how they worked through whatever it was. Those are the times we discover what we are truly made of, what we are capable of, and learn the lessons that will help us move forward.

Afterwards, spend some time with your journal and write down some thoughts from your conversation. Write down how it felt before, during, and after.

Write about the impact you were able to have on the other person.

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Intentional Leadership — D2, W4, M9 — Attitude

Today, we’re going to spend a little more time on the topic we jumped into yesterday. Get out your journal, and list three benefits or lessons you learned from the two experiences you thought about yesterday.

First, what was the failure in your personal life?

Benefits or Lessons Learned:

1

2

3

What was the failure in your professional life?

Benefits or Lessons Learned:

1

2

3

Now that you are clear on the lessons in each of those situations, what can you (or maybe you already are) do differently going forward to face similar situations differently, and to realize a better outcome?

How does your attitude play into what will happen in the future?

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Intentional Leadership — D1, W4, M9 — Attitude

This last week of month 9, we are going to focus on the power of your attitude. As Thomas Jefferson once observed,

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Are you familiar with the story of Christopher Gardner? If you’ve seen the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, you will recognize it. Gardner lost it all — his wife, his home, and family savings in a bad business investment. He was living on the streets with his son when he entered a competitive stock broker internship program, which, by the way, offered no pay for six months. Determined to prove himself and provide his son a good quality of life, we went on to become  a top performer for Bear Stearns, and eventually opened his own firm with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. He also has become a motivational speaker and philanthropist who has received numerous humanitarian awards.

Imagine what would have happened to him and his son if he had given up when he found himself on the street. We read the stories every day, and there are numerous possible outcomes to this kind of story, and few of them are good. Had he adopted a negative attitude, not only would his and his son’s lives be very different, but so would the lives of the many people he’s helped since he dusted himself off and got to work.*

I know we don’t like to spend a lot of time in consideration of the times when we’ve failed, but they are gems in terms of lessons learned. Spend some time today considering a failure you’ve experienced in your personal life and in your professional life. Describe them.

What attitude did you take in response to these failures?

What happened as a result?

Looking back on it now, how would you say your attitude served you?

 

*From Intentional Leadership by Giant Impact. 

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