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.
