Over the course of about 60 minutes, we’re going to lay the foundation for successful thinking. The only thing I want you to try to keep in mind is this: 

 

Using any one of these ideas on a regular basis will dramatically increase your ability to choose your life.

 

Starting with very little, these concepts enabled me to create the exact life I wanted from the ground up… and the best part is the more often I used these ideas, the more effective they became.

 

So, where do we start? How do we begin the process of “pulling the weeds” from our mind; begin shifting our focus from counterproductive thoughts and actions to productive thoughts and actions?

 

Well, many years ago a brilliant man drew millions of people’s attention to what he called the “magic word.” That man was Earl Nightingale, and that magic word was: ATTITUDE.

 

As simple as it may sound, it really does begin with our attitude. People who start with a healthy attitude have an enormous advantage in their life. But why is that?

 

Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but the one that I think is most important is this: It’s just easier to take use value from any situation, (whether it’s good or bad,) when you’ve got a good attitude. Having a good attitude means you’re not easily frustrated by circumstances…it’s getting yourself to a point where you can accept that everything, whether you like it or not, is just part of the process…it’s YOUR JOB to figure out how to use the current situation to your advantage in some way.

 

When you get to that point, when you’ve developed that kind of healthy attitude, you can pull some kind of profit out of almost anything. …even if it’s just a hard lesson…It took me a long time and plenty of mistakes before I realized that  “hard lessons” actually had value if I’d just take the time to see it that way. I wish I’d looked at it that way earlier, because if I would’ve, it would’ve saved me the aggravation of re-learning a lot of hard lessons.

 

But what about having a good attitude? What’s the real problem with that being an important part of successful thinking? …The simple fact that most people don’t know how to have a good attitude. The fact that most don’t understand that they (not the world around them) are the ones who’ve got to make it happen.

 

Our attitude is our responsibility. Think of it as clothing…something that you must choose to put on. If you’re just waiting to see what the world has to offer before choosing your attitude, you’re letting others dress you. What do you think the chances are that you’re going to like what you end up wearing for the day?   

 

All you have to do is turn on one of the cable news channels in the morning. There, you’ll start the day with the perfect ingredients for a terrible outfit….a bad attitude in other words. And sadly, that’s the aim of their programming. It’s designed to be divisive and upsetting. They generate more ratings that way, and whether it’s good for us or not is completely irrelevant.

 

We’ve got to keep in mind if our attitude is a blank slate going into that, things aren’t going to turn out very well for us.

 

And that’s just a small part of it. We’ve got our work, our debts, our goals, relationships, family responsibilities…there’s a lot for us to deal with. And if we’re not careful, it’s very easy to fall into a self-defeating cycle or a bad “habit” of perpetual bad attitude.

 

So, with all this going on, how do we set and keep a genuinely good attitude? …not just for our own good, but for the good of everyone else we come in contact with?

The excerpt above is from The 1-Hour Guide to Successful Thinking. To access the complete program (Transcript, Audio Files and Workbook) please purchase either the PDF version or the Kindle version.