Life Coaching and Career Coaching

Attitude is judgment. It is part of our emotional tool-chest.

Our attitude toward something, or about something, orients our emotional approach and response to the object of our attention.

Attitudes are “positive” or “negative” feelings toward the object. Attitudes are learned from our direct and observational experiences, and by what others have taught us. Because attitudes are learned behavior they can also be unlearned — that is, ATTITUDES CAN BE CHANGED.

What if …?

How do you know that you can change your attitude? How do you know that you can change someone else’s attitude? We know because we can ask ourselves the question, “What if —– ?” Because we can conceive of alternatives for our actions and responses, we can also conceive of what these might mean to us and others.

All to often we fail to ask ourselves the question. Instead we simply act or react emotionally to a situation. And once we react to the situation and experience the response, we begin to form an attitude toward the response. The next time we face a similar situation, that attitude will become the attitude that we will take into the situation.

Attitudes, formed in this way, can make our life so much simpler. We “know” what to expect and what is expected of us. We will seek out good situations. We will try to avoid bad situations. And we will try to ignore the unfamiliar or ambiguous situations. In time our attitudes become habits and our habits, left unquestioned, lock us into the attitudes we have about the world and everything in it.

As a child I had a bad experience with a raw onion. To this day, I don’t like onions. I will eat onions when I have no reason to suspect that they are there, such as in a sauce or a flavoring. But, I will not eat fresh raw onion such as in a salad or as a garnish. This is a habit I have. I hate onions.

I really don’t remember exactly what my negative onion experience was. Whatever it was, it has had a lasting impact.

Was these important the scheme of things? No, I don’t believe so! I have, over the years, learned to like the onion flavor. But I have not unlearned my reaction to raw onion. My attitude towards them is unchanged. I’ve never really asked myself the question “What if I eat this red onion in my salad?” Instead I just remove the onion and proceed to eat the rest on my salad.

The “What if …? question is a choice question. It is a question that can be asked before we chose to do something. When we ask it, we are saying to ourselves, “Maybe there is another way to do this,” or, “another way of looking at my choices.” The “What if …? gives us the option of controlling our immediate future before we act.

If only…?

The “If only …?” question is the question we ask when things go wrong. The Spanish Soccer players in the 2010 World Cup are not really concerned with the “If only…?”. They won the World Cup, they had a positive experience in the game and positive attitude about their play. The Dutch players on the other hand are probably still asking themselves “If only…?” questions about their lose.

When we ask the “If only…?” question, we are engaging in an evaluative process and a judgmental process. The evaluative process is where we try to look at the outcome from a critical and objective point of view. “If only I had zigged instead of zagged, I would have avoided the hole in the road.” This is a useful question and suggests an alternative course of action for you to consider the next time you encounter that hole in the road. It is something you can control, your car. And if you can control your car, you can change what happens to it.

The judgmental process, on the other hand, is where we place blame or responsibility for an outcome. Often this results in creating a negative attitude toward the perceived cause of the outcome. “If only the public works department would fix the road, then I would not need to avoid these holes.” This is an interesting, but useless, piece of information about how to avoid driving into a hole in the road. You don’t control the public works department.

But you do control your feelings and thereby your attitude toward the situation, i.e. the hole. If you have a negative attitude, you are most likely to complain about the department and do nothing about the hole. But if you have a positive attitude toward the situation, you might report the hole to the public works department and follow up to see that the department fixes the hole. The negative attitude blames the hole on the department, while the positive attitude takes responsibility for the problem and seeks a solution to fix the holes.

Janus says

Our mental chatter frames our attitude

“What if  —– ?” and “If only …?” are questions we ask ourselves all the time. They are an important part of that chatter talk that goes in our head. You know, that voice that is there when you lay in bed before going to sleep and when we first wake-up in the morning. These are the questions we consider whenever we are faced with a choice or decision or the consequences of a decision.

The “What if —-?” and “If only …?” questions help to separate us humans from other species. They helps us to examine our emotions and change our attitudes in a positive direction.

Is your life in balance?

Recently I was at a Toastmasters Club Meeting and the speaker describe an event of watching a rope walker, a man who mounted a rope suspended between two trees and began to walk from one end to the other. The speaker was impressed and curious by the performance. He asked the rope walker how he did it. The roper walker invited the speaker to try it.

The speaker got onto the rope next to the tree where one end was tied. After a few false starts, he succeeded in mounting the rope and maintaining his balance. He looked straight ahead, placed one foot directly in front of the other and spread his arms out straight at the shoulders. The rope swayed but he held his balance.

He slowly moved his back leg around placing in front and moved forward. The rope swayed again but he retained his balance. He repeated the moment once more. This time the rope swayed more violantly and the speakers legs swayed to and fro. Keeping his arms out he maintained his balance as the swaying slowed. The further he moved down the rope and away from the tree, the greater the swaying with each step.

Again, he brought his rear leg forward but this time the swaying increased. He looked down at the rope,  his legs stiffened and he brought his arms in closer to his body in an vain attempt to dampen the swaying. He fell off.

The rope walker explained that in order to successfully walk the rope you have to be focused. To be focused requires that you allow yourself to become part of the rope. First,  relax your legs to make them part of the rope and they will absorb the energy that moving your leg forward releases into the rope. Second,  spread your arms out perpendicular to the rope to distribute your weight across the rope and making your body the center of gravity. By extending your arms you can control the swing. And, third, most of all, look straight ahead, focus on the end of the rope tied to the other tree.  When you loss your focus, you loss your balance. This, the speaker said, is how the rope walker keeps his balance and can walk between the trees

Balance is what it is all about. That is what life is all about. Balancing your ego and needs  with your obligations and responsibilities to others.

The greatest balancing act we face in life is balancing our personal life goals and our professional goals. It is an act that only becomes more complex as we age. The sooner you start to learn how to balance yourself, then the better and more productive you will be in the time allotted to you in this life.

Toward the end of the second decade  in our lifecycle, say our late teens and early twenties, we are, or tend to be, very self-center. We want what we want and we want it now. Our personal goals are fairly short term and ill defined. Our professional goals are equally ill defined, if we have any at all, except where it comes to making money to support our immediate personal “needs.” This is when we get onto the rope, leaving the security of our family. We are drawn to the thrill and  uncertainty that comes with the independence  of  ”adulthood.”  While we are glancing into the future. our attention is more focused on breaking our connections with the past that we perceive as holding us back.

Around our mid to late twenties, if we are lucky, we have become independent and self supporting. We can experiment with life, take chances, and live a movie version of the hero in our own drama. Or we may find that we have made a few wrong turns and are now caught in a trap of our own making, one we may spend the rest of our life trying to escape. In either case, we have not yet addressed the issue of balance. In many respects this can be the biggest mistake we can make and introduce chaos into our life.

What we do and how we do it, in this our third decade of life,  set the “initial” conditions which will determine how our life will work out. Without a goal to focus on, without priorities, we, like the speaker who would be a rope walker, can slip and fall. What in chaos theory is referred to as the butterfly effect.

Janus says

What is your life goal?

What are your priorities?

Where is your balance?

Do you have a rope walker who can  helping you to navigate the rope of your life?