The Power of Positivity

By Tom Haynes

Many people want to improve their lives. They want things to be better, to come easier. They want all the things they hear other people talk about…money, happiness, health, freedom, and more. Many of them read and read and read but they never quite know where to start.

The best place to start is your own attitude. You need to focus on being positive! Why?

Being positive is a big key to being excited. And life is so much better when you are excited! And when you are positive and excited, you are sending a powerful signal to everyone, to life the universe and everything, that this is how you are and what you expect of it. You will then begin to naturally attract more people, things, and events to keep you positive. You are simply leading by example.

Be careful, because it works the other way too. If you are a complainer, a whiner, or a gossiper you will naturally attract other people who like to complain, whine, and gossip. And when was the last time you saw one of these people be truly successful? You set the tone for the people around you. If you are positive when everyone else is negative you will either raise the group to your level or a new group will form around that attitude. People like being around positive people.

Being positive is also a key to staying motivated. Most people can get themselves motivated for a little while. A couple of hours, a few days, maybe even a month or two. Any real level of success requires you to keep going for years and that is much harder. By keeping positive and setting the example of what you expect of everyone around you, your positivity will keep you motivated when nothing else will. You’ll see the silver lining in clouds, the opportunity in setbacks, and the potential of the people around you when even they do not.

When you are in a leadership position, it is of course all the more important to set the example of a positive attitude. Here, you are clearly more responsible for setting the tone of your own environment. Remember to reward and praise positivity on your team. Don’t let meetings or even just the normal workday become a complaint session. Once it starts it is hard to stop, so make sure you are encouraging the right attitudes. Talk to your people when you are feeling positive, excited, and enthusiastic. Avoid holding meetings with them when you are not feeling that way. If you just aren’t feeling it, there is an old saying "fake it till you make it". If you ACT positive and enthusiastic you can’t help but feel that way after a while.

Don’t expect perfection on your new policy of positivity, either. Everyone gets down, depressed, discourage and that’s ok. One of the easiest ways to fail is to expect everything to go right 100% of the time, so allow some room for you to be a normal person. Don’t let yourself get bogged down in these problems, solve them and move on.

If you hit a roadblock you just can’t get past, try a different route and stay positive. At the very least you learned a great lesson about how NOT to do it. Thomas Edison was famous for having tried 10,000 different ways of making the first lightbulb. But he never allowed himself to think of these as failures…he just learned different ways to not make it and eventually he just narrowed it down!

If you let yourself fall back into bad attitudes, you are almost guaranteeing failure…no amount of smarts, talent, creativity, or good looks will help.

Don’t let other people change you. Many people have chosen their little rut. They are happy and content…so long as no-one reminds them that they are indeed in a rut. If you start to succeed, they will naturally try to pull you back down so they are not reminded of their own failures. Man promising people fall victim to this peculiar habit of people.

Always remember that 90% of winning is having a positive attitude, and that is 100% in your control!

Tom Haynes has worked with sales, management, and not-for-profit for companies, helping their staff set goals, increase productivity, exceed expectations, and manage their human resources. He is the owner of E-Motivate.com, a site dedicated to http://www.ArticleBiz.com