How to Succeed When Your Attitude Sucks

Does Success Depend on Attitude?

Sometimes I sit down here to write and I feel like crap. I don’t want to type one damn word and and have thoughts that it’s going to be trash anyway. Simply put, my attitude sucks. My mind says I’m too old, I’m not good enough, I’m doomed.

Aging well is not for the faint of heart.

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are. “~ Norman Vincent Peale

“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. ” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Profound Statements

They have zero basis in truth, but profound just the same.

Having the right mental attitude has little or nothing to do with success. There is one quote that has been attributed to many people from Abraham Lincoln to Henry Ford to Helen Keller. You may have heard it…

“If you think you can or if you think you can’t, you are right.”

But isn’t it much more true that sometimes, no matter how much you think you can do something, it turns out you can’t? Sometimes, maybe even disastrously so?

On the other hand, has there ever been a time that you though there was no way you could accomplish some task or goal. Then you kept trying and, I’ll be damned, you did it?

Amazing Feats and Absurd Failures

Growing up with the baby boomer generation, one thing I have seen is that people are capable of amazing feats and also of participating in gargantuan folly. We are notoriously out of touch with what we can or can not accomplish. Sometimes one of the best lessons to be learned is when to quit.

And when not to quit.

In a forum I frequent, the subject of the inner critic came up. It’s called by a couple of other names, too  – Resistance, Fear, The Gremlin. I know that people really want to help. Here is some of the advice given.

“You are not alone in this feeling which means that you are normal which means that your self-doubts are felt by even the most successful so stop worrying about it”

“Ignore the critic – send them on an island vacation (great idea!).”

Have you ever tried to ignore that negative attitude, that critic, and send it away? Or when worried, have you ever tried to stop worrying?

Before I tell you that it doesn’t work, let me tell you the bad news. Occasionally it works.

How Can Something that Works Be Bad News?

It’s the bad news in the same way that the worst thing that can happen to a person the first time they go into a casino is to win big. It’s like a kid getting a taste of heroin for the first time and her brain saying, “Holy shit, that’s good.” And we all know the outcome of both of those scenarios.

It’s the same with the critic and worry. Occasionally, in the right situation, we tell ourselves to STOP thinking something and it works. The other bad new is that it works the same way willpower works when we decide we are going to diet. It works until it doesn’t.

And, at some point, it always doesn’t.

Don’t Think of a Yellow Jeep

Daniel Wegner has done studies that suggest the more you attempt to get rid of the inner workings of our mind, the more of our mental real estate, they begin to take up. Two groups were tested. One was told that their task for x minutes was to do everything they could not to think of a white bear amd to ring a bell if the white bear crossed their mind. The other group, the white bear was mentioned, but they were told to think about whatever they liked, but if the white bear came up to provide a signal. The first group went white bear crazy.

Think of the last time some catchy line from a song got you going and whatever you did, you couldn’t seem to stop humming that damn tune. It’s like that.

Persistance

Another saying, attributed to an Edward Hickson often came up in my childhood.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Don’t give up too easily; persistence pays off in the end.

It’s the motto of the plugger, the person that will keep on plugging, chipping away at the immovable object.

There is another side to that, too. You also have to know when to say “Screw it.” I’m done.

Quitting can be the hardest, and sometimes the right, thing to do.

As we age, the choice to stop, start, quit, or go forward becomes more important. Mastery is knowing when to do which.

How to Succeed When Your Attitude Sucks

The first step is deciding what you want and know success covers a lot of territory. The second is understanding why you want it. You make it your mission.

Then you take the next step.

If your attitude sucks today you still take a step.

Your inner critic says you can’t do it.

Thank it for its input and still take a step.

You’re depressed today. Noted.

You still take a next step.

Your mind will try to fool you. It will tell you there is no step you can take. There is.

Take the next step anyway.

The mind has known you a long time. It knows your weaknesses and it knows the bait to throw out – the kind you’ll bite on every time. Your mind, my mind, the collective mind is not always our friend, especially when we are stepping outside that old comfort zone. It’s resistance’s best tool.

There is always a next step.

Before You Go

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