We’ve all heard the adage “Your attitude determines your altitude.” While I’m in the camp that says a positive mental attitude (PMA) is an important success factor, I’m too much of a pragmatist to say it’s the most important factor. PMA will take you a long way, but without other success attitudes, it simply won’t get the job done.
So, what success attitudes does one need to put together a package for sustained growth and achievement? Here’s a short list of attitudes that, when converted to habits, will create a success synergy that’s pretty tough to stop.
# 1 Desire
You can’t wish your way to success. Everyone wants some level of success in his or her life but just wanting it won’t get you there. Desire is “wanting” on steroids. Desire is what forces us to roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done.
Napoleon Hill, in his landmark book, “Think and Grow Rich,” said: “The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small amount of fire brings a small amount of heat.”
#2 Personal Initiative
Here’s a cold, hard fact; no one else is responsible for your personal growth, your personal success, or for seeing to it that you accomplish whatever you say you want to accomplish. That responsibility belongs to you, and you alone.
Gilbert Orland said: “When an archer misses the mark he looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull’s eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim – improve yourself.”
#3 A Process for Improving Performance
W. Edwards Deming, one of the great management thinkers of the last century, said: “If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Without a process for improving performance and productivity, we’re leaving the possibility for success and achievement to chance. Great organizations and high performing individuals have one thing in common – they actively manage their futures by implementing some type of process for ensuring success.
#4 Commitment
Commitment to what? Commitment to personal improvement and commitment to a process, making sure you achieve what you want to achieve.
Jim Rohn, billed as America’s foremost business philosopher, talked about the reasons for failure and for success. He said failure is the result of a few errors in judgment repeated every day, and success is the result of a few simple disciplines practiced every day.
Just trying something for a day or two, or for a week, won’t create the habits for success and achievement you’ll need to create. Commitment to getting better is essential because some days are better than others, some things don’t work the way we want them to, and people will sometimes let us down. Sticking with a process – on a daily basis – is what gets results.
#5 Accountability
This is the heart of every personal or professional coaching plan in existence today. Why? Because we all need a little help staying focused and motivated.
It’s just too easy to get caught up in the grind, or to start majoring on those minor things that rob us of real achievement. We’ve all experienced the benefit of having someone support and encourage our most important activities.
Accountability starts by holding our own feet to the fire for doing the things we need to do to accomplish what we want to accomplish. But having a spouse, friend or colleague hold us accountable is important as well.
Positive attitude is a great thing to have, but a PMA without desire, personal initiative, a process, commitment to that process and accountability will just not carry the day.
