Positive Attitude (renewed)

A positive attitude seems trivial. What could be more basic than that?

Well, as trivial as it is, having the habit of maintaining a positive attitude, even in the most demanding situations, is not that simple. We think that in order to do so, one has to clearly understand why it is so important.

Your attitude is one of the first things people will notice about you. We guess that most people won’t start to rationally analyze your attitude, but most of them will surely remain with some sort of first emotional impression about it.

Even more important than this is the fact that usually other people’s reactions toward you will, to some extent, reflect your attitude back to you. As simple as that, if you smile at somebody, they’ll usually smile back. If you whine to someone, they’ll usually immediately start to tell you about their troubles.

The effect of having the right or wrong attitude is even stronger in modern-day organizations with complex, multi-dimensional matrix organizational structures. Unlike past, simple hierarchical organizations where people had the chance to know each other on a more intimate level and get past first impressions, in contemporary organizations, you might interact with people for a very brief moment, and the first impression you make, the one that is largely affected by your attitude, might just be your last one.

Once we understand how crucial it is to maintain a positive attitude, the question that remains is how to do it?

Maybe the first thing to do is understand your current attitude. This can be done by asking people you know about it. You can ask people you trust and think would be honest with you. It is important to also ask people with whom you might have some difficulties (we intend to write a post about feedback in the near future and we’re going to elaborate on this subject more).

Once you understand your current attitude, you’ll probably know which parts are your strengths and which are your shortcomings. We’ve found out that the increased awareness about those behaviors immediately makes us increase the good, positive ones and decrease the bad, negative ones.

Other things that work for us are:

– Smiling a lot without giving up being honest
– Being optimistic by seeing the positive side of everything. When we think about this, almost nothing is totally bad or good, you can choose which side you want to emphasize!
– Being empathetic to others by really listening and understanding their point of view

Good luck! Please let us know what you think and what works for you.