More Perspective - A Simple Attitude Trick

Emotions are tied to many things, and a simplified example would be to say they are tied to thoughts, events, and experiences. In today's world it's very easy to find someone to agree or disagree with you, all you have to do is log on to the internet and you can prove yourself right or wrong (most people would rather prove themselves right, unfortunately).

But rather than harbor a negative thought pattern, or get stuck in a cycle of thinking and feeling that isn't steering you towards success, wouldn't you rather feel great and do great?

While I believe strongly in finding the right mentors and people in your life to help guide us in various ways, I also believe strongly in developing our own personal skills to lean into for when that person or people aren't around. Here's a short exercise you can either think through or write through to adjust your own attitude and thinking swiftly.

1. Identify the exact thing that you're stuck on. Maybe it's a problem you haven't solved, a metric you haven't achieved, or a scenario that keeps repeating itself.
2. Take accountability for it. Own it. When you think about it or write it down, if you start to notice any such thing as another person, the weather, anything at all that is not "me/I/self" eliminate that. It's really hard to make something better if we don't have a sense of influence or control over it. Control can be dangerous sure, but it is also necessary, for example you need control over the car you're driving assuming it doesn't self-pilot.
3. Once you've decided you can improve or change it, now you need to figure out what's normal or real and what isn't. I'll use the example of cold-calling in a sales business. If it's normal to make 50 phone calls and schedule 3 appointments, then know that. Because if you make 10 calls and don't get any appointments, that's normal. It wouldn't make sense to get frustrated or have any other perspective than "ok this is part of the process." Once you have a clear understanding of what's perfectly common and average for the thing you've identified, you can move on to the next step. Also, don't deceive yourself with things like "well I should be better than average." Maybe you're right, but if you're not performing at least at the average, having unrealistic expectations of the results or outcomes won't do you any good.
4. Accept it, smile, and do better. Sounds simple enough right? The act of accepting what is real, normal, and common is incredibly powerful. Personally, I have found peace in the chaos of the world today by reading a lot of history and recognizing the patterns that emerge in social behavior. Really none of what has been happening is different, it's just we have new things, toys, and people and it feels new to us. The same can be said for most anything in your life, and once you accept the reality of it, the smile is optional but personally, I find it very helpful, you can start to work on how to improve and change it, or to leave it be if it's something you have no desire to improve or change. Because I have spent most of my professional time for the last 8 years personally selling b2b products and services and coaching, training, consulting, and managing in this arena, I'll use another sales example. You can get better at something by practicing either by yourself or with another person who is good at it, listening, taking notes, and then going and applying it as soon as possible. The application part is necessary, as we don't improve without the act of doing.

So there you go, 4 simple things you can do that will help you feel better because you can carry hope in reality and progress. Identify the source of the negative emotion. Own it, make it your problem and nobody else's. Figure out what "normal" looks like for the problem or situation/event. Then accept it and figure out if you want to improve it or not, then do that.