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No one should ever lose a job, miss a promotion, or destroy a marriage because of a bad attitude. WHY? Because a person’s attitude is not set; it’s a choice.

Here are six ways to manage your attitude and stay on track.

Take Responsibility For Your Attitude

Roberta Flack recalls, “My mother had only gone as far as the tenth grade and ,my father had a third-grade education, but they were both very literate. They drummed into our heads that the situation you live in doesn’t have to live in you.” Our attitudes don’t come from our circumstances or personal history. Attitude does not come from outside ourselves. It comes from within.

Evaluate Your Present Attitude

To improve your attitude, you need to assess where you’re starting from. Depending on how self-aware you are, it may even be difficult. The key is to try to look at yourself objectively, to separate yourself from your attitude. Identify problem feelings about yourself –Feelings come into play before a conscious awareness intellectually. Identify problem feelings related to others. Identify problem thinking.

Develop The Desire To Change

The desire to change is the key to growth in all areas of life. Ironically most people desire improvement but the resist change. The problem is that you cannot get the one without the other.

Change Your Attitude by Changing Your Thoughts

Major Premise: We can control our thoughts.

Minor Premise: Our feelings come from our thoughts.

Therefore: We can control our feelings by changing the way we think.

Why is this argument construct important? Because your attitude is your emotional approach to life. It is the framework through which you see events, other people, and yourself. The saying is true; “You are not what you think you are, but what you think…..you are.”

Develop Good Habits

Much of what we do every day comes from habitual behaviors. Over time we approach a way of participating in life. It is not enough to simply change our thinking, we must also change our habits. Fortunately our habits are not instincts. They are actions or reactions that we have acquired over time.

Manage Your Attitude Daily

One of the great discoveries of life is realizing that we often place too much emphasis on making decisions and too little on managing the decisions that we have already made. In John Maxwell’s book Today Matters, the thesis is that successful people make the right decisions early and then  manage those decisions daily. If you take responsibility for your attitude, recognizing that it can change how you live, you can make your attitude your greatest asset.

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Music: “Gratitude Mood” by David Arivett. You can learn more about his music by clicking on his name. THANKS DAVID!