Change Your Future by Changing Your Attitude

“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.” – Oprah Winfrey

We’ve all been there before. We feel discouraged because things are not going the way we’d like them to go. We haven’t accomplished what we’re trying to accomplish. Perhaps you are not losing weight as fast as you would like. Or perhaps you realize at the end of the week that you only fit in exercise 3 days instead of the 5 days you planned on. According to a Stanford Research Institute Study, a positive attitude contributes more to success than anything else. The study showed that 87.5% of people’s success is related to their positive attitudes while 12.5% of their success is related to their aptitude, knowledge and/or skills.

Everyone deals with discouragement at times in their life. The important thing is to try and learn from these experiences and decrease the amount of time we allow ourselves to stay discouraged. We can do this by changing our attitude.

So how do we change our attitude?

First of all, we need to understand the power of attitude. If you allow negative attitudes (such as disappointment and discouragement) to be foremost in your mind, these attitudes will lead you to make negative decisions that will affect your life in negative ways. However, if you work on developing and maintaining positive attitudes (such as determination and flexibility) your life will be more positive and successful. For example, if you focus on the fact that you haven’t reached your exercise goal for the week, you may be tempted to not even try to fit in exercise for the next few days. But if you focus on the positive you may focus on the fact that you will have some extra time over the weekend and can therefore do some exercise.

We need to respond rather than react to the unexpected. Sometimes unexpected things happen that you have no control over. When this happens try to respond positively rather than reacting negatively. You can choose how you respond to a situation. For example, you hit a lot of traffic as you leave work and are headed to the gym. You know you won’t make it to the gym in time to do your favorite workout class. A negative reaction would be to allow disappointment to prevent you from going to the gym since you won’t be able to do the exercise class. A positive attitude focused on flexibility would involve you coming up with another plan for your workout such as using some exercise equipment at the gym or perhaps going home and doing a YouTube exercise video.

We need to focus on what we can change. If something you are doing is not working well for you, think about how you can change what you are doing. This can help prevent feeling discouraged or disappointed. For example, if you find you tend to be rushed in the mornings as you are preparing your lunch and snacks to take to work with you, consider preparing some or all of your food the night before. There are always modifications you can make to what you are doing. It may take some trial and error to figure out what works best for you. Ultimately, this will help you maintain that positive attitude.

Changing a negative attitude to a positive one may not always be easy, but the benefits you will experience will be well worth the effort. It is a daily process of checking in with yourself to ensure you are focusing on the positives in your life. It takes determination, perseverance and flexibility (which are all positive attitudes!). The more you focus on maintaining a positive attitude, the easier it will be.