7 ways to a "Good Attitude"

Laugh : Keep humour in your life

Love : loved ones enhance life's good and buffer the bad

Simplicity : Keep everything simple

Accept some sickness but keep a positive attitude.

Remain optimistic.

Talk calmly to yourself positively.

Question your priorities and goals : Don't get in over your head.

Attitude
Dear Friends,

During the last few years, I have realized how important my attitude is
to life. attitude, to me, is more important than facts, fictions,
education, money, failures and success and that's what other people
think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, kindness or
skill.

Think about it for a minute. Attitude can make or break a company, a

school or a home. The remarkable thing is that everyday we have the
choice regarding which attitude we will embrace for that day.

We cannot change our past. Nor can we change the fact that people
will always act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.

But we can change ourselves. We can change the way we think. We

can change the way we act.

Attitude decides our future. TO shine or wine.

No matter how rich, powerful we are, we can sustain that only when
our attitude is good towards others, if we fail then consider we are self
destructing.

Attitudes and its functions

Attitudes is a psychological concept that reveals the past experience,
shape ongoing behaviour, and serve essential functions for the persons
who hold them. Attitudes lead individuals to react in certain ways to
events or situations they encounter. According to Gordan and Allport
opinion, Attitude is Social Psychology’s most central concept.

According to Baron, Attitude is defined as, permanent evaluations of

people, groups, object, or issues- in fact, of nearly any part of the
social or physical world. According to Petty and Cacioppo, Attitudes are
considered to be general evaluations group can make about
themselves, other persons, objects, or issues.

According to Breckler and Wiggins, Attitudes are permanent mental

representations of various features of the social or physical world.
Attitudes are acquired through knowledge and exercising them which
has a direct influence on the succeeding behaviour.

According to Katz, Attitudes give out four significant functions for

persons and they are adjustment function, ego-defensive function,
value expressive function and knowledge function. They are described
as follows:-

1. Adjustment Function: People tend to develop favourable attitude

towards rewarding and beneficial functions as well as relationship.
Similarly people develop negative attitude towards such functions and
relationships, which shall attract punitive actions.

2. Ego-defensive Function: Attitude can be served as devise for

protecting self-image.

3. Value-expressive Function: Attitude supports expression of core

values.

4. Knowledge Function: Attitude serves as standard or frame for

understanding and interpreting people and events around them.

There are basically two sources of formation of attitude:

a) Social Learning, and, b) Direct Experience:

a) Social Learning: Social Learning is acquiring attitudes from others.

There are broadly three processes of acquiring attitudes through social
learning and they are Classical Conditioning, Instrumental
Conditioning, and Modeling.

• Classical Conditioning is an essential type of knowledge in which one

motivates regularly and helps in preceding the next step. It is
knowledge based on the association, when motivation is presented by
one and is followed by others. Prejudices and preferences are shaped
through conventional or classical conditioning. Classical Conditioning
can play a responsible role in the development of attitudes.

• Instrumental Conditioning is related to the knowledge to

communicate the “right” views. Instrumental Conditioning is formed
through rewarding the most wanted behaviour and discouraging an
undesirable behaviour. Thus a particular type of attitude is created
towards a particular type of action through Instrumental Conditioning.

• Modeling as a theory which deals with persons adopting new

behaviors by way of observing the dealings of others around them in
the organization. Persons have a tendency to do what others do, not
what others say. Thus attitudes can be transmitted from one person to
another, or from one group to another, or from one generation to
another.

b) Direct Experience: Attitudes are also produced in the course of real

life experience, which may be also called as direct experience or
personal experience. Many studies recommend that strength of the
attitudes achieved through direct experience is stronger than the
strength of attitudes acquired indirectly. Attitudes acquired through
direct experience are held more assertively and are difficult to be
changed easily. If you hold strong attitude about an object, issue, or a
person, and you want others to appropriately appreciate your position,
it is good to let others have direct experience with the attitude object.

MOTIVATIONAL QUOTES ON ATTITUDE

"People often say that motivation doesn't Last. Well, neither does
bathing
That's why we recommend it daily!" ~ Zig Ziglar

FAMOUS QUOTES ON ATTITUDE

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds;
it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous
opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
- Earl Nightingale

A healthy attitude is contagious but don't wait to catch it from others.

Be a carrier.
- Unknown Author

Always look at what you have left.Never look at what you have lost.
- Robert H. Schuller

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere. The

pessimist sees only the red light. But the truly wise person is color
blind.
- Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that
determines our success or failure. The way you thing about a fact may
defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by
the fact because you think you are.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Attitude determines altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

Attitude is an important part of the foundation upon which we build a

productive life. A good attitude produces good results, a fair attitude
poor results, a poor attitude poor results. We each shape our own life,
and the shape of it is determined largely by our attitude.
- M. Russell Ballard

Attitude is your acceptance of the natural laws, or your rejection of the

natural laws.
- Jim Rohn

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will
help create the fact.
- William James
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that
happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward
achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
The benefits of a positive attitude
* Achieving your goals and attaining success.
* Success achieved faster and more easily.
* More happiness.
* More energy.
* Greater inner power and strength.
* The ability to inspire and motivate yourself and others.
* Fewer difficulties encountered along the way.
* The ability to surmount any difficulty.
* Life smiles at you.
* People respect you.

Positive attitude expresses itself in the following ways:

* Positive thinking.
* Constructive thinking.
* Creative thinking.
* Expecting success.
* Seeing opportunities.
* Being inspired.
* Choosing happiness.
* Looking for solutions.
* Not giving up.
* Motivation to accomplish your goals.
* Looking at failure and problems as blessings in disguise.
* Believing in yourself and in your abilities.
* Displaying self-esteem and confidence.

List of Top Twenty Excuses :

1. I didn’t have time to practice.

2. I don’t understand the tasks.
3. I don’t have the best idea.
4. I don’t have the best tools.
5. The tasks are too daunting.
6. I hate runway landings.
7. My glider isn’t trimmed right.
8. My linkages are loose.
9. My eyesight isn’t what it use to be.
10. I’ve got a terrible headache.
11. I can’t get focused today.
12. I can’t deal with the pressure.
13. I don’t enjoy flying at this field.
14. This contest isn’t important to me.
15. I can’t get a good timer.
16. I can’t beat him.
17. I don’t like to compete.
18. I don’t know how to…
19. Never done it before.
20. The CD is a jerk
(When all else fails, blame the CD!)
A+T+T+I+T+U+D+E = 100%
---A_T_T_I_T_U_D_E---

You must have learned somewhere that if we give numbers from 1

onwards to each alphabet starting from A, then by adding the values
of letter A,T,T,I,T,U,D & E, you will get 100 i.e. 100%

Its really true that Its you Attitude, not your Aptitude that decides you
Altitude. Because even if you have proper technical knowledge, you
will not be able to apply it properly without optimistic attitude.

A positive attitude will help you to see Any Opportunity amidst

Difficulties. Its a way of looking a 50% glass of water as Half
Filled glass or Half Empty Glass. If you have changed you attitude
then almost half of the battle is won.

At the end I would like to give a great example of Positive Attitude

with a very good incident:

============================================
=======
Soldier: Major, We are surrounded by the enemies!

Major: Great, Now we can shoot in any direction.

============================================
=======
THAT'S A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E

Influence of attitude on behaviour

The fundamental point of your knowledge on attitudes is to be familiar
with the degree of impact of attitude on job behavior. In the beginning
investigation mechanism recommended that attitudes merely influence
behavior. Some researchers have pointed out that behavior is far away
from easy, but it is logical. It was established that attitudes and
behaviour are at top only inadequately connected.

The modern research works propose that the influence of attitude on

behaviour is important, but we should be able to choose to spotlight
on explicit, fairly fine attitudes rather than general. It means that, in
the presence of certain reasonable variables, impact of attitude on
behaviour is important.
The factors which determine the degree of influence of attitudes on
behavior are :

1. Attitude Specificity: It means that particular attitudes are enhanced

predictors of behavior than general.

2. Attitude Strength: It refers the fact that strong attitudes are better
predictors of obvious behavior than weak.

3. Attitude Relevance: It means that the degree to which attitude

matters in fact has an outcome on the existence of the individual’s
holding various attitudes. Therefore these effects should be strong
enough to maintain a strong link between attitudes and behavior.

4.Attitude Accessibility: It is not difficult to be with specific attitudes

which can be brought into awareness from remembrance. It is very
important to have high degree of accessibility in order to have strong
impact of the same.

5. Existence of Social Pressure: While societal stress clasps

extraordinary power, individuals’ obvious behavior pursue the model
put through such stress, although there might be inconsistency
between attitudes and behavior.

6. Direct Experience: Attitude may persuade behavior more powerfully

if an attitude refers amazing effects to a person with whom he has
direct contact.

Captivatingly elevated relationship was found in this way, and it has

been completed that behavior controls attitude more powerfully than
attitudes influence behavior. This view is called Self-perception theory.
This theory suggests that attitudes are used to make sense out of an
action that has already taken place, rather than as plans that lead and
guide action. This idea appears to be in contradictory tune with respect
to the theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

Nevertheless, it may be constructively used to shape the attitudes of

persons by encouraging them to participate in certain actions.

Hence we can say that attitudes are formed after spotlighting the
adequate experience, which influences behavior in considerable
manner.