Why should you have the right attitude? There is one factor that will have a huge impact on almost everything you do in life. Your attitude will determine the outcome of your goals. Did you know that it is possible to choose your attitude? Have you ever been given a task that seemed impossible? What was the outcome? You attitude might actually prevent you from success even before you get the chance to try, why is that? Did you know that your attitude can prevent you from trying? What can we do about it?

Learned Helplessness

I have been reading Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by Ph.D. Martin Seligman. His book is about how people can learn helplessness and not see or not apply any effort to an obvious solution. And of course his book is also about learning optimism and solving just such problems. This actually proves that you might get obstacles in your life that seem so hard that you will not even try, resulting in failure or unhappiness.

When Change Comes

You probably do not like change? Human does not like change, change is often challenging our comfort zone. Have there at any time been changes in your life that you thought was bad? Did it turn out bad? Is there a pattern between good and bad change, and good and bad outcome? We do like to say told you so? Don’t we?  Hang in there with me as I am soon getting to the point.

Failed To Reach Your Goal?

Did you fail to reach your goal? Is the goal so overwhelming that you even won’t try? My son is six years old and he replies with: “I do not know how to do that!” whenever I am trying to teach him something new. I try to tell him that’s why we are going to try it, but in many situations he just refuse to try because his fear of failure.

It Is All About Your Attitude

The great thing about our mind is that we can chose our attitude and be aware about our obstacles. Read these 3 points:

1. Even if the problem seems unsolvable, do try to solve it. Do not give up. Do ask for help, consider other options. If I tell you to carry 100 rocks from A to B, you will be exhausted before you are finished if you carry one and one rock. If you find a wheelbarrow and a friend with a wheelbarrow you task will be done faster with the correct outcome, the rocks are located at B. If you get a truck you might even finish it much easier. There is one certain guaranteed way to fail any task, and that is not trying. So whatever the obstacle choose to try!
2. Oh, no there is change coming along. Change can be good or bad. But there is almost no way you can know beforehand. You can cut of a finger, and it might not be bad, if you decide to play the lottery while visiting the hospital, and won $ 15.000.000? When change is entering your life, try to stay positive as you will not know if the change is good or bad, until long time after. You can make a choice to be positive, and if you do most changes will be good. If a change create an obstacle, do not say “I told you so” rather read number one again.
3. There is one saying from Confucius that I like: “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” There is no reason to stay fat if your diet failed. There is no reason to feel as a failure if you did not manage to get the report in on time. If you do not reach your goals, do not adjust the goals. Do not think of yourself as a failure. It is all in the actions. You need to do something different! Does that require change? Read part two again. Is it creating an obstacle? Read part 1 again.

When it comes to attitude you have a few choices, either give it a try and have a fighting chance or do not try and be sure not to succeed. Either you will stay positive and embrace change and try to make it good or be negative and fight the change that’s around the corner making the change a failure. When it comes to not reaching your goals either adjust your actions or give up and never reach your goal.

I hope that you will see that having a positive fighting attitude will make your life better either at work or at home. If your attitude is the other way around you will be certain to fail, but you will have the chance to say I told you so one more time.

If you now need some motivation take a look at these 10 blog posts about motivation

Or you can read this blog post about motivation to learn more about the mechanism of motivation. Do you have enough ego drive to succeed?

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Have you ever tried to achieve a task and failed? What do you do when it isn’t working? Do you feel frustrated when you do not reach your goal? Is it something wrong with your goal? Should you settle with a C paper when you can get an A? How can you manage to reach your goal, when you have failed and failed again?

Confucius was a wise man and one quote that I do love is this one “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”

There is a lot true here, there is no reason to adjust the goals if you set them too high. As long as you are making progress you will be able to get a little bit closer all the time. But I do not want this article to be to wishy-washy and just throw you a saying without any tools on how to live according to this saying.

Long term goals vs short term goal

Is there coinheritance between your long term goals and your short term goals? Your long term goals should be your destination, your short term goals is directions to get you forward. Do not work with goals short term or long term unless you are able to align your path (short term) with your destination (long term).

Short term evaluation

I use short term goals as day to day goals to reach all our goals for the week. I use weekly goals to adjust for the month and so on. I evaluate several times at work to reach our daily goals before 4 pm. We start by evaluating at 10 am. Are we on our way to reach our goals? Are we falling behind? Should I prioritize differently? Are we managing just fine, or do I need help? What is my goal? What is the current status and how do I get there? We do not change the goals, but like Confucius’ saying, we adjust our actions.

Long term evaluation

Since I work at a call center the long term goals might only be a month. The length is not important, but breaking it down to short term goals is essential. For me it is to evaluate the week to adjust for next week to make sure that the result for the month is good, and month by month to reach the goals for the quarterly reports. If you fall behind one week you need to do equally better the next week, so you need to keep track, because if you fall behind just reaching your goals will not be enough, you will need to do better to compensate for the previous loss.

When do you evaluate?

Some people tend to evaluate after the finish line is passed. This is too late, and here is the key to live like Confucius say; evaluate several times during the run and pace your speed accordingly. The way we do it is by using a whiteboard with the current status at 8 am; we set our goals for 4 pm and have our first pow wow at 10 am. We write the current status on the whiteboard for all our different goals and we decide what to do next. What goals are doing fine, which are falling behind? What do we now need to do? And then we adjust, or try to adjust. When more people are the key, we are not able to clone, but at least we will ask other departments for help if necessary. We have a smaller dialogue at 12, and one last at 2 pm and if necessary one more at 3 pm. We reallocate resources and we try to do what it takes.

And what if you still fail?

An essential part of evaluation is to analyze, did we do great or did we fail? Why did we fail? Not enough people? Not enough effort among the people at work? Are the goals to difficult? (No, never… remember Confucius?) The sweet deal here is that you will most likely figure out why you failed. And the answer to why is what, so what can you do about it? If you fail to recognize this what, and still do what you use to you are working by habit. Embrace the answer to why and what and work with this systematically. This is your obligation as a leader to work with systematically. And if you do there is “not if you reach your goals”, it is “when”.

Are you having an old static company web page, did you hire expensive web designers to create a publish system that you just can’t figure out? If you are considering an offer from a web design company ask about social media strategies. If they are just giving you fancy design and no interaction with your customer, stand up and leave. Go for a blog, a twitter account, live chat and a facebook profile and find someone who knows what those things are.

Why you ask?

I have been working as a web developer more or less professional for 12 years. I have been creating everything from static one page HTML sites to full blown publish/shop solutions. My ultimate goal was to make more values for my customer. But the interaction of today’s social media is finally giving a solution to what you want to achieve in the first place, interaction with your customers. And guess what, your customers might have a great idea or two when it gets to your products and services. All you need to do is active listening and informing.

M(w)ake up

My wife have been participating in online make up forums with 100.000 users that order make up all around the world. They swap stuff, they interact with the company, and the company gives names to new types of eye shadow based on direct user feedback. They inform about upcoming events and product launches, and I am sitting in my living room regretting not picking up on how to make cosmetics when I was young. What an amazing business idea. My wife has gotten friends all around the world swapping cosmetics and advices and staying loyal to one company. Well almost, this company made one error of judgment, they did not listen to the customer and walked out on a promise, resulting in thousands of customers moving to the competition.

Online support Center

I work at a broadband company, our site is new and nice, but static, showing products and prices. New social media has still not quite reached our marketing department. I would love it if we made a blog, a customer forum, a twitter account, a facebook profile and … alright we got an online chat. What if we had some technical difficulties, we could inform in an instance. What if we told our customers that five people are sick today, wish them well, but please understand that the phone lines might queue up.
What if we launched a new product right into an active community of thousands of customers? What if a customer had some great ideas that we could adapt? The customers could teach us what they want, and we could teach the customers about how we operate. And I bet that we could save us a bunch of money that went to a marketing company financing their fancy coffee habits. And just let us listen…

One man is doing it right.

In Norway, one man in particular has gotten the idea of social media. Steinar J Olsen founder and CEO at Stormberg is using his blog, communicating with not only his customers, but also state leading politicians and journalists. His twitter account has 4744 followers, and his blog is quoted in national media all the time. The company facebook profile has 9166 friends. Customers are providing feedback, example a print error in a calendar, with the marketing director giving an instant feedback. Customers are asking about the quality of boots, resulting in recommendations from other customers. In comparison I tried to locate one of the competitors facebook profile and found a profile with 133 friends.. I wonder who is getting the most impact in this advertising channel?

Replace your company website with a blog; do not hide behind your boring web site. NOW!

If you believe, you can make it happen. Positive thinking is so powerful and at work it is an almost necessary tool to possess for success. But what is positive thinking and what makes it work? I would like to draw the line and connect positive thinking to positive action. Let’s start by looking at how the brain works. The brain is a learning center; everything you do is based on knowledge and experience. If you touch a hot plate once, chances are that you will not touch one ever again. If you have never experienced a hot plate, well all kids are doomed to sooner or later touching a hot plate. If you as a teenager find one pick up line that works, you will end up making a personal slogan. The brain learns from experience, so to make your life great, you’ll need to teach your brain the right way to act.

For instance, I am a chocoholic, I have tried for years to quit eating chocolate. But the only way for me to manage that is to experience a successful way to not be eating chocolate. I have been spending months thinking that I do not like chocolate, and why do I eat chocolate when fruit is so much more tasteful? I have been thinking and thinking for months and suddenly I could manage to go days and weeks without it. I am still training my brain to avoid the cravings each day. When I eat salad for lunch at work I am thinking about the great flavors and its magnificent tastes. I am looking at my pure glass of water and enjoying its cold refreshing taste that no other liquids can provide. I am not dieting, so losing weight is not the goal, I am trying to change one habit at the time.

That was personal, and not very work related, but the concept is the same. So if you fail at work, tasks that you just can’t get the hang of, or never makes it within timelines. Most likely you hate this task, and have never experienced success with this task. Remember when performing a task there is only two outcomes, either you make it or you won’t. But if you do not make it, you are not failing, you are just mind mapping ways that do not work, and you are getting an experience. Why is it failing? If you manage to learn, and stay positive you might find one way of not performing this task. Spend time thinking, reflect and ask why it went wrong. You are learning. Keep trying and correcting if you need to. You need to picture success in your head. Teach your brain to know what success looks like. Is it timing? Is it prioritizing? Is it knowledge? What does it take?

The mind trap.

As you do fail, your mind will try spare you. It will make up excuses and explanations to why you are failing and it will make barriers to prevent you from doing this again. Do not let your brain build barriers. “I do not get a date because I am so shy” – Your mind will persuade you to never try again to protect your feelings, and if you do not ask, you will not get any answers. If your boss yells at you and you are being called into the office a week later, your stomach will be in turmoil and you’ll be all sweaty and nervous. Are you a psychic? Do you know what the meeting is all about? No, this is your brain working with experience and trying to prepare you for what might come. Your mind has a few basic functions, learn, act and anticipate. Based on earlier experience your brain will try to tell you what is up ahead. When it comes to doing the boring tasks at work that you always fail at, remember your mind is already anticipation your failure. You need to set it straight. The good news you can.

I am being a bit personal again as I have a fresh example in my head. I have several times tried to quit my sugar addiction and my mind was always craving chocolate from I woke up until I fell asleep. I once managed 21 days without chocolate and I was in hell every single day. Today I have not eaten chocolate in 12 days, and I have only had a bad craving once. But I do not like chocolate anymore, I am telling my mind that I hate the bad feeling it provides. I am remembering and programming how bad this is for me. And at the same time I am praising my tasteful salad replacement. I am mind mapping the great taste, the great way it makes me feel. And sitting here close to bedtime, I am starting to crave some salad. At work I have yet not found the winning formula for holding a group meeting without queuing up the phone lines. We need group meetings once in a while and holding it outside opening hours is not a solution. I need to divide my staff in half and hold two meetings during the day. I have failed at this before. I have learned that it is not wise to hold such a meeting at a day with high traffic. I have learned that I should ask for help from other departments taking some load of the remaining employees. I am still going to hold a great group meeting without anything failing. I am very result oriented so if the meeting is causing one customer waiting, I will consider it a failure. So I need to figure it out what it takes to achieve success.

But figuring out what you are doing wrong, might be hard, so do not be afraid of talking about your challenges as it might only provide helpful input. Ask about what others do to succeed instead of talking about what you are doing wrong. You are still putting your hand on a hot plate; you’ll need to figure out how to turn off the heat. Why is someone always getting greater sales results? What do they do? And keep a positive mind. Failures are a chance of learning, process the learning and store it in your brain. Think about what worked out great.

This is just some few practical pointers. You should also provide positive actions in your life. Smile, make other people smile, do some volunteer work, make other people happy. Your role in life should be to make it easy on everybody while making them smile and enjoy their day. As you teach this thinking to other people around you it will come back with interests. This is positive thinking, and positive actions. It is about learning, sharing, caring.