If youâve got a negative attitude, it will taint your entire outlook on life and dramatically decrease your ability to succeed. Instead of consciously crafting a successful life, your negative disposition will often lead to a passive personality, one in which you shrug your shoulders and let life happen to you, rather than making things happen for you. If thatâs not the life you imagined for yourself, then itâs time to transform your current attitude into a can-do attitude.
Here are some powerful and practical ideas you can start using today to make that attitude shift and start an upward cycle of success for yourself that will reverberate into every area of your life.
1. Start With Your Mindset
Since the early days of boxing, experts relied on what they called the âtales of the tapeâ to predict how successful an athleteâs boxing career may or may not be. These âtales of the tapeâ were a series of physical measurements that included the fighterâs fist, reach, chest expansion, and weight.
Experts thought these measurements could predict which athletes would be most successful in the ring based on how their numbers shook out against these measurements.
But get this: did you know Muhammad Aliâhailed as one of the greatest boxers of all timeâfailed every single one of his measurements?
The so-called âexpertsâ called him a failure. They didnât believe he had the skills and talents to succeed. As Dr. Carol Dweck explains in her book, Mindset, Muhammad Ali âwas not a natural.â Not by a long shotâat least according to the boxing experts of that era.
Nonetheless, against all odds, Ali went down in history as one of the greatest boxers of all time.
What exactly was it about Ali that contributed to his incredible success in boxing? What made him âthe greatest,â as he is often proclaimed? It wasnât his brawn; it was his brain.
Author Carol Dweck explains Aliâs success as follows:
â[Muhammad Ali] was not a natural. He had great speed but he didnât have the physique of a great fighter, he didnât have the strength, and he didnât have the classical moves. In fact, he boxed all wrong. He didnât block punches with his arms and elbows. He punched in rallies like an amateur. He kept his jaw exposed. He pulled back his torso to evade the impact of oncoming punches, which Jose Torres [former colleague of Ali] said was âlike someone in the middle of a train tack trying to avoid being hit by an oncoming train, not by moving to one or the other side of the track, but by running backwards.â
Throughout his career, he was constantly matched with athletes that were bigger, stronger, and faster than himself, but he beat them anyway.
It wasnât his physical talent or skill that helped him do succeed over and over again. It was his mental attitude. His can-do attitude to be more precise.
This leads me to believe that in many cases, the critical factor between someone who achieves success vs someone who does not comes down, in large part, to your mindset.
Our mindset determines the way we deal with tough situations and setbacks, as well as our willingness to deal with and improve ourselves.
A person with a growth mindset automatically has a can-do attitude because they donât give up when they fail. Instead, they use failure as a learning opportunity that does nothing more than getting them closer to success.
Ali helps us understand that developing a growth mindsetâand by association, a can-do attitudeâis about rising strong regardless of how lackluster your abilities may seem. Instead of looking in the mirror and saying, âIâm not good enough to be a champion,â instead he said, âIâm going to use a different path to achieve greatness.â
He showed everyone that success comes first from the gem between your ears. The same gem that chooses to leave behind negative beliefs and replace them with an attitude that says, âI can do this.â
2. Focus on Being Congruent
âWhile some researchers and clinicians argue that you can change your life by just changing your thoughts, actions, or feelings, I have seen no evidence in my research that real transformation happens until we address all three as equally important parts of a whole, parts that are inextricably connected to one another, like a three-legged stool.â âBrene Brown, from Rising Strong
Your thoughts + actions + feelings are like a three-legged stool.
This is similar to people that follow the old self-help advice to just âthink positive.â
If we THINK positive, but we still FEEL negative, then how will we ACT?
Positive thinking is powerful, but only when we think of it as one of the three necessary legs that reinforce the stool weâre sitting on.
If we donât want the stool to wobble or break, weâve got to make sure we give each leg the care it needs to keep us from falling and getting hurt.
I believe that the key here, with this idea, is to focus on being as congruent as possible.
Whatâs the best way to do that?
1. Align the Way You Think With the Way You Act
When you affirm powerful thoughts to yourself about what you can do rather than what you cannot do, your biochemistry will change for the better. You will stand taller and move with confidence.
2. How You Act Is Going to Impact How You Feel
When you tell yourself that you can do something over and over again, your mind will begin to believe it and accept it as the truth. This, in return, will make you feel like a winner, like a success.
3. Use How You Feel to Reinforce the Way You Think
The way you feel right now has a lot to do with how youâre carrying yourself.
Are you hunching forward? Are you slouching in your seat? Are your shoulders sloped? If yes, you probably donât feel like youâre at your best.
Now, straighten out your back, tilt your chest upward, and smile (even if youâve got no reason to!). Not only will you notice a shift in the way you feel when you do this, but youâll notice a shift in the way you think, as well. Youâll go from thinking thoughts that lead to feeling stressed and depressed, to thinking and feeling confident and creative.
In short: youâll have that can-do attitude that leads to the success you crave in life, which is going to circle right back around to help you decide the way you choose to act in any given situation.
See the feedback loop these three end up creating?
The bottom line is that itâs not about positive thinking alone that drives our success in life â itâs about being in positive congruence between the way we think, act, and feel that drives our success in life.
3. Be Mindful of Your Self-Talk
Your self-worth depends on your self-talk.
An all-star baseball player once decided to visit a prison to inspire the inmates to better themselves. He told them a story about how his father always encouraged him when he was a little boy. His dad always told him, âSon, if you keep on hittinâ the ball like that, youâll end up in the MLB one day.â
Sure enough, he ended up playing professional baseball.
Upon hearing this story, one of the prisoners stood up and said, âHey, my dad told me something similar when I was a little boy. Every time I did something my dad didnât like, he looked at me and said, âSon, if you keep on misbehaving like this, youâll end up in prison one day.ââ
Sure enough, he ended up in prison.
As it turns out, 90% of male prisoners were treated like dirt by their parents when they were children. Many of them were spoken to like they were prisoners WAY before they ended up behind bars.
Now, this doesnât mean that our parents determine the future for us in advance.
We all can respond to our circumstances however we want.[1]Â However, it certainly makes things a lot easier if we have a solid foundation to build upon.
Regardless of how your parents spoke to you, though, the takeaway from this story is very simple: the way we speak with ourselves plays a massive role in the way we perceive ourselves.[2]
And the way we perceive ourselves plays a massive role in our ability to develop a can-do attitude and reap the rewards it affords. Our attitude goes a long way toward determining whether we decide to take on challenges and pursue success in the face of adversity.
Drop whatever limiting attitudes youâre holding on to about yourself and replace them with a strong, self-starting, can-do attitude.
4. Become an Activationist
âExcellent ideas are not enough. An only fair idea acted upon, and developed, is 100 percent better than a terrific idea that dies because it isnât followed up.â âDavid Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big
Plenty of people have excellent ideas, but only a select few can see their idea through to action.
There are two types of people on the planet: âactivationistsâ and âpassivationists.â
Activations come up with ideas and execute them without hesitationâthe embodiment of a âcan-doâ attitude.
When these folks decide to take a vacation, they take it. When they decide to call a client, an old friend, or even a potential romantic interestâthey do it. Activations decide to become successful, and they will that decision into reality with a can-do attitude.
Passivationists, on the other hand, might have just as many ideas as an activationist, but the passivation executes none of them. They postpone and procrastinate their dreams and goals continually.
This lack of action is the result of having a passive mentality about life and neglecting to cultivate a can-do attitude.
So, what can we do to break ourselves from the passivation habit?
We can start by breaking the habit of perfectionism.
Perfectionists put things off because they fear doing something wrong. However, the activationist goes ahead and does things, and then deals with any problems that arise along the way.
This also includes waiting for the âperfectâ time to do something. There is no perfect time, and every minute that you wait makes it that much more likely that you will chicken out of the whole thing. Now is the magic word of achievement.
Itâs time to get rid of tomorrows, laters, and sometimesâand replace them with the readiness and urgency of a can-do attitude.
You Can Do This!
If you want to achieve success in all dimensions of your life, youâll need to get your mental game in check. Ensure your mindset is directed towards growth and progress for most of your waking hours.
Do not allow fear to freeze you in place and prevent you from achieving your dreams. Embody the habits of an activationist and start spending time on consistent action until you achieve what you set out to achieve.
With each achievement, you will find your self-confidence getting stronger as you begin to say âI can do this.â This then will lead to more action, which will lead to more successâŚ
And this cycle of success? It never needs to stop.
