A man pulled into a gas station on the outskirts of town. As he filled his tank, he remarked to the attendant, “I’ve just accepted a job in town. I’ve never been to this part of the country. What are the people like here?”
“What are the people like where you came from?” asked the attendant.
“Not so nice, in fact they can be quite rude,” replied the man.
The attendant shook his head. “Well, I’m afraid you’ll find the people in this town to be the same way.”
Just then another car pulled into the station. “Excuse me” the driver called out “I’m just moving to the area, is it nice here?”
“Was it nice where you came from?” The attendant inquired.
“Oh yes! I came from a great place. The people were friendly, I hated to leave.”
“Well you will find the same to be true of this town.”
“Thanks” yelled the driver as he pulled away.
“So what is the town really like?” asked the first man, now irritated with the attendants conflicting reports.
The attendant just shrugged his shoulders. “It’s all a matter of perception. You’ll find things to be just the way you think they are.”
There is an old adage that says people are about as happy as they make their mind up to be. John Milton put it another way in his book, Paradise Lost,“The mind is its own place and in it you can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.”
As you go through this week choose to make it a good one, think positively and you will be amazed how contagious that attitude and approach to life really is.
“I think the most important thing for any team is a winning attitude. The coaches must have it. The players must have it. If you have dedicated players who believe in themselves and their team, you don’t need a lot of talent and if you don’t believe you can win it is a sure thing that you won’t.”
– Paul “Bear” Bryant
I often hear coaches say something to this effect, that whether you think you will win or think you will lose you are very often right. The power of positive thinking and a positive outlook on life is real and is contagious, face life with that attitude and you will have a positive impact on all of those you come in contact with. This of course doesn’t mean you will never have a bad day or never fail but with this attitude and approach to life it is much easier to pick yourself back up when that happens and keep moving forward because you have surrounded yourself with others with this same attitude. A couple of anonymous quotes I read somewhere put it another way:
“Think positive: When going after Moby Dick; take along the tartar sauce.”
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.”
What goals have you set for you and for your organization? Do you believe in those goals and the path to get there? Does your team believe in those goals and the path to get there? You can not underestimate the importance of spending the time needed to get the team buy in to the direction the company is going by involving them in that process, it is critical to the success of the team. I saw the following quote on a motivational poster somewhere:
“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is clarity of purpose. This is the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.”
The final thought that I will leave you with is when you go to set those goals they must be achievable, if you make them pie in the sky goals you won’t be able to get the team to buy into those goals; that being said most people have the opposite problem, make sure you don’t sell yourself short. Michelangelo said “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short but in setting our aim to low and achieving our mark.”
In all aspects of your life relentlessly pursue what you are passionate about.
