Do you have a skunky attitude? While I think it was Zig Ziglar who first said, “Your attitude determines your altitude,” The Colonel was the first person I ever heard it from, and for 40 years of my life, I thought it was entirely his wisdom. Regardless of who said it first, it is a certainty. And, in Dad’s house, a positive attitude was non-negotiable.
It’s also not negotiable for leadership. I’ve never met, nor have I ever heard of, anyone who is wildly successful with a consistently negative attitude. Your attitude, whether positive or negative, is always “leaking” out of you in some way. The question to ask yourself is: “What am I leaking? Is it fresh, positive, and fragrant, or is it stale, negative, and skunky?” The reality is that you can do everything wrong with a positive attitude and still succeed. On the other end of the spectrum, though, you can do everything perfectly to policy with a stinky attitude and get nowhere.
We have all met people who light up the whole room when they walk in. We have also encountered people who suck the very light and life from the room. These people are great black holes of negativity, consuming any and all optimism in their wake.
Maintaining a positive attitude in our inherently negative world is not necessarily easy, which is why we must be ever-vigilant. It may surprise you to discover that positive people don’t always wake up with a positive attitude. Some mornings I wake up and say, “Good morning, God!” On other mornings I wake up and say, “Oh good God, it’s morning.” A positive attitude is a choice. Significant leaders discipline themselves to that choice every day.
Because your attitude does, indeed, determine your altitude.
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