Mentality 1: Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude

"I said, 'Excuse me, I'm going to be a pro golfer.' They said, 'No ,no, only one in two thousand or ten thousand makes it.' So I said, 'Fine. I'm the one.' I had that level of self-commitment."
Champion golfer Nick Faldo .


We now have our goals in place. To achieve these goals, and our quality of life, we now need to marshal our resources both mental and physical.

First we start with the seat of all success - the mind.



Attitude and Belief

In the fascinating book, 'Mind Games' , former British national athletics coach Frank Dick talks of his relationship with double Olympic gold medal winning decathlete, Daley Thompson.

"Just after a hard day's work, when we were sitting back and feeling the sun on our faces, Daley said to me, 'Frankie, who's the greatest athlete you ever saw?" I asked if he meant even in videos, and he said yes. I named someone who had made four world records in one day. Daley said, 'Forget it, buddy, you're looking at him.'"

Mental training is an essential part of all sports. I cannot say I have experience of sports at a high level but I did spend some time involved in hill walking and expedition leadership where belief in your ability was probably more important than physical fitness.

With so many other challenges in life, the only barrier to our success is mental, something we touched upon previously when discussing fear.

Scammers and confidence tricksters use their attitude to persuade their victims of their plausibility. A few years ago I did some work locating properties for investors and was amazed how I easy it was to broker multi-million pound deals with professionals without having any previous experience myself.

Belief in yourself and a positive attitude are therefore key to success in any field.

As mentioned before, success requires breaking out from our comfort zone, and this can be frightening. And yet, once you have expanded your mind in this way, it will never be the same again.

James Allen says this: "As a being of thought, your dominant mental attitude will determine your condition in life."

Bob Urichuck : "Your attitude is 100% within your control! There are plenty of things in life that we have no control over. We can't control the weather, the time or what other people say or do. But we can control the way we react, our thoughts, our self-talk and our beliefs."

Robin Sieger agrees: "You have to believe in yourself and your capacity to succeed whatever happens. To have an unshakeable faith that you will make it."

He relates this can be seen in world-class champions in both sport and business.

"These people have a belief that will enable them to overcome hurdles that we would probably stare at and say 'No way through there and give up.'"

"I hope you really believe that you can achieve your personal goals and not pay lip service to them. So it is good to reflect on what we want to achieve in our lives and make sure they are not wishes we pay lip service to, but rather they are real goals that we believe in and act upon."

James Allen: "Belief is the basis of all action, and, this being so, the belief which dominates the heart or mind is shown in the life. Every man acts, thinks, lives in exact accordance with the belief which is rooted in his innermost being."

"Belief lies at the root of all human conduct. Every thought, every act, every habit, is the direct outcome of a certain fixed belief, and one's conduct alters only as one's beliefs are modified. What we cling to, in that we believe; what we practice, in that we believe. When our belief in a thing ceases, we can no longer cling to or practice it; it falls away from us as a garment out-worn."

This is the basis of the Law of Attraction. What we believe in, what we focus our mind on is most likely to occur.

Bob Urichuck : "What you think about is what you attract into your life. Negative thoughts attract certain conditions in your life, as does positive thinking. You have the ability to make any thought a reality. Mix those thoughts with emotion and they have an even greater impact on becoming reality."


The Quiet Man


James Allen talks about the confidence of the quiet man. I can think of individuals who appear to have belief in themselves who one might say have a good attitude. And yet these people are outgoing and loud: full of themselves, if you will. I think the truth is that the truly confident with the best attitude are generally also the most quiet. They feel no need to prove themselves.
As you adopt a positive, success-orientated attitude you may well find yourself approaching situations in the same calm, unruffled manner.

I have been lucky enough in my life to have dealings with several such individuals. The world of exploration and mountaineering in particular seems to breed this type. Three good examples that leap to mind would be Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Sir Chris Bonnington and Bear Grylls. You feel their confidence and are drawn to them.

James Allen: "The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good."

James Allen (1864-1912) certainly practised what he preached. A neighbour in Ilfracombe, Devon quoted in his biography by John Woodcock described Allen a having "a mysterious air" and "You almost had the feeling he could put a spell on you. We stepped aside when he came along."

Martial arts masters acknowledge this attitude of confident peace too.

In his book on T'ai Chi Ch'uan, Master T.T. Liang writes: "The principle of T'ai Chi is to control action by tranquillity and to conquer the forceful and unyielding with the gentle and yielding. From nothingness something is produced: it looks like nothing, though it is something; it looks soft, but in reality it is firm."

"When the mind can be maintained firmly, then a calm unperturbedness can be attained; and to that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose of the spirit of vitality."

A few years ago the England soccer manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson was impressed by his captain David Beckham. "Beckham is very positive. He's still young, but he's a leader. He doesn't talk very much, but that's positive about him. He works very hard and always tries to find solutions for difficult tasks. That's important."

It may be going slightly off topic, but I can vouch personally for the advantages of quiet confidence. On customer services training courses in the past we were always being told to deal with a loud, argumentative person by using a measured, quiet tone. Inevitably the loud bully will quieten his or her tone to match your own. I have tried this and it does work.

On one occasion, however, I was able to imitate this attitude in an extreme test. A gang of loud teenagers decided to use the front wall of my property as a seat and to occasionally climb into my garden. I simply stood in full view of them and said nothing. Initially they shouted abuse at me but my quietness and inactivity unsettled them to the point where they simply got up and walked away. I can only conclude such people feed off the emotions of others and, when confronted with calmness, they have no reply.

(I use the expression the 'Quiet Man', full in the knowledge that this can relate to both men and women alike.)


Conclusion

Attitude from a belief in yourself is clearly required for success in any field. But how do we get this belief and attitude? In the next blog we will deal with this question.

Until the next time, have a great week. With my very best wishes as ever,

Keith


http://www.keithbraithwaite.com/