Success, anyone’s success, starts in the mind. You have to convince yourself that you’re a success, before you can convince anyone else. Even more importantly than that, you have to convince yourself that you’re a success before you’ll take the actions necessary to make you a success.
You might be wondering what I mean by that. No, I’m not talking about some New Age psychological game that you play with yourself. I’m not talking about lying to yourself either. What I’m talking about is you convincing yourself of your potential. I’m talking about creating an attitude that you are an overcomer and that you will succeed.
Zig Zigler said it really great. He said, “Your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude.” You see, there are a lot of very capable people out there who never really succeed. If all you needed was ability to succeed, then we could tell how successful people are going to be by looking at their report cards in school. But, and again but, there are plenty of people who aced it in school, but never made it anywhere in life. Likewise, there are plenty of people who have been highly successful in life, without doing well in school.
Look at Albert Einstein. Universally lauded as the greatest scientist of all time, he was called a failure by his fourth grade teacher. They kicked him out of school, because he couldn’t learn. But when all was said and done, this great “failure” developed theories which have held up to scientific examination for 100 years.
So, since attitude is so important to our success, we’d better make sure we know what we’re talking about. There are lots of people who talk about “copping an attitude” or “having attitude;” but that doesn’t make them a success. Actually, they’re using attitude the wrong way. That’s a slang form of attitude which is mostly negative. That’s not what we want.
If you look up the word “attitude” in the dictionary, you’re going to get “A settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in the person’s behavior.” I like that; I think it shows what attitude really is, as opposed to what our youth have perverted it to be.
The first word that stands out in that definition is “settled.” You’ve got to have it settled in your mind, or it can’t be an attitude. What do you have to have settled? How about the idea that you are a winner? If you haven’t got that settled in your mind, you need to. As long as you’re convinced of anything else, you won’t give it your all and so you won’t succeed. Winners know they are going to win before they go out there. That motivates them to do whatever they need to, in order to win.
All too many of us are wavering back and forth in our conviction of our own ability. Some days, we’re fine; convinced we’re going to win. But other days we’re the opposite. You can’t be double-minded about this. If you are, you’re just going to be fighting yourself. One day you’ll do everything you need to work towards your ultimate success and the next day you’ll undo everything that you’ve done.
