Everyone has seen those cute paperweights with various effigies in the office. Some are humorous, but I personally like reading one that made me think. During an office visit, I noticed one that simply stated, “Attitude is Everything”. I was the first to show up for an office meeting and as I waited for the others to show up, I thought how profound that statement truly was.

One of the greatest qualities I look for in a person is their attitude on how they treat their family, how they work with others, how they view themselves and especially how they maintain their attitude in difficult situations. I work in the Telecommunications field and one of the most important traits is to have a positive attitude. People who have positive attitudes don’t look for excuses when things are bad. They are always thinking we can learn from this failure. They not only learn from their failures, they welcome it as a positive. This failure will allow the team to gain knowledge. It will allow them to be more proactive and act on it to prevent the failure from happening in the future. Learning from your mistakes and preventing them in the future is good.

When things go bad, it’s so easy to blame someone else, and you see this type of behavior daily. Politicians seem to have this trait down in spades at times. It seems when something goes bad, a typical politician will always come up with someone else to blame. And when they make a mistake, they deflect the blame instead of taking personal responsibility. I personally admire people who will look you in the eye and admit they made a mistake and they are telling you the absolute truth about how and why it happened. People who are impeccable with their words are people we should all emulate.

Having a good attitude is something that radiates from you when you have it. People want to work with you and be around someone who has a positive glow around them. I work with people who are very technical and some are better at it than others. But I would rather work with a lesser skilled employee who has a good attitude than one who is higher skilled with a bad attitude. You can always teach someone who has a positive attitude since they are constantly looking at improvement. Negative personalities tend to drag everyone down in the office and that is never good. They seem to dwell on past failures without coming up with any innovative solutions. They also seem to watch the news a lot, but only repeat what is wrong with the world and seldom note any positive news. I love watching the news myself, but I do it in order to stay informed, not to dwell on the negative.

People with positive attitudes also tend to always work to their best ability. They usually have very little self doubt because of this and that is good too. Everyone likes to see the underdog win and I believe this is because despite having low chances of winning, they are doing their best of their ability. During a little league baseball game, a little boy swung at his third strike. The umpire was my Uncle and he said, “I think I’ll give the little fellow another swing”. No one complained since the batter was the smallest kid and was doing his best. My father told me this true story and it always makes me smile when I think of it.

Another great trait to have in life is not feeling sorry for yourself. Life is seldom easy and usually quite difficult for most. It serves no purpose to feel sorry for yourself or to assume that someone else is holding you down for a promotion or in a relationship or whatever. When you feel sorry for yourself, it can be very self destructive to your inner spirit. When you fall down, you should stand up, dust yourself off and move forward in life. Your inner spirit will thank you for it.

In conclusion, if you follow some of these very simple rules in my article, you will be successful in everything that you do. You will be someone that others respect and want to emulate. Just remember to have a good attitude, especially when things are not going well. Learn from your mistakes and have humility in your personal and professional life. Put your best effort into whatever you do and don’t make assumptions about how others think about you. Just focus on your dreams, stay positive in everything you do. And remember…”Attitude is Everything”…

Richard Sizemore