People often underestimate the importance of attitude when it comes to how it affects our everyday lives. Even though you may not realize it, your attitude can be projected towards others before you even open your mouth to say anything.
Our attitudes consist of more than just our words. Body language and facial expressions convey our attitudes as well.
It took me a long time to realize that the words I spoke, my enthusiasm, and my body language has an impact on people around me and the energy I attract.
Once I started working on having a more positive attitude, I quickly noticed how almost every aspect of my life improved.
My family was happier around me. They were able to talk to more openly. Strangers would compliment me. Coworkers would praise my work.
My positive attitude attracted more positivity into my life.
Learning the benefits of a positive attitude will help you change your outlook in life and overall well-being.
The Importance of Attitude: Positive Over Negative
Bad situations happen to good people sometimes. There’s no denying that. How we react to those bad situations is what affects us more than the situation itself.
Our initial reaction to a negative situation is to have a negative attitude about it.
For example, you’re getting off of work after a long day. An accident on the highway backs up traffic with over an hour delay.
You’re hungry, tired, and just want to relax for the rest of the evening. Your first thought may be, why me? After a tough day at work why can’t I get home and just unwind?
You begin to yell at cars around you. You honk your horn out of frustration even though you know that the traffic can’t move.
Your negative attitude projects to other drivers as well and now everybody is honking their horns and yelling in frustration without consideration for the people who are actually in the accident.
Now, let’s look at this situation differently.
You’re still stuck in traffic, still tired, and still hungry. Instead of having the negative “why me” attitude, you choose to take the time to focus on something positive.
You decide to reflect on the good things that happened at work today. You choose to take the extra time in your car to listen to calming music that helps center you or your favorite podcasts. Now you have to time to call friends and family that you haven’t spoken with in a while.
You realize that someone is getting the medical help that they need in a time of emergency, am grateful that it wasn’t you, and are patient until the traffic picks back up.
The time you initially spent having a negative attitude about a bad situation was able to be turned into something positive all because of a simple attitude adjustment.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Bad situations happen to good people sometimes. There’s no denying that. How we react to those bad situations is what affects us more than the situation itself.” quote=”Bad situations happen to good people sometimes. There’s no denying that. How we react to those bad situations is what affects us more than the situation itself.”]
Benefits of a Positive Attitude
Having a positive attitude can definitely change your outlook on life and other’s reactions towards you.
The importance of attitude when we have a more positive approach can begin to show immediately.
A positive attitude can help you remain calm in situations where you would usually stress out. It boosts your confidence as well.
You’ll have a stronger ability of self-reflection and to understand how the world affects you. You’ll be more in control of your emotions.
Communicating with others will be easier because you’ll want to openly listen to their thoughts and they’ll want to do the same for you. Tensions in your relationships will decrease as well.
Being more optimistic will emit positive vibes from you and will attract those same vibes back.
Your concentration and focus on solving problems will improve because you know that those problems aren’t the end of the world. You’ll work more on figuring out solutions opposed to wondering why the problem happened in the first place.
Positive attitudes can increase your energy level and productivity, as well as your willingness to learn new things.
Also, research show that a positive attitude improves your overall health and helps you lead a happier life.
How To Develop a Positive Attitude
I’m going to be honest with you. Developing a positive attitude doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and patience with yourself.
If you’re someone, like me, who was used to having an initial negative attitude then it will take some time to reprogram yourself.
Also understand that you shouldn’t expect to be positive all of the time about every single thing. We all have our days and that’s ok.
There are steps that you should follow if you truly want to achieve a purely positive attitude.
When working on improving your attitude, you first need to understand the situations in which you usually have a negative attitude.
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Is it something frustrating like not being able to have a little me time when you get home?
Are you having health issues and dealing with chronic physical pain that’s initiating a negative attitude?
No matter what causes you to have a less than positive attitude, identifying it is the first step to an attitude adjustment.
You can begin by writing down 5 – 10 situations in a journal that cause your negative attitude.
Once you have those things written down, you should think about why you have a negative attitude and the things you need to do to change your attitude into a positive.
Keep in mind that only you can control your attitude. Other people may cause situations that may put you in a negative mood, but only you can internally process those situations and give a positive output.
Let’s say that someone ate your last piece of candy out of your jar on your work desk. You know who did it and you’re ready to confront them. You don’t mind sharing, but it was your last piece and they should’ve been considerate enough to ask before eating it even though you openly allow anyone to come get a piece whether you’re at your desk or not.
Instead of going to confront that person and cause tension at work over a piece of candy, you can look at it a different way. Now you can go buy another bag of your favorite candy and bring it to work because you weren’t going to buy a new bag until the last piece of the old bag was gone.
You buy a new bag, put it on your desk to share, and place a little note next to the jar telling everyone to please save you the last piece. Everyone respects your wishes and you never have a negative attitude about sharing your candy again.
I know this situation may seem trivial, but the steps to overcome the negativity can be applied in almost any situation. You took handle of your emotions and changed the things that you were able to control.
Developing a positive attitude with the journal method using the above story, the situation that caused the negative attitude was the last piece of candy being eaten by someone else.
The negative attitude may have been caused by something when you were younger when people took advantage of your kindness and used you for everything just to get themselves by.
The solution to change your attitude was by making a few adjustments with the things you could control.
If you work on your list one by one, then you’ll start to see a change in your attitude.
If the journal method doesn’t work for you, then you can make the intention to start your day with a positive attitude. Say your positive affirmations first thing in the morning.
Purposefully and sincerely smile at people you interact with throughout your day.
Stand tall and give eye contact when speaking with coworkers, your boss, friends, family, and even cashiers at your local grocer.
Exude your positive attitude on others and you’ll understand just how important having a positive attitude truly is.
Do you understand the importance of attitude? How do you change negative attitudes into a positive?
So well said. Having a positive outlook makes such an impact on every single aspect of life!
I totally agree! If you walk into a situation with a positive mindset, your day will likely turn out way better than if you walked in with a negative mindset. Having a great attitude is a good tool to have!
-Jennifer
https://maunelegacy.com
This is a great post… a positive attitude is so important – it can totally change the way things go in your life!
Mindset is huge. People definitely would rather be around a positive person than a negative person. It lifts you up!
I’m a bit of a negative person by nature, I can’t help it, it just seems to be the way I am. This means I have to work really hard to be positive and see small positives but I am trying hard to do this for the benefit to myself and those around me. Great post 🙂
This is such helpful advice! I agree that attitude matters and can change so much in your life.
I am currently on a journey of positivity so I’m very glad that you’re helping others on that journey as well!
I am all for positivity. I also try to have as much positive attitude and positive outlook in life. I believe in the law of attraction.