Book Summary "Attitude That Attract Success"

Attitudes That Attract Success

By Wayne Cordeiro, OMF Literature Inc., 2005

taken from amazon.com

In Hawaii, there is a custom of giving leis as an act of hospitality, honor or friendship.

If you string together old socks, the whole world has this funny odor to it.

A lei is usually made up of flowers strung together and     Your attitude is like a fragrance hung around a person’s neck.               you carry around with you. The We give leis to say “Thank you”        difference is that skunks carry and we give leis to say               a bad odor while a beautiful

“Goodbye.” Hawaiian plumeria blossom carries a fragrance. Whether Our attitude is like a lei. Each of you like it or not, each of us us has one, but we have the carries one of the above. You choice of what we are going to choose which it will be.

string together to make up that lei. If you string together a collection of dried fish, everything starts smelling fishy!

INSIDE THIS SUMMARY The Big Idea Why You Need this Book Make Your Choice Believe You Can Change Train Your Eyes to See What is Good

Raise the Bar of Excellence Play the Right Background Music Practice, Practice, Practice! Finish Well Now You Get to Choose

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Why You Need this Book

This book gives practical steps to building internal values and perspectives that will change your life!

If you’re not experiencing the full life that you can be living, this book will show you the common mistakes that all of us make without realizing it, what separates successful people from perpetual losers, and how to change the way you think. Your great new future is a lot closer than you know. In fact, it’s just one attitude away!

Make Your Choice

Making the wrong choices – now that would be tragic! Nevertheless, as dumb as it sounds, that’s exactly what we do. So far too often we see the consequences of making a bad choice or walking through life with a bad attitude, and yet we choose that attitude anyway. Then when relationships fail, when we lose friends or forfeit a great opportunity, it really should be no surprise. Yet some of us are still taken aback when this happens.

Deposit into your heart the necessary ingredients to develop a life-changing attitude.

Make that choice right now. It may come slowly at first, but don’t give up. The new attitude may feel awkward at first, but practice until it becomes natural.

You are only one attitude away from a great life, a successful marriage and a promising future!

Believe You Can Change

Your attitude is the set of your sail. You must choose the direction you want your life to travel and set your heart accordingly. There will be storms, but it will be your attitude toward those storms that drives you in one direction or another, not the storm itself.

Each of us will be surrounded with problems at times, and we will often find ourselves steeped in hot water. But remember that the event will soon pass. The event is temporary, but the effects of how we respond in the midst of the event will last much longer. A poor attitude in the midst of the storm can cause the storm to rage inside for a lifetime.

You will see problems everywhere, but don’t allow your eyes to remain focused on them. Look for answers and that’s what you will see. Develop a new perspective – a fresh view of your problems. Solve them; don’t dwell on them. You’ll be tempted to remain in a slough of despair. It feels good sometimes to be pitied, and many of us look for reasons to remain in our unhappy circumstances. But don’t do it.

Failure is not when you get knocked down. Failure is when you refuse to get back up after having been knocked down. Don’t hang around the swamps of despair. They will only skew your attitude and impede your resilience. Learn to bounce back quickly.

So when you go through hell, don’t stop to take pictures.

Train Your Eyes to See What is Good

Have you ever gotten so caught up in the details of life that before you know it, the ride is over? You begin your days with a jolt of coffee, motor from task to task, and return home exhausted – only to get up and do it all over again.

Don’t miss the ride! Instead of driving through at a relentless pace, let’s slow down.

Here are a few ways you can learn to enjoy the ride:

1.    Take five minutes today and write down the names of two people you appreciate. They may be people who have gone unnoticed. Write them a note of thanks. Be sure to add as much detail as you can about how that person’s actions blessed you. And send it!

2.    Don’t forget to laugh. Some of us need to learn to laugh again. There is plenty to laugh about in life, and we need to laugh.

3.    Do one thing for yourself today.

Write it into your schedule. Whatever it is, take time to enjoy life in its simplest form.

4.    Make a new friend today. A great place to start is with your family. You’ll be surprised how many of us are related but not friends. Life is too short for that. By establishing deep friendships with your family, you’ll begin to reap one of life’s greatest promises and rewards.

Pause long enough to enjoy the ride. Train yourself to see what is good. You will be pleasantly surprised how a new perspective will help you to develop an attitude that attracts friends, laughter, joy and success!

Raise the Bar of Excellence

Though we may have excelled in our approach to life, we must continue to develop it every day. We need to practice having an excellent attitude in each and every endeavor, for it will always be true that we can improve the way we see problems, people and life.

Even if it’s only 1 percent each day, improve something about yourself. Sharpen something! If you can improve just 1 percent a day, that means over one year you will have improved more than 300 percent for your life. Just 1 percent a day!

Look for something to improve about yourself. It may be the way you stand or comb your hair or something to improve your hygiene. It could be the way you shake your hands or the way you look at people in the eye when you talk with them. It may be something about your posture or your speech. Instead of responding requests by muttering, “Yeah, okay,” say, “Sure I would love to!” When someone asks for your help, instead of replying, “I guess so,” say, “I would be more than honored to help!” Raise the bar!

Play the Right Background Music

Our internal music is composed of the thoughts we think over and over. These include selected memories – maybe something your mom or dad once said to you, a word of encouragement from a teacher, or the way you felt when you weren’t picked to be on the team or to be someone’s friend. As you dwell on these memories, experiences and thoughts, they are recorded on the soundtrack of your mind and play continuously all day long.

Whatever you play on this internal sound system affects everything about you – your attitude, your self-image, your confidence level, your relationships, the way you communicate with others and even your faith. Memories hang on for a long time if you let them. They will play the selections attached to them, giving you feelings of fear or courage, insecurity or assurance.

You are the disc jockey. What is your play list? You get to make the selections, so choose wisely!

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Read each definition that follows. Then evaluate where you stand and determine which areas you need to prioritize for practice.

Love

Am I consistently committed to helping others develop and discover the very best in their lives? Do I treat others as they should be treated?

Joy

Do I trust the fact that every situation is good because it can be learned from, regardless of how it looks to me? Do I take joy from knowing this, or do I tend to draw my contentment from pleasant situations and circumstances?

Peace

Do I bring a calming effect to every situation, or do I stir up people’s feathers?

Am I a reconciler or an instigator? Do I tend to fix the blame or fix the problem?

Patience

Do I give people room to fail, and then help them look for the lessons of life that can be extracted from that failure? Or do I keep score of hits and errors?

Kindness

Am I kind? When working with people under my supervision or care, do I appeal to them kindly? Or do I have a tendency to order them around? How do I behave toward my family?

Goodness

Is the core of my heart good? Do I want the success of others, or do I look out only for myself, regardless of what happens to others?

Faithfulness

Am I loyal? Can I keep confidences, or do I have the tendency to share private information about others? Am I a faithful spouse, or do I emotionally court other relationships?

Gentleness

How do I deal with others’ failures, especially if it affects me? Am I more concerned about my welfare or theirs?

Self-control

Do I control my thoughts or do they stray? Am I able to discipline my emotions and sexual desires?

Take the time to practice these character qualities you need to build within you and express through you. The more you practice these things, the more fruitful you’ll be in your attitude, business, and family. So practice, practice, practice!

Finish Well

Each of us can live an extraordinary life with an attitude of excellence, but it must be diligently cultivated. Let’s take a look at four keys to living an extraordinary life. Each of these four keys seems simple, but each is priceless.

1. Aim for the Right Target.An attitude that attracts success begins with knowing which opportunities to accept and which to reject. This way you will begin to develop not just an existence but a LIFE.

Remember, first aim for the right target. What are you aiming for? What is your goal? That will determine the race you run.

2. Run the Right Race.

You cannot run someone else’s race; you can only run your own. If you run the wrong race, you’ll end up at the wrong finish line.

3. Understand What Satisfies Your Soul.

Contentment cannot be acquired directly. Rather, it is a by-product of a life that is focused on the right things. Truly content people are those whose aim in life is something much bigger than attaining mere contentment alone.

If your sole aim is to acquire possessions and money in order to be comfortable and content, then contentment will be as elusive as a butterfly.

Learn to understand what truly satisfies you – what satisfies your soul. Otherwise, you will never develop an attitude of true contentment. You’ll always be looking for a good time but never finding it.

4. Make Contentment an Inside Job.Contentment is vital in developing an extraordinary attitude and, as discussed in the previous point, must be aimed for instead of instant and all too temporary gratification. Contentment is nothing less than the final and critical key in your process of selfimprovement.

Now You Get to Choose

There was once a story told of two prisoners lying on their bunks one evening. The prisoner on the top bunk was staring out the window of his cell into the night sky. The stars were spread out in a splendid array, with an occasional shooting star making the evening sky a spectacular display of fireworks.

Calling to his cell mate in the bunk below, the man said, “Hey, wake up! Look at the stars! They’re beautiful. Look!”

“Aw, leave me alone,” his cell mate grunted.

“Come. Just look. The stars tonight are the brightest I’ve ever seen!”

His cell mate groaned and turned over in his bunk to look out at the night sky. After a brief glance, he growled, “I don’t see no stars. All I see are the bars.”

One prisoner saw the stars; the other saw the bars. It all depends on your attitude, doesn’t it? Contentment is an inside job. You will either be a master or a victim of your attitude.

So, too, is set before you the decision of facing life with a great attitude or with a poor one. Choose a good attitude that you might experience life the way it was meant to be lived!

But it takes training, discipline and desire to develop your perspective to see what’s good. Choose, because both will be present – the stars and the bars. Look for the stars, and you can reach them! Look for the bars, and they’ll surely imprison you.

Look for the stars. They’re out tonight. Follow them, and they just may lead you to a bright future.

You’re only one attitude away from a fantastic life!