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In working with clients I tend to hear from people who are unsure of what they want to do with the rest of their life, but will focus on telling me what they don't want to do. It goes something like this, "I've worked it that industry before and wouldn't want to do that again."
The reality is, successful people focus on what they do want and how they are going to accomplish it. As a result of this mental attitude, they have much more fulfilling careers.
Unsuccessful people, who wander from one thing to another, tend to focus on what they don't want out of life. As a result, they usually get just that!
Martin Seligman author of the best-selling book Learned Optimism, interviewed 350,000 men and women over a twenty-year period to find out how their thinking patterns.
What Seligman discovered was that the predominant quality of successful people is optimism. People who succeed in their career fields are much more optimistic than the average person. They simply have a positive mental attitude about themselves and others.
Let's think about how people fall into patterns of negative thinking. Many people start their days out watching or listening to the news as they grab their cup of coffee and rush out the door to work. This feeds a lot of negative input into the brain. Disasters, fatalities, and corruption are all part of what sells in news these days. Instead of absorbing this negative input to start off, how about replacing it with something positive - like spending time in scripture, exercising and reading, or listening to something that motivates you to achieve?
Of course, I'm not saying that you should ignore the news like an ostrich with its head in the sand. Instead keep it in small doses and don't make it the platform by which you start each morning. Remember, the first 60 minutes of each day will set the tone for what the remainder of the day will look like.
Want to start your first 60 minutes out right? Check out Dan's new inspirational book, The Rudder of The Day.
To access the links in this article, visit www.careercalling.com/Archives.htm and read edition July 22, 2005.