Choosing Your Attitude

It can be a challenging time when our world as we know it shifts beneath out feet. One of my favourite quotes is:

Don't worry about having the carpet pulled from under your feet; learn to dance on a shifting carpet.

That's the key right now, and it all depends on where your focus is and what attitude you choose to bring to this moment. At no point in time has it been more important to manage your mental state and choose where your mind goes and what you are focusing on. If you are focused on the doom and gloom than that is going to be all you will see. If you shorten your focus and become present in the moment, you will be able to see that you are, in fact ok. You will also be much more likely to be able to creatively deal with whatever comes towards you and still create the career you want.

What ever is happening in your world right now right now you have one tool that is very powerful – the free will to choose your attitude to what is going on around you. In my book Remembering Perfection in the chapter Reality and Attitude I talk about how the one thing we have absolute control over is the attitude we choose to adopt when something happens in our lives. Right now, when it can feel like everything is outside of your control it is quite useful to feel in control of one aspect.

So choose your attitude. If you are effected by the 'credit crunch' ask yourself what attitude can I adopt that would put me in the most positive mindset to handle this well.

One thing you can do is to stop making it personal to you. By this I mean rather than 'woe is me, the credit crunch is happening to me', simply 'there is a credit crunch'. What this does is that is gives you a nanosecond of choice. A moment where you can choose to think creatively, not only about solutions, but also new opportunities that you could create. It gives you the ability to respond with awareness rather than unconsciously react.

For example a client of mine who is a graphic designer recently looked at the current climate and decided that this was a good time to open her business. She has extensive corporate branding experience and could offer a high quality of design for half the cost of the large design agencies. The attitude she adopted successfully was one of 'it's an opportunity." If she had listened to the doom and gloom merchants she would never have been so positive.

Often our fears are mental constructs that we get caught up in, and then it can be very difficult to talk ourselves back into calmness and clarity. Once we start to focus on the fear factor the filters in our unconscious mind start to look for evidence of what we are focusing on. Neuro-Linguistic Programming teaches about these filters and demonstrates how our unconscious mind can only let in approximately 134 bits of information each second from the 2 million that are coming towards us. If we start to focus on what is wrong we will see the evidence.

For example have you ever had the situation when you see something for the first time – like a car model that takes your fancy – and then you start to see it everywhere? This is the unconscious mind filtering for something we have taken notice of. With this fact in mind start to become aware of what you are filtering for and consciously give yourself a new focus. Our attitude to what is happening is a filter so start to become very aware of how you are approaching your own life.

This is where visualisation can be useful, ten minutes every day focused on what you would like to bring into your life and how that will feel, is a far better focus than the one you will get by reading all the bad news and watching the news channel 24/7. I am a great believe
of limiting the amount of negativity we expose ourselves to.

I am not saying don't be informed – that would be irresponsible, but I am saying don't watch the repeats of the bad news all day, everyday. Get the information that is relevant to your life, deal with it in whatever way you can, and then be vigilant as to where your focus goes for the rest of the day. I have found that by severely limiting my exposure to the news and newspapers I still know what is going on the world, but I don't choose to talk about it all the time, chu
it over with friends how terrible things are and make it my main focus of the day.

It is a turbulent time and to flow with it as smoothly as possible and deal with all that comes, a positive attitude will serve us the best. The present moment holds that calm space, so I invite you to spend some time each day getting in touch with that space within you that is always present. The space where you feel strong and competent and not only ready and able to deal with whatever may come, but also able to go out and create the life you want.