Managing Your Attitude: Why Positive Attitude Is Your Best Motivation

By Dorcas Karuana,
“The discontent and frustration that you feel is entirely your own creation.” Stephen Richards, is perhaps the best way to demonstrate how attitude affects our success or failure. Your attitude can be your greatest asset or your greatest liability. Our attitude affects our behavior, which in turn is demonstrated by our performance, and it’s no wonder that attitude is so important in our life’s as it determines how we relate to others, how we do our jobs and even how we fell about ourselves.
In the workplace, employers and organizations have the right to expect that an employee’s behavior and performance will have a positive impact upon their organization. You will agree with me that an organization comprised of employees who have a negative influence on their customers and co-workers will not be in business for very long.  But organizations whose employees have a positive impact on their co-workers, their customers, and their company will enjoy many years of success.
To Stay Positive, Avoid Negative People. Attitude, whether positive or negative, is contagious.  From your own experience, think about how you feel when you have to work with a negative person. Do you remember times when someone else’s negativity influenced your own performance that day? Even though you may love your job and you’re proud of the products and services you deliver, you probably felt that you and your organization weren’t doing their best. And if you had to work with a negative person for a long period of time, their poor attitude may have even made you want to quit your job. That’s the power a negative attitude can have on us.
If you have to work with negative people, try to limit additional interactions. You are not obligated to carpool with them, go to lunch with them, or spend time with them after work. Part of your responsibility as a professional is to be the kind of employee that others are not trying to get away from, but rather, to be a positive person with whom they enjoy working and seek out.
Your Positive Attitude is Your Best Motivation. Unaware of this, some employees often say, “My job is hard work. And my organization doesn’t even try to motivate me to do my best.” You may not realize it, but your performance has the power to make or break your organization.
A positive attitude is not taught but self acquired. It is not the responsibility of your employer to motivate employees because motivation cannot come from the outside. Motivation is “an inside job.” This means that employees should not have to be coddled or coerced into working hard and doing an excellent job. A valuable employee, the kind an organization would work hard to hire and retain, is self-motivated.
Most people do not separate attitudes from actions. They find it difficult to display a positive attitude even if one is feeling sad, depressed, or angry.  At one point, employees may find themselves in situations where they simply cannot let their internal feelings influence their actions.  But just think of this; ‘would you like your lawyer to argue your case poorly because she didn’t feel like talking today?’ S/he is required to behave in a certain, prescribed way regardless of their attitude.  And you certainly expect them to do that-no matter what.
But how do you stay enthusiastic and excited about your job if you’ve been at it for a while and things at work or at home are not going perfectly?  When actors are on stage, they know they must be so good at what they do that their performance will set them apart from the rest of the cast and make them memorable.  Be eager to take over the role the moment that actor begins to deliver a performance that is less than top quality.
Attitude is contagious, analyze your attitude and determine whether or not you’re helping to create a healthy home or work environment. Always try to have positive influence on your friends, colleagues, customers and your organization.
[Adopted from ‘Living Life Fully’]