What is ‘attitude’?

1. An attitude, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website, "is a mental

position with regard to a fact or state; a feeling or emotion toward a fact or state."

2. Dictionary.com defines attitude as "a state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive
attitude about work".

Positive or negative attitude

Wikipedia says that attitude "is a concept in psychology. Attitudes are positive or negative views of an
'attitude object': i.e. a person, behavior or event"

Positive attitude manifests in the following ways:

 Positive thinking.
 Constructive thinking.

 Creative thinking.

 Optimism.

 Motivation and energy to do things and accomplish goals.

 An attitude of happiness.

Why is it important to have a positive attitude?

A Positive Attitude Leads to Success and Happiness:

A positive attitude helps you cope more easily with the daily affairs of life. It brings optimism
into your life, and makes it easier to avoid worries and negative thinking. If you adopt it as a way
of life, it would bring constructive changes into your life: with a positive attitude you see the
bright side of life, become optimistic, and expect the best to happen. It is certainly a state of
mind that is well worth developing.

A positive attitude is contagious:

A positive attitude leads to happiness and success and can change your whole life. If you look at
the bright side of life, your whole life becomes filled with light. This light affects not only you
and the way you look at the world, but it also affects your environment and the people around
you.

If this attitude is strong enough, it becomes contagious. It's as if you radiate light around you.

A positive frame of mind can help you in many ways, such as:
  Expecting success and not failure.
 Making you feel inspired.

 It gives you the strength not to give up, if you encounter obstacles on your way.

 It makes you look at failure and problems as blessings in disguise.

 Believing in yourself and in your abilities.

 Enables you to show self-esteem and confidence.

 You look for solutions, instead of dwelling on problems.

 You see and recognize opportunities.

How to Develop a Positive Attitude in 5 Easy Steps

Is your glass always half-empty?

Tell yourself you can change.

“Happiness is not the belief you don’t need to change, it’s that you can change.” - Achor.

Take a moment to notice the relationship between change and personal growth.

Go someplace else.

When you're taxed, it’s easy to blow small negatives out of proportion. But research shows that a new
environment can change your perspective for the better. Achor describes an experiment where Yale
medical students left class to study ancient paintings at a local art museum. After their trip, as a group
they showed a 10 percent improvement in their ability to recognize important medical details, compared
to students who didn’t take the same break. “By training their brains to see more vantage points, these
students learned to approach problems with a broader and deeper perspective,” Achor writes. Try this: If
you're stuck, expose your brain to a new environment—physically go to another place, or read or look
elsewhere—to gain a positive change of attitude.

Refuel and re-energize.

Everyone knows that tired plus hungry equals unhappy, but this combination might be more damaging
than you think. Your brain interprets lack of sleep as a threat to the central nervous system, Achor
writes, which can cloud judgment. Missing one night of sleep can cause you to remember 59 percent
fewer positive words, which could make you overly focus on the negative. “If you are well rested and just
fed, it will be easier to see the broader range of valuable details, information, and possibilities,”Achor
writes.

In one well-known Columbia Business School study, judges granted parole to only 20 percent of
applicants before lunch time, but to 60 percent after they ate something.
Try this: If your attitude is chronically cranky, look at your eating and sleeping habits. A mid-morning
snack (like the protein-fat combo of apple with peanut butter) could steady your blood sugar.

Identify both the positive and the negative.

No matter how bleak it may seem, every situation has a silver lining, Achor insists. “I’ve never
encountered an environment where positive details could not be found,” Achor writes.

Try this: Focus on an object or task and list as many descriptions as you can for 30 seconds. You get three
points for positive descriptions, and one for negative. Why include negatives? “Awareness of negatives
can motivate us to take action, and the act of looking for them can make our brain even more flexible
and nimble,” Achor says.

Talk to the right people for support.

Venting your dramas to your officemate or your sister might be more harmful than helpful. Continually
talking to like-minded people could mean you hear the same perspective on repeat, which discourages
problem solving. To get a positive attitude, seek out different viewpoints to recognize all aspects of the
issue.

Try this: With big decisions—ending a relationship; asking for a promotion—use a three-person reality
check, Achor says. “Find someone with a different personality, different economic status, and different
age group,” Achor explains. “It covers all of your bases.”

Tips to develop a positive attitude: Be positive, even if you're not feeling it quite yet. Put some
positive enthusiasm into your interactions with others and hit the ground running, excited to
begin your next project. Stop focusing on the problems in your life and instead begin to focus on
solutions and making positive changes.

1. Remember that YOU control your attitude.

2. Adopt beliefs that frame events in a positive way.
3. Create a "library" of positive thoughts.
4. Avoid angry or negative media.
5. Ignore whiners and complainers.
6. Use a more positive vocabulary.