A Successful Attitude Helps Create A Successful Life

You Can Always Change Yourself By Adjusting Your Attitude 

Your attitude is the summation of your personal philosophy on life. 

As Jim Rohn says, "Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out." 

Hence, your attitude, being the summation of your personal philosophy, can be considered the greatest determining factor in how you shape your life and control your destiny (i.e. how you Live A Determined Life).

Look at these personal philosophies and you can tell exactly what kinds of attitudes these highly successful people have:

The world is a great mirror. It reflects back to you what you are. If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the world will prove loving and friendly and helpful to you. The world is what you are. ~Thomas Dreier

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.  ~Oprah Winfrey 

Positive self-direction is the action plan that all winners in life use to turn imagination into reality, fantasy into fact, and dreams into actual goals. ~Denis Waitley

People who stay on top, who are winners year after year, have one thing in common – a winning attitude. They know that complacency breeds mediocrity, so they give 100 percent. They always are the best they can be, and they never spend time thinking about what they have done, because it steals from what they’ve yet to do. ~A. J. Foyt

Man is unlike any other animal on the planet in that we can create our own motivations and attitudes. 

This wasn't the common thinking for thousands of years when men thought they were merely at the mercy of pre-ordained destinies. William James, the 19th Century philosopher, was most influential in spreading the understanding that man could control his destiny. He wrote: "The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing their inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

While that was extremely revolutionary thinking at the end of the 19th century, it is certainly the accepted thinking today, at least in those parts of the world which have advanced beyond the basic poverty level. 

The bottom line is, while you may not be able to change the world, or the events in the world directly or indirectly impacting upon you, you can always change yourself by adjusting your attitude and your thinking. 

This article is excerpted from the best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats. 

Knowing Yourself / Defining Yourself

Life is about creating yourself

As you continue on your life's journey it is critical, as American actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein wrote, to "accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself."  

The journey of self awareness and self understanding is a difficult and long one. As we quoted Miguel de Cervantes in the previous post Know Thyself, "Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world." 

Difficult, yes. Impossible? Definitely not. 

The foundation of your own self definition will be expressed in your own self image. What you project to the world, and to yourself, reflects how well you understand yourself. The better this understanding, the greater will be the satisfactions you feel and experience.

Here are some quotations from our book Project You: Words of Wisdom to help you along this journey of self understanding and knowing one's self:

He who knows others is learned; He who knows himself is wise. Lao-Tzu 

He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe. Marcus Aurelius 

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Max Ehrman 

I am learning to be patient and compassionate with myself as I gain the courage to be true to myself. Shakti Gawain 

As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you the first time around. Oprah Winfrey 

Again, the better your understanding of yourself the greater will be the satisfactions you feel and experience.

After all, as George Bernard Shaw said, "Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

That's a philosophy at the heart of Living A Determined Life. 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Words of Wisdom, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.