About every four or five weeks, I take an active role in motivational meetings that are usually held in central London.
The meetings are great but so are the journeys, a couple of hours train ride in the morning and then again in the evening. That enforced rest for two hours at a time is usually spent reading inspirational books or networking with travelling companions.
It was different many years ago when I had to commute to a job; my attitude to those enforced daily journeys was far less positive; then I looked at the travelling as a boring waste of time. Taking a journey by train now is something very civilised that I look forward to every time.
Sometimes, when the meetings are held at a different location, it is necessary for me to drive. This is not so enjoyable because driving is not resting and I cannot read or network.
However, I am always looking to get a positive outcome from every challenge so I use the enforced hours of solitude to listen to motivational programs on CD. These can be by business professionals who uplift or inspire me or I often return to my favourites, the audio versions of Think & Grow Rich and The Science of Getting Rich.
One recent morning, I was not sufficiently organised for the trip and I forgot to load any CDs for my journey. This dawned on me when I had gone too far to return home and still be on time for my meeting.
I was really annoyed with myself but as usual endeavoured to turn the mistake into a positive and tried the radio, hoping for inspiration. Bingo! The radio program was a cracker; it was about positive thinking, based on nun’s diaries.
The gist of the programme was that a group at a University somewhere made a study of diaries that had been written by Catholic Nuns. I forget which University carried out the study but their findings were fascinating.
The nuns were groups of women who lived together in very similar environments. They all did the same tasks, wore the same cloths, they ate identical diets and went to bed and got up at very similar times. They all kept similar diaries or journals, all their life. The only thing that was different was “Their Attitude.”
The researchers read the diaries and based on the content, they assessed the attitude of the women who had written them. They then gave each nun a score of 1, 2, 3 or 4 for the positiveness of their attitude as it appeared in the diary. This research used diaries that spanned more than 60 years and the results were consistent.
All of the nuns that unswervingly had the positive scores of 1, lived to be 80 years old or more. The least positive, most negative nuns who scored mainly 4, nearly all died in their 40′s or younger. Those that scored 2 and 3 had a lifespan between these times.
The only thing that was different about any of these women was their attitude to life and how they either thought positively or whinged and whined to their diary.
This shows that there is one thing which will determine above all else, how successful you are in your life. It has nothing to do with your education, your knowledge, your age, your gender, your race, or your experience. It has everything to do with your attitude or to be more precise, YOUR POSITIVE ATTITUDE.
The world is full of people who can give you any number of reasons why something won’t work. And guess what… if you start out with the belief that a particular idea or approach won’t work, it’s bound to fail. It’s pre-determined. Your only consolation will be that you were right all along!!
Likewise, you can pre-determine your success. If you believe you’ll be successful… that it will work then the way you act and behave will ensure that it does work. You were right again but this time the overall result is much more to your liking. Anything will work if you approach it with an open mind and a positive ‘can do’ attitude.
We go against the tide when we try to fight reality, and resist change. Change is going to happen, whether you like it or not.