ATTTITUDE IN THE WORKPLACE

By Michael Murphy

It was the great Jim Rohn, America's business philosopher and success sage who said,

I doubt that your aspirations are to work for McDonalds even though I know that it has been a great training ground for many young people at various stages in their lives. However, Mr. Rohn's point is quite clear.

I've always found it puzzling that an employer would maintain an employee whom they didn't like. I've heard employers complain about their employees dozens of times in my life. My thought always was, 'why would you hand someone a paycheck week after week that you deemed incompetent, lazy, ignorant or uncaring about their job?' I mean, the employer is in charge of the hiring and firing of employees.

Likewise, I've found it puzzling that a person would work for someone that they despised and hated working for. Why put yourself through the anguish and the long term effect of a such a negative experience?

Your attitude is your choice regarding every aspect of your life. Especially in your job.

In a full-time job, you are spending one third of your life, 5 days per week, totally absorbed with your work. Almost 24% of your entire week is spent at your job. One third of your waking hours are spent in the workplace. Why would you do anything other than what you enjoyed and what brought you fulfillment?

I know the off-handed answer to that question. Generally what I hear is, “Well, I've got to do something for a living. I need the money.” Well, spending 1 out of every 3 waking hours doing something that you hate doing, isn't much of a living. For many people, it is a living death.

How can you change your situation if the above describes you?

You have two choices. You can choose to adopt and adapt a positive, powerful attitude or you can choose to do nothing (yes, 'not choosing' is also a choice). If you choose to do nothing, you get the default results of doing nothing. The default results are, unhappiness, misery, discontent, depression, discouragement and more unfavorable outcomes. If you choose to do something and change your attitude, then there are favorable results that go with that. Nonetheless, you have a choice.

I can best illustrate this with a wonderful story. Brian Cavanaugh tells the following story in A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul:

Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his powerful attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’

I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After eighteen hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the incident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He's a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

You, like Jerry, can choose a powerful attitude no matter what you are facing or what turn your life has taken. Indeed, it is in the most trying times of our lives when attitude determines the level of character that we will allow life to develop in us.

Choose a positive attitude at your job. You will either grow to like your job, move up, get promoted and make more money. Or, you will likely find someone else who wants to hire you for the value that you can bring to them.

Make your life better regarding your work. Choose today that you will begin the process of changing your attitude. Start finding anything that you can be positive about your job. Focus on it. As you do, you will find more things that are good about it. In so doing, you will change your life.