Positive attitude makes success an achievable goal

Why is it that some people are seen to be more successful than others?

Why do some people seem to be "stuck" in middle or lower management when others seem to rise to the top ranks of management?

Why do some people think it all depends on brains, talent, who you know, or just luck to be successful in business?

The key ingredient above all else is attitude.

Through research over a number of years, Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on optimism, discovered that attitude was a much more consistent predictor of success than IQ, education and a wide range of other factors tested.

He also found that people with positive attitudes stay healthier, have better relationships and achieve higher levels of success in their careers.

He found that people with positive attitudes will earn a lot more money over their life spans.

Importantly, anyone can adopt the right attitude, a positive attitude. It is who you are that will be the foundation of your success.

Personal characteristics can be cultivated, and indeed, require cultivation over time. Unless they are strengthened through conscious attention, they can be forgotten or ignored in the complexity of daily life.

Line of choice

A simple model can help reinforce the need to continually focus on a positive attitude as a foundation for your success. This model is called the line of choice, the choice between living above the line or living below the line.

The key difference between operating above the line versus below the line is a focusing on what you do to generate results versus focusing on what the other person does to negate results.

As a business owner or a business leader, it is important to clearly set expectations for everyone to operate in both their professional life and in their personal life to make the positive and optimistic above the line attitude choices for self and community success.

Seven key points

Here are seven key points that will lead to success through operating above the line:

1. Take charge of your own destiny. Believe that anything is possible. If you spend your entire career waiting for something exciting to happen, you will be waiting a long time. If you think you can't achieve something, you probably won't.

2. Demonstrate integrity and authenticity internally and externally in everything you do. Integrity and authenticity require self-reflection, the ability to understand oneself honestly, the ability to assess one's strengths and weaknesses accurately, and the ability to accept who you are.

Make sure what you promise is what you deliver, and only make promises that you are willing and intend to keep.

Communicate broken agreements at the first opportunity and clear up all broken agreements immediately.

3. Understand that principles are more important than rules. Perform in a way demonstrating that order based on principle is important for success in a group but rigidity through rules will not only stultify activities, it will also destroy morale as people take their attitude Below the Line.

4. Be consistent and disciplined in activities, communications and in attitude. This will allow people dealing with you in any of your relationships to feel comfortable with you at all times. And possess a sense of humor so that you take your responsibilities seriously but never take yourself seriously.

Have fun so that your life as a journey is enjoyed and appreciated in a way that those around you also enjoy life as well.

5. Care for others and their well-being. Rarely can anything be done by one person alone … something of lasting value is almost always the result of some form of group effort. Show appreciation often and in many ways so everyone around you knows how much you appreciate everything and everyone who is connected to your life.

6. Use failure as a way to pave for success. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is the way in which they deal with failure.

While it may appear that some people never experience setbacks, it is reality that everyone will have failures from time to time.

Have the confidence to encourage risk-taking as a way to improve your business and as a way to provide opportunities for even greater personal success.

7. Never accept less than excellence. Good enough is not good enough. Only deliver products and services of exceptional quality that add value to all involved for the long term.

The question "who are you?" is the foundation for a never-ending journey to success … without fabrication and with consistency.

A guru of understanding the basics of success, Sun Tzu, wrote 2,400 years ago: "Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat. If ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle."

Iain Macfarlane is the president and founder of BizCOACHING & Associates in Madison, a franchise of ActionCOACH Business Coaching. He was named "Coach of the Year 2005."