Attitude ls Everything
    One of the most important steps you can take toward achieving  your greatest potential in life is to learn to monitor your attitude and its impact on your work performance, relationships and everyone around you.
    I generally start my workshops and seminars by asking a fundamental question:  What attitude have you brought to this meeting? This often brings puzzled looks. In truth, people generally don't have a high level of attitude awareness. They know if they are hungry or if their feet hurt,  but they usually neglect to trouble over their attitude.  That is a mistake because attitude is everything. lt governs the way you perceive the world and the way the world perceives you.
    We all have a choice.  We can choose an inner dialogue of self-encouragement and selfmotivation,  or we can choose one of self-defeat and self-pity.  lt's a power we all have.  Each of us encounters hard times, hurt feelings, heartache, and physical and emotional pain. The key is to realize it's not what happens to us that matters;  it's how we choose to respond.
    Our minds are computers that can be programmed.  We can choose whether the software installed is productive or unproductive.  Our inner dialogue is the software that programs our attitudes,  which determines how we present ourselves to the world around us. We have control over the programming. Whatever we put into it is reflected in what comes out.
    Many of us have behavior patterns  today that were programmed into our brains at a but we don't have to program it into our brains.
    The loudest and most influential voice we hear is our own inner voice,  our main source of self-criticism. lt can work for or against us, depending on the messages we allow. lt can beoptimistic or pessimistic. lt can wear us down or cheer us on.  We control the sender and the receiver,  but only if we consciously take responsibility for and exercise control over our inner conversation.
    Habitual bad attitudes are often the product of past experiences and events. Common causes include low self-esteem, stress, fear, resentment, anger and an inability to handle change.  lt takes serious work to examine the roots of a harmful attitude,  but the rewards of ridding ourselves of this heavy baggage can last a lifetime.