Coach Phil explains why exercising your attitude is just as important as your body.
October 2007,
When we talk about fitness, we generally think about our "physical fitness" - the act of getting to the gym, taking exercise classes, lifting weights, running or biking. We envision a body with no flaws with great stamina and strength.
But there is another area of fitness that is even more critical to our business, personal life and overall well being. It's our attitude.
Attitude is Everything
We have heard many times, "Attitude is everything!" Well, truer words have not been spoken. Let's take a look at the definition of "attitude:" "A position of the body or manner of carrying oneself; a state of mind or a feeling; disposition; the orientation of an aircraft's axes relative to a reference line or plane, such as the horizon."
Attitude is the actual positioning of oneself in order to correct and put ourselves into alignment. Just like the aircraft must align itself in relation to the horizon, or what will happen? That's right. It will crash and burn. Just like us, we must align ourselves with the good that we want and veer away from what we don't want.
You're in Control
More closely, attitude is the conversation or thoughts we have with ourselves about something or someone. And who controls that particular conversation or thought? We do!
For example, let's focus on your real estate business. There may be a few different conversations that you may hold with yourself about your real estate career (All of which are made up by you). Perhaps you focus on, "This is too hard," or "I hate working with buyers," or "I hate listings. I have too many and they are not selling," or even, "This market is awful. I can't do it."
Or the opposite conversation: "I love my career, I get to work with who I want, I love my clients. Selling real estate is easy! Wow, I get listings every time! I feel energized!"
Empower Yourself
Which of these conversations do you believe will help you to mentally and emotionally operate more effectively? Which conversation provides more enthusiasm, enjoyment and empowerment? Which conversation "moves" you to better thinking, thereby creating better results?
The second conversation definitely gives you more empowerment and clarity, doesn't it? Empowerment builds you up. It creates a higher mood level, thereby creating more positive energy, which stimulates and leads to creating a fit attitude!
The first conversation, or negative conversation, was one of disempowerment, which creates a significantly lower mood level immediately. It sinks in to a low energy state and sucks out all creativity and excitement, thereby causing a great deal of doubt and uncertainty. In many instances for Realtors®, it leads them to a depressed state, which is the lowest emotional state you can experience. This is where no productive behavior can be achieved easily.
A Stronger Position to Face Life's Challenges
When we operate from an empowered state, then we are acting from a fit mental state. This instantly puts us in a much stronger position to handle the constant ups and downs that life offers us each day. We are ready to maximize the wonderful opportunities that come our way unexpectedly and expectedly. It also gives us a strong foundation to align ourselves to withstand the many challenges that life will throw at us.
This is a fact of life. The control we have over external situations is zero. What we do have control over is how we let it affect us, how we handle it and move forward to our next challenge or opportunity.
The ways we do handle our challenges is determined solely by our attitude. The more we practice correcting and fine-tuning our attitude, the better and quicker we can correct our thinking to meet the challenges head-on and turn them into opportunities. In other words, we are building up our "toolbox" to aid us in handling every situation that will come to us. The better the tools we implement into that toolbox, the better we will be able to navigate through all kinds of challenges and opportunities.
Practice Makes Perfect
We must practice continually empowering our minds via our attitude through conversations and thoughts. "I can do this." "I will handle it." "This is great! I love my life, I love myself." "I am powerful and creative," and so on. When we fill our minds with this kind of thinking, we have less room for the disempowering negative thinking. It will no longer freely creep into our thoughts.
This is our attitudinal workout, if you will. We are taking the necessary steps to working on our attitude, or "working out" our attitudes. With the proper tools in our toolboxes, we become stronger mentally and more ready to react with fitness and speed in order to calm rough waters or to take advantage of opportunities faster than other agents. We become the fitness gurus of mental acuity.
Propel Yourself Toward Your Goals
We get to propel ourselves toward our goals and gain the power to attain them rather than letting those disempowering conversations take you in the opposite direction of your goals, thereby making them more difficult to attain.
Using our "new attitudinal pull," we have created a system that will help us to attain so much more out of our real estate lives and even more important, to help pave the way to truly enjoying the process of achieving all the goals that you decide you want to achieve.
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