After reading Mike Cooper's post The lifespan of a blog I thought, what the heck I'll go back and check my numbers since it's been awhile. I highly recommend you read Mike's post and take a look at your numbers too. Quite informative and enlightening activity to do today and into the future.
Honestly I wasn't shocked with my results. The same post that continues to go on and on and on, had nothing to do with being a real estate professional and yet it has everything to do with being a real estate professional and every other business for that matter! It was posted in June of 2009. Let's see if this new revived post receives a few more comments then it did back then (2). So far the 2009 post has 17,347 views and 301 short url clicks. Somebody out there appreciated the post! And maybe you will too! Let's hope the post continues to give some food for thought as well! And isn't that the point of blogging!
Behavior Affects Attitude; Attitude Affects Behavior
One of the fastest ways to change our external circumstances is to change the way we think about things! No matter how well trained we are at controlling our self-talk, sometimes we confuse two basic concepts: attitude and behavior.
Behavior is, quite simply, the way we act - the things we do and including tone of voice, facial expressions, hand gestures, eye contact, and word choices etc. Generally speaking, behavior follows attitude. We tend to behave the way we feel.
Sometimes, though, we find ourselves in a position when we have to alter our behavior to be different from our underlying attitude. I heard a contractor at a recent networking event describe a success he'd recently had. When working with a very challenging client, he learned to bite his tongue and let her be right, even when he would have preferred to argue with her. It was not easy but he's learned that letting the challenging client get the best of you usually doesn't bode well for the length of the client relationship. Granted, sometimes you definitely need to let some clients go elsewhere - but usually, as this contractor learned, a little discipline (behavior)helped change his attitude and made all the difference.
The lesson here is that we all have the ability to control our behaviors, independent of how we feel, because it's our conscious minds that determine how we act. The most amazing outcome of this awareness is that by controlling our behavior, we can control our attitudes - exactly the reverse of the way most people live.
We can choose how we want to feel by choosing the way we behave!
Catch-22
Our attitude affects our behavior. Likewise, our behavior affects our attitude. Like the graphic depicts, this means there are two ways to get to the same place. We can start on the inside, changing the programmed beliefs and thought patterns that determine our values, which in turn affect our attitudes, which therefore determine our behaviors. The thing about this process of change is that it can take a LONG LONG time.
The quicker, more effective way is to change our behavior first. This is a much more active way of taking control of our life circumstances, and the marvelous thing is that our attitudes will change to reflect our new behavior.
Doubt it? Try this, right now. Push your chair back from your desk, stand up, and yell at the top of your lungs, I AM ENTHUSIASTIC!" Yes, your office-mates will think you're nuts, but maybe, just maybe you can teach them and you )something new.
The fact is, you can't pretend to be enthusiastic if you don't have at least a little enthusiasm for what you're doing. If you stood up and whispered, " I am enthusiastic," so low that your potted plants could barely hear you, you probably didn't experience a noticeable change in attitude. But if you really took me seriously and shouted at the top of your lungs, " I AM ENTHUSIASTIC!!" I can promise that you feel differently now than you did when you first started reading this post.
Behavior can follow attitude, but why do it the hard way? If you focus on taking control of your behavior so that your attitude follows, you'll begin to see shifts in every area of your personal and professional life.
Behavior VS Attitude - Which works faster and better?
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