Attitude Creates Environment -Environment Generates Outcomes

So you know, I heard this first from John Maxwell as “Attitude Defines Environment, Environment Defines Outcomes.” I modified it because Creates and Generates have greater impact on this excellent life principle.

An exercise we used in sales training classes was to put up the words Attitude and Skill and then ask the participants to call out words that are qualities of a good salesperson. The results were always the same. Most words fell on the side of Attitude. Henry Ford said, Success is 85% Attitude and 15% Skill. Another life principle might be that Attitude will get you further ahead in life then Skill all by itself. We all know very well educated and skilled people who other people just don’t listen to because the ‘skilled’ person has a ‘superior’ attitude. By now you’ve been thinking about the word Attitude and have thought up several descriptive opinions based on facial expressions, body posture, a glance, a turning, and words. As I’m writing this, I’m thinking mostly of bad attitudes in the forms of body positions and words. I must now force myself to think of those positive and encouraging, facial expressions, body postures, glances, turns and words based on a positive mindset that move me. Better yet, that move WE! Attitude is a connecting point, a bridge between, a coupling, a union, where WE sense starting with me, that this is going to be good and we can ‘Create’ something good with this interaction.

Create is quite a word. I like this description from the dictionary; to cause to come into existence. WOW! I hope you can see that this create factor starts with me having the ability to create WE. So are you a better person when you create good or when you create bad? If you are reading this I know you are a person who wants to create good. From the play Julius Cesar by Shakespeare, “The good that people do often lives after them, the bad is interred with their bones, so let it be with Cesar.” So let it be with all of us in the ‘Here and Now!’ People who create good environments are people we all want to associate with and be around. So, let it be with all of us. We all have the ability to Create from our Attitude the Environment where we want to be connected as a part of the Win-Win.

Environment is your circumstance. You have the power to Create your circumstance. You know people ask ‘What happened’ others say ‘What’s happening’ but the best of people say, ‘Let’s make something happen!’ Whoops! Did you just think make something bad happen before good? Those old devils, Screwtape and Wormwood that CS Lewis talked about in The Screwtape Letters, love to move us in the wrong direction. I always want us to start with a good Attitude. It will be easier to Create the Environment that is generating good and improving environment.  You can do that by recognizing and nurturing the good that are in people while influencing your good in the direction of possibilities that improve the environment. It may not always be easy, but you have the power to expand the environment for the good not the bad. To paraphrase James Allen, when it comes to environment he says, circumstances don’t make the person; they reveal the person to their self.

Generates is the power that expands by creating more. Many people misconstrue power with force. Force dissipates over time. Power has the ability to increase dynamically. Like good and evil, which do you want more of? Another way to explain the difference is with the words Love and Hate. The Power of Love is so strong that when you love someone, you can’t get enough of them. You don’t have to be in the presence of that person for your thoughts to be expanding. Hate on the other hand, tends to force us into the presence of something hateful and then force us to remain for as long as it can hold us in its grips. We know the minute that ‘something’ goes away, we escape, blocking and wanting the memory to go away as if it never existed. Now let’s dwell for a moment on the principle that power is generating as in ‘Environment Generates Outcomes.’ Your Attitude is in the best place possible, right? Attitude then, is Creating, causing something to ‘come into existence’ that you can make the Environment good.  Now that we are in this  Environment, Generating more and more power, WE are ‘making it happen.’ Outcomes become united for Mutual Benefit.

Outcomes, the result of our interactions, especially with people, should always be about having mutually beneficial Outcomes. This is beyond Win-Win. Mutual is about WE. I want you to become better and better and I will help in any way I can. Conversely, you want me to become better and better and will help me in any you can.  Mutual then, is all about WE. The best possible Outcomes in people relationship are always about WE benefiting with others in our Environment.

Got the feeling, ‘Spiral Up!’

Attitude Creates Environment – Environment Generates Outcomes.

 

 

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