Uncovering Success Strategies – More About Success Strategy #6
“Admit that your thoughts, attitudes, behaviors and actions determine who’s in your life and how they treat you.” — Joe Caruso
Our attitudes about ourselves will determine whom we attract. I know that this is a pretty bold statement, but let’s examine it. Have you ever known someone who left an abusive or unhealthy relationship, only to find himself or herself in another one? It’s not magic. It’s not coincidence. It’s due to the fact that the attitudes these people have about themselves are that they deserve abusive relationships. At the same time, the abuser is actually looking for someone with just this attitude. They attract each other.
How is this so?
In some of my development sessions, I teach that the definition of attitude is either, “I love me” or “I don’t love me.” Your attitude about yourself isn’t something that can be measured on a continuum. At any point in time it’s either one or the other – I love me or I don’t love me. It isn’t, “Well, I kind of love me.” Our thoughts about ourselves, whether positive or negative, are constantly triggering an “I love me/I don’t love me” attitude.
“We all have the capacity to be our own best friends and our own worst enemies.” — Joe Caruso
Although this may seem like an oversimplified approach – it’s not. Rather, it’s quite a concise and accurate way to communicate how we actually feel about ourselves at any point in time. We all have the capacity to be our own best friends and our own worst enemies. We can be very judgmental when it comes to how we look at ourselves.
Your attitudes will have a direct and powerful impact on your thoughts, which will in turn have a direct and powerful impact on your behaviors. Nothing more drastically affects your behavior than your thoughts.
This fascinating chain of events doesn’t end here. You see, the people that you encounter in your life respond to your actions, which again are a direct reflection of your thoughts.
In short, your attitude determines your thoughts, your behavior and your actions. The power of this Success Strategy lies in the fact that all of the people in your life don’t have to be aware of each and every step of this process in order to correctly identify your inner attitude. They only have to be aware of the end result. Our behaviors and opinions reveal a great deal more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.
According to scientists, the central nervous system is able to manage 7,560 bits of information per minute. That’s 126 bits of information per second.* If you keep in mind that we are all quite similar in regard to the fact that we share the human experience (there are only so many thoughts and emotions and so many ways to express them), you can see how a person wouldn’t need ESP in order to quickly and correctly identify our attitudes and thoughts, even on a subconscious level.
People are constantly making decisions about how much they’d like to be involved in your life and how they’ll treat you. Don’t kid yourself. These are not arbitrary decisions. More often than not, they are a response to your attitude.
*For more about this, check out the book Flow by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.