Jim Rohn said that attitude, which he defined as how we feel, was an important component in determining whether we achieve our goals. Still, our feelings aren't the first thing we work on when we get serious about changing ourselves and our lives. Instead, as pointed out in the previous article in this series, the first thing to be addressed is our philosophy, which is made up of what we know and how we allow it to affect us. Our attitude or feelings must come second because they are largely formed by what we know and believe. Trying to develop an appropriate attitude without first dealing with the ideas, thoughts and beliefs that help form attitudes is not very effective.
The point of this article is not “how to feel good about yourself and get what you want”. While having positive feelings about yourself is important, we have feelings about a lot of things, many of which affect whether we get what we want. Nor is this article going to tell you how you should or ought to feel. You'll need to make those decisions based upon your values. This article is simply about feelings, how they affect you and some things you can do to change them.
As noted above, we have feelings about a lot of different things. These feelings have wide ranging effects. For instance, in a previous article, this author related the story of a small business owner who has publicly stated that he “hates money”. While it's not a requirement that anyone in business love money, it's probably not very helpful for a small business owner to actively hate money. His chances for any sort of success in business are greatly decreased by his attitude (and the philosophy that drives it) toward something that would probably help him achieve his business goals. This same business owner walks everywhere he goes because he cannot afford his own transportation. He does not own a home. None of these are essential if he doesn't want them. However, in this case, it's not that he doesn't want some of them. It's simply that he hates the thing that will allow him to own them.
It might be easy to leave this discussion of feelings here and say that it's just the way we feel about money that determines whether or not we get what we want. That's not how things are in the real world, though. If we continue to think in terms of business, here's a partial list of things toward which we probably have some feelings.
- Money
- Business
- People in general
- Specific people
- Compromise
- Negotiation
- Conflict
- Hard work
- Accountability
- Responsibility
- Economics
- Politics
- Conversation
- Relaxation
- Recreation
- Self
- Society
- Culture and subcultures
- Customers
- Suppliers
- Taxes
- Labor
- Management
- Collective bargaining
- Holidays
- Government regulation
- Finance
As you can see, the list is long and could be even longer. Can you see how they might affect the financial success of a business owner? While this series of articles has dealt largely with financial success because it's relatively easy to measure, feelings affect success in all areas of life. You could easily pick another area of life in which you want to achieve certain goals or get certain results and make an equally long list. The point is this: Your feelings matter!
Some people say things like this: “Well, I feel the way I feel and that's it. End of story.” but this is not true. Your feelings are not fixed or set in stone. They can be changed. There are a number of ways of changing feelings. Here is a short list:
- Re-frame the event or circumstance (“with traffic this slow I can change mental gears before I get home”)
- Ask yourself some questions to change or at least challenge your perception (for instance “what else can this mean?”)
- Changing your associations, what you read and what you listen to
- Hypnosis
All of these can be effective and there are others as well. You must choose the one that is right for you. Hypnosis is included because it can
- Help identify feelings that are interfering with getting what you want
- Help identify causes of some negative or limiting feelings
- Help resolve conflicts that can produce negative feelings
- Help you change or modify your feelings about specific things
One final thought: Your feelings are powerful and they affect virtually every area of your life. Still, you are not your feelings! Having one or more negative attitudes does not make you a bad person. If you will recognize your feelings and how they affect you and then work on changing them deliberately rather than just letting it happen, you'll be amazed at the result. How will your life look and feel when your feelings are in line with what you want?
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