Don’t Let Others Pull You Down When You’re Trying to Pull Yourself Up

People have a strange habit of discouraging others anytime they try to improve themselves. This applies to everything from finances to health to careers. I constantly encounter this when people discover that I’ve never bought a new car. I’ve always known that a high quality used car is a far better deal than a new one that loses 25 percent of its value the day it’s driven home. My lifelong philosophy on this was confirmed when Tom Stanley and William Danko reported in The Millionaire Next Door that the average millionaire never buys new cars and later by financial guru Dave Ramsey. Yet the people who mock me for this the most are those who are drowning in a sea of debt including huge car payments.

I also encountered this when I went on a low carbohydrate diet. I was amazed at how quick people were to tell me the diet was unhealthy and that I should get off it immediately. Many were graphic in describing how all the red meat would block my arteries and kill me. None of those critics ever cared enough to learn that I actually ate more fish and chicken once I started the diet, and far less red meat than I ate before I started it. My cholesterol dropped dramatically and I lost 52 pounds, which I have kept off for seven years. I find it ironic that none of those critics ever said, “Glenn, you’re fat and it’s bad for your health. You need to lose weight” before I went on the diet. Their criticism only came once I tried to improve my situation.

The same will happen to you when you try to improve your career. There will be people in your life that will discourage you from working harder. They’ll purport to be concerned about your well-being but their concerns could be far less noble. If they were really concerned about you they would inquire about your financial situation or goals and offer you encouragement. Their real concern may be that they look lazy if you work too hard. They’ll say things such as “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” or “Don’t forget to smell the flowers along the way.” Look closely and you’ll notice most of them can’t afford any flowers to smell.

This habit of pulling people down when they try to improve themselves isn’t limited to humans. John Maxwell tells a story of a study done on how animals can pull each other down. Four monkeys were locked inside a room with a pole in the middle. A bunch of bananas hung from the top of the pole and one monkey tried to climb the pole to get them. The experimenters hit him with a blast of water that knocked him off the pole just as he reached the bananas. Each of the other three monkeys tried to reach the bananas and each was knocked off the pole by a blast of water. Eventually they all quit trying. The experimenters then replaced one monkey with a new one who didn’t know about the water hose. He immediately tried to climb the pole but was pulled down by the others. The experimenters replaced each monkey one by one. Each new monkey tried to climb the pole and was pulled down. Eventually there were four monkeys who had never been hit with the blast of water. None of them would climb the pole but none knew why. Don’t let the monkeys in your life pull you down while you’re trying to climb the ladder of success.

100% Attitude

The effect your attitude has on everything – some steps to improve it.

Your attitude will determine a lot, we’ve all heard the glass half full or glass half empty way off looking at things, both are the same thing, but are vastly different as well.  You have the ability to transform your life and reach new heights of success and fulfilment. Whether at this moment in time your attitude is positive, negative or somewhere in the middle you can take control of your life and set yourself free!  Everyone has potential, the unfortunate thing is that most people go through life and never realise or take advantage of this!

Firstly you must visualize what you want - you the dreams everyone has – unfortunately most people leave them as just that, dreams.  The second thing that you must do is see yourself in your dream environment, and see yourself getting there.  I can, I will and when I are the things you must say rather than the negative version I can’t, I won’t and if I!  Don’t worry if you fall into a more negative category – the good thing about attitude is that you can learn and train yourself to have a positive one given a bit of time and practice.

You’ve told yourself that it is going to happen and now must talk about it by doing this you are making yourself accountable and putting yourself under a little pressure to make it happen!  If you dream is to be on Millionaire Street and you are currently in debt – you must realise that this dream is not going to happen overnight in may take a few years – you don’t go around saying you are going to be a millionaire by next Thursday afternoon in three weeks time!  Don’t set unrealistic targets otherwise you may put yourself under undue stress and pressure to achieve, which can be detrimental to your cause.

Attitude isn’t everything – it is simply the first thing!  Remember it’s going to be action that actually gets you there and the attitude will determine what pace that will be.  You are the architect, the builder and the benefactor of all your life’s endeavours.  So when something doesn’t go your way the first place to look is inwards.  You must ask yourself what you could have done differently to have gotten a more favourable result, after this inward analysis is done then you look at some of the external issues that may have been amiss too.

Everyone has their fears; I don’t mean things like scared of the dark or spiders etc.  I am talking about fears to do with success, for example, it might be something that you haven’t learnt to do yet, and you fear that you may fail.  Remember that if you don’t try you fail anyway, and if you do fail sometimes then success is that much sweeter because you actually had to get over obstacles to get to the end result.

In summary we’ll use something interesting to illustrate a point.  There are 26 letters in the alphabet, A = 1 and Z = 26 working on that basis we assign a number to each letter of the word attitude and add them up:
A(1) + T(20) + T(20) + I(9) + T(20) + U(21) + D(4) + E(5) = 100 - 100% Attitude!
Having a positive or optimistic attitude helps you to achieve more for yourself than a negative or pessimistic one.  Visualise what you want, take action to make it happen, overcome any fears and keep plugging away, remember that tree that you see in your local park didn’t get that big overnight.  You can learn to train your mind, and over time you will learn how to develop and maintain a positive attitude.