Does attitude really determine altitude?

Keith Harrell’s book screams: Attitude is Everything: 10 Life-Changing Steps to Turn Attitude into Action. Jeff Keller, in order not to be left behind, takes another step and shouts: Attitude is everything: change your attitude, change your life. Two of the fathers of modern motivational literature, Napoleon Hill and W. Clement Stone, had written what many consider to be the definitive treatise on attitude in 1960 when success through a positive mental attitude was published. Although it did not have the word attitude in its title, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People had a positive attitude and was first published in 1937.

The first book on positive attitude was titled Self Help and was written by Samuel Smiles, a Scottish physician, in 1859, and sold 250,000 copies. Oliver Swett Marden clung to Self Help and in 1891 published his Pushing to the Front, which he claimed were notes of “inspiration and help for wrestlers trying to be someone and do something in the world”, culminating in his lunch of the SUCCESS magazine. in 1895. According to the editors of SUCCESS Magazine, in SUCCESS, Marden “sought to inspire and uplift, teach and present successful role models as a beacon for others who aspire to be equals.” With SUCCESS magazine, Marden launched the “success movement,” also called the “self-help movement.”

Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, which came out in 1937, literally set the success movement on fire and the movement has never looked back. By the time of Napoleon Hill’s death in 1970, it had sold more than 20 million copies. Leading figures in this movement, excluding founder Marden, and not necessarily in any order, include early parents such as Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Norman Vincent Peale, Denis Waitley, Wayne Dyer, and Og . Mandino. The following are the followers of the day after like Zig Ziglar, Harvey Mackay, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown and Tony Robbins. With the advent of the internet, a new generation of success gurus led by Brendon Burchard has exploded onto the scene with millions of followers. Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, is one of a kind. His Think Big and Kick Ass In Business and in Life is one of the definitive bibles of the success movement.

The self-help industry, according to The Guardian, is $ 11 billion in the US alone, with books in this space like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series selling over a billion copies. Rhonda Byrne’s book The Secret, published in 2006, and the follow-up film starring Bob Proctor caused a worldwide sensation and was translated into 46 languages. The book has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. The book is based on one of several trends in the self-help industry called the Law of Attraction. According to this law, what you think, you attract. If you have positive thoughts, you attract positive things. The opposite, according to the author, is also true. Viola, change your way of thinking, change your life. John C. Maxwell, Wayne Dyer, Daniel G. Amen, Brian Tracy, and Marilee Adams are some of the best-known authors who have books on how positive thinking helps change our lives.

So let’s get back to our question: does attitude really determine altitude? For non-cognizers, altitude refers to the level of your monetary success, the height of the glory of your achievements, the awesomeness of your wealth. However, a deep look at some of the most successful people on the planet, whether in politics, sports, academia, business, and entertainment, to name a few, does not show a causal relationship between attitude and success. whatever its definition. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Williams Shakespeare, Bill Gates, Ben Carson and Oprah Winfrey, Tony Elumelu, Aliko Dangote and Richard Branson, to name a few, are some of the most successful people registered. How did each and every one of these individuals achieve stupendous success? One word: through courage.

By success, I don’t mean just financial wealth, because Nelson Mandela, one of the most successful leaders who ever lived, was not a billionaire. So the only ingredient that separates successful people from others is determination, by which I mean hard work, burning the oil at midnight, iron determination, standing up for something, sacrifice. Malcolm Gladwell tells us that to be successful in any endeavor, you need 10,000 man hours of continuous practice – that’s about 10 years in the trenches. Ten years of learning, ten years of concentration, ten years of faith, ten years of passion, ten years of sacrifice is what it takes to reach the proverbial tipping point.

Attitude is a state of mind, of always hoping for the best no matter what the world throws your way. But attitude (software) without hard work (hardware) won’t put bread on your table, even if you’re a comedian. As a comedian, you have to continually create fresh rib crackers otherwise you will get stale and that requires extreme hard work. John H. Johnson of Ebony Magazine empire fame said “there is no defense against excellence,” and boxing maverick Don King once said, “if you set yourself on fire, the world will come and watch you burn. “. Don King spoke of passion, zeal, determination, to go out and make something of yourself, without expecting a donation, social security or manna from heaven. Are you ready for success? Then wake up, put on your running shoes, fold up your shirt sleeves, put your hand to the plow and never look back and the gods of success will smile at you. Only hard work will take you to the Promised Land because the same maker of the entire universe decreed that he who does not work does not eat. You need a great attitude. But attitude alone, my friend, is not enough. You need a lot of sand to stand up.

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