JULY 2015
In this issue: 1 John Maxwell: Making Attitude Your Greatest Asset 2 Get Inspired 3 Words of Wisdom 4 New Franchise! 4 Top Ten Volume Leaders 5 Personal Best Volume May 2015 5 Chart Toppers 6 KUDOS 8 Navigate ServproNET® 9 Southcoast Emerging Leaders 10 BE THE BRAND 11 Raise the Roof 11 Applause
Attitude is a Choice The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.
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John Maxwell: Making Attitude Your Greatest Asset Making your attitude your greatest asset begins when you choose to have the right attitude. Once that decision is made, the following steps will help you achieve an attitude that will be a positive difference-maker in your life.
It is more important than appearance, giftedness or scale.
What I have discovered is that time spent on the front-end thinking about these issues will allow me to get right to the heart of the problem. Think long, act on the short is my philosophy. And just like the amateur logger who only works on what he sees in front of him, if we don’t take the time to evaluate, we will create extra work and grief for ourselves. There are three stages of evaluation that I have found to be very helpful.
It will make or break a company… a church… a home.
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The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day.
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We cannot change our past.… We cannot change the fact that people
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act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it, and so it is with you…. We are in charge of our attitudes. Chuck Swindoll, The Power of Attitude:
Evaluate Your Present Attitude I think most people, myself included, are prone to go for the quick fix instead of taking a moment to step back and evaluate the best option before we act. A good illustration of this point is the logging industry. When logs get jammed in the river, an amateur logger will only work on one log at a time in an attempt to free the logs. Whereas a seasoned logger will look along the river for a high point where he can get a bird’s-eye view of where the logjam is, so he can go right to the area that is causing the problem, saving valuable time as a result. Sometimes when we evaluate ourselves and we look at things we do not like, there is a tendency for us to over engage in a lot of activity.
Identify Problem Feelings—What attitudes make you feel the most negative about yourself? Usually feelings can be sensed before the problem is clarified. Write them down. Identify Problem Behavior—What attitudes cause you the most problems when dealing with others? Write them down. Identify Problem Thinking—We are the sum of our thoughts. “As a man thinks within himself, so he is.” What thoughts control your mind? Although this is the first step in correcting attitude problems, these are not as easy to identify as the first two. continued next page...