So, you've heard that you need an attitude adjustment? Well,
there's three things you need to know before making that attitude adjustment.
I'm Dr. Paul Jenkins a professional psychologist and I've helped people with attitude changes for
my entire career. I will give you three very practical steps that you can take
as we talk about the things you need to know before you make that adjustment. Let's start with
the word attitude itself. This is an aviation term actually. My son is a pilot and I've been flying
twice with him in a little two-seat sport cruiser. He pointed out to me on the instrument panel there
in that little airplane the attitude indicator. Now, I would expect to see an altitude indicator in an
airplane but no attitude. Attitude is probably the most important instrument in the cockpit of that
airplane and what it is is position. Position of the plane relative to the ground or the horizon.
So, if my hand is the plane you can have a nose up attitude which is going to give you altitude.
You can have a nose-down attitude which is heading you into the hard stuff.
You can have a banking attitude. It's the position of the plane. So, when we think about attitude
as position it's not how you feel, it's your position relative to whatever is going on
in your life. That's the first thing I wanted you to know before you make that attitude adjustment.
It's actually going to be a position adjustment. Attitude is not how you feel it may well
affect how you feel and that leads to the second point. Let's look at attitude as a thermostat
more than a thermometer. You're familiar with those two instruments? A thermometer tells you how
warm it is or how cold it is. It tells you what the current circumstances or conditions are
related to temperature. So, if I want to tell how warm it is today I go look at the thermometer and
it tells me the information I'm looking for. What is a thermostat? The thermostat sits in your house
usually in the hallway or somewhere out of the way where you can go, if your house is too cold. If the
thermometer says that the number is lower than you want it to be you can go to the thermostat
and make an adjustment. So, you turn it up or you turn it down. You set it to the number you want
that doesn't immediately change the temperature of your house. What it does is gives instruction
to the system and then the system does what is necessary to bring the temperature up to what it
is that you set it for or down to what you set it for. So, the thermostat is more of a control
right? Where the thermometer tells you what's going on currently. So, how you feel is more
like the thermometer, okay. It's just the way things are right now. It's my current conditions.
The thermostat is your attitude. Where do you want it to be? What do you want to feel? I had a
client in my office just last week who is feeling very distressed over some circumstances in
her family and I asked her a question that she didn't expect. I said, "How do you want to feel?",
and her head was still in, "Well, this is how I have to feel because of my circumstances", and she was
blaming her circumstances for her feelings. How she feels right now is like reading the thermometer.
My question was where do you want to set the thermostat? How do you want to feel and after
a little conversation she said, "Well, I want to feel peace", I'm like, "Oh, awesome", okay. Can we set
your attitude, your thermostat, for peace? Yeah, peace, joy, love, acceptance, how do you want to feel? Let's
set the attitude for what you intend not for what you currently feel. That's just the temperature.
I think we've established that attitude is not about how you feel. It certainly affects how you
feel and it's going to have a profound impact on it. There's another important piece to this
though, it's choice. You get to choose. When I was telling you about that client, how do you want to feel?
She didn't realize in that moment that she has some choice over where she puts the setting.
Sometimes we give far too much power to our circumstances or what's going on around us.
We have a choice about our attitude and that's the third thing that I wanted you to know before
I share those three simple steps with you. Before I get to those three steps would you just take
a moment to hit that subscribe button and click on the notification bell too. I've got
more videos coming your way. I don't want you to miss any of them so take a moment to do that.
Now, let's get to those three steps. Step number one for the attitude adjustment, turn your brain on.
I know your brain's always on but there's a specific part of your brain that I want you to engage it's
called metacognition. That's a fancy made-up word that basically means thinking about thinking. Well
you turn that on? You're going to need to monitor what your actual thoughts are and this is good
news too because metacognition creates a little space and in that space is where choice exists.
Until you see it as a choice it's not. Your brain is just going to roll with whatever it's used to,
whatever you've been trained, taught, or educated to already think and whatever you practice you get
really good at, okay. So, you want to turn on your metacognition think about your thinking and that
will put you back into a position of choice, that's step one. Step number two, feed and fuel your brain
intentionally on purpose, in a way that serves you well. Pay attention to the input. I said feed
and fuel. Your brain is an organ in your body and it's the biggest energy hog of your entire system.
That means that what you actually put into your mouth matters. The fuel that you run your body with
is the fuel that your brain is using, notice that. Nutrition is not just about your physical health
unless you remember of course that your physical health includes your brain. So, feed yourself well.
I'm also talking about media and what kind of music and movies and books you consume.
That matters. What you're putting into your brain is largely going to determine what
your brain produces for you. In the computer industry there's an old term called GIGO,
g-i-g-o garbaging garbage out. That's kind of negative, right? But what if you put gold in and
you get gold out. What you put in matters. So, pay attention to the food and the fuel that you run
through your system and here's your third step, get some coaching, get some help with this. Trying
to do this on our own is sometimes like trying to read the label on a bottle that we're inside of.
Kind of hard to do and you need someone outside of your bottle that can give you some
timely and helpful and powerful feedback. That's where coaching comes in. Associate
with people who get it. Who are going in that direction. Get in the places and in the rooms
where you can experience the kind of feedback that will allow you to powerfully take charge
of your own attitude. I hope you found that helpful. Hey, if you don't already have a coach
pick me. I would be happy to help you out. Go to this website go.liveonpurposecentral.com...
We've got coaching available for you.
I'm there every week doing personalized coaching. So, come on over, check it out.