Attitude is a contagious thing. Attitude spreads faster than a cold bug through kindergarten, and if it goes south, it can take an even bigger toll. Conversely, though, it can elevate a group and serve as a powerful tool for growth.
Every morning we all face a choice about how we respond to the day ahead of us. Some days are going to be great, some awful, and some will just sort of happen in a gray area neither particularly good nor bad; that's just how life works. But how we respond to stresses, the environment, and our own particular sphere of influence, will affect in one way or another a great many people.
By 5:30 AM, I've already spoken to 8-10 people. In most social interactions, we exchange some form of standard greeting such as "how are you?" - this may come rattling out of one's mouth without a thought, but in fact, every such question is an invitation to reply in a positive or negative manner. You have a choice when someone greets you this way, every single time. You could casually say "fine" without even thinking, and go about your day, you could piss and moan about the weather (because as we all know, the weather is in a permanent state of awful no matter the season, temp, barometric pressure, precipitation or forecast) or how it's too damn early, or you can come up with a legitimate positive about the day. If you're asked this question it means that you're more than likely not dead. So that's a start. You've successfully gotten out of bed and made your way to a destination to begin your day, so there's another plus. See where I'm headed with this?
I'll be honest though. I've had a cold for a week. Freezing rain isn't fun to drive in. In fact, I ran out of "good underwear" in the clean laundry and now I've resorted to the weird pairs that don't fit quite right and it's mildly annoying. But do any of those things need to define my day, or my attitude? Hell no! Colleen made coffee for the gym, I have batman sneakers on, and I get to bench today! All in all, things are pretty decent by 5:15 AM. Even though there will be stress, I'll sneeze a few times, and these stupid underwear are in the wrong place, I can greet my first appointment with a positive statement that today, is, in fact, gonna be pretty good! And maybe some of that positive attitude will go with her to work where she can spread it further. By 10:00, a solid 200 people might have been influenced by a simple choice to kick today's ass instead of today kicking mine.
This might mean someone sets a PR. It might mean they treat a coworker to coffee. It might mean a better performance on the job, or just a friendly smile to a stranger that needed more than you'll ever actually realize. Those things add up.
I'm not suggesting that you lie here. The world isn't all rainbows and puppies and Reece's cups and we all know that. (We also know that it's cold - if you're going to bitch about the weather please do some research and tell me something I don't know, like the annual rainfall change since the industrial revolution. Seriously, I too walked outside to my truck this morning, the cold didn't escape me. Be original!) What I AM suggesting is that every morning before you tell someone that today sucks and you're tired, is to actually take a moment, however brief, and find something good in your existence. It's not hard if you have a halfway decent attitude on a regular basis, and the first person you see might truly need to hear a positive word or see a genuine smile that day. Then they can pass it on. Those 400+ people we talked about might just be impacted from your choice to smile. Think about that. Think about that over a year's time. A decade even. That's a lot of power you're holding, use it well.
Steve Decker
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