Developing a Positive Mental Attitude: Part One

To survive as a full-time author, I believe it’s necessary to develop a positive mental attitude (PMA) to get you through the humps and hurdles that every writer meets in today’s new publishing paradigm. Say what you will, but nothing great has ever been achieved without PMA. One of my personal pacesetters and all-time mentors is Napoleon Hill, who once said, “Whatever your mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.” Amazing insight from a man born in the rugged mountains of Southwest Virginia in 1883 in a one room cabin!

So how do you develop a PMA to make life pay off on your own terms? The following thirty-nine building blocks were taken from Napoleon Hill’s book, Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement. Read on…

1. Recognize that your mental attitude is the only thing over which you – and only you – have complete control, and exercise that control.
2. Realize that every adversity, sorrow, setback, or defeat, whether or not you caused to happen, contains the seed of an equivalent benefit which you can nurture into a blessing that soars above the disaster that brought it.
3. Clear your mind of any influence which does not support a positive mental attitude.
4. Find out what you want most in life and go after it.
5. Select the person, who in your opinion, is the finest person in all the world, past or present. Make him or her your pacesetter for the rest of your life, emulating him or her in every way possible.
6. Determine what kind of resources you need, and set up a plan for acquiring them based on the idea of not too much, not too little.
7. Form a habit of saying or doing something every day  which will make someone else feel better. (Also known as doing a random act of kindness). Remember, one good deed will keep old man gloom away!
8. Make yourself understand that what whips you isn’t defeat, but your mental attitude toward it. Train yourself to look for the seed of equivalent benefit in every disappointment you face.
9. Ascertain what you like best to do, and do it as a labor of love with your heart and soul. Don’t let boredom or brooding get you down!
10. Understand that often when you have searched in vain for a solution to a problem, you can find it by helping someone else solve his or her problem.
11. Take a complete inventory of every asset you possess. You’ll discover that your greatest asset is a sound mind with which you can shape your destiny.
12. Acknowledge that the space you occupy in this world is in exact ratio to the quantity and quality of the service you render for the benefit of others, plus the mental attitude in which you render it.
13. Break bad habits. Do this one at a time. Show yourself who is boss. If you need help, get it. Don’t let your pride master you!

I’ve broken these building blocks to developing a positive mental attitude into three parts. Please join me next week when we continue our journey to success!