Attitude – What’s Yours?

Jerry is the kind of guy you love to hate.

He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!” He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant.
The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious. So, one day, I went up to Jerry and told him, “I don’t get it!”

“You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.”

“I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business.
We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a
restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gun point by three armed robbers.

While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked. Jerry continued, “… Well, the paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”

” What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’

Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.’”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

Attitude, after all, is everything!

BooYaa !!!
Leslie Choudhury – Int’l Speaker, Trainer, Consultant and Author
Serious Fun for Serious Business
www.lesliechoudhury.com

Burnt Scones – Gratitude & Acceptance !

Mom liked to make scones for tea every now and then. And I remember one time in particular when she had made scones on a saturday afternoon. That afternoon, mom placed a plate of scones which were extremely burnt in front of dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed
.
All dad did was reach for his scones, smiled at mom and asked me how my week was at school. I don’t remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and strawberry jam on that scone and ate every bite.

When I got up from the table, I remember hearing mom apologizing to dad for burning the scones. And I’ll never forget what he said: Darling, I love burnt scones.

Later that night, I went to kiss Dad good night and asked him if he really liked his scones burnt. He wrapped me in his arms and said, “Your Mom puts in hard work everyday running this house and all you children and she’s rarely appreciated  – a little burnt scone never hurt anyone!”

You know, life is full of imperfect things…..and imperfect people. I’m not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else.

What I’ve learned over the years is that learning to accept each others’ faults – and choosing to celebrate each others differences – is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

Because in the end, you are the master of your own life, to be happy or unhappy, to be positive or negative.

It’s up to “Moi”.

We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship , be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship.

Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket – keep it in your own.

Yes it’s up to “Moi”, how many times do I have to remind you!

So please pass me a scone

How to change habits using visualization

The average person on the street, when asked what behavior modification is, gets a glassy look in their eyes and usually just stares in silence… unable to respond. The ones that do have an answer often say something about rewards for good behavior or punishment for bad behavior.

That’s understandable, because after all, that is what typically drives human behavior.

Physical or emotional pain stops us from doing things that do (or might) cause it.

And we do the things, moment-by-moment that we believe will give us physical and emotional pleasure.

But if that were the only way to change our behaviors, we’d be doomed.

Hmmm that’s why our prisons are filled !

Because most times that doesn’t work, not with the number of temptations each of us is faced with every day.

For example, as good as drugs (both legal and not) can make us feel, many people still are able to fight the temptation.

In fact for most people, they are not tempting at all. It is something most people never ever think about.

And as tempting as it might be for many to eat only the super delicious, great smelling packaged chemical “food-like” substances available at every turn today, many people still are easily able to walk right by.

And as easy as it would be to avoid picking up our messes, to never do laundry, to avoid daily grooming, to kill the people we hate, or to sit in a bar all day keeping a permanent buzz on, many people have no compulsion to do any of those things… even though they were never beaten or threatened with bodily harm or even promised great rewards for acting the way they do now with no apparent effort.

Because it is habit, not pain or pleasure, that is the greatest director of human behavior.
You see we are more like trains than cars.

Cars can go off-road, but trains must stay on their tracks… their destinations are predetermined.
And that is how most humans are, once we’ve developed our habits. We become slaves to those habits.

Our habitual ways of thinking defines us, and our habitual patterned thoughts guide almost all our behaviors.

That is why, for instance, I could give a thousand people the most authoritative, proven course that shows them exactly what to do and say, and when to do it and say it… and still 990 out of those thousand will fail to do anything even though there are promises of riches or success beyond their wildest dreams.

This is because it is not pleasure that rules.

It is ……..H A B I T.

This is also why you might have dozens or even hundreds of excellent “how to” books, tapes and videos on your shelves and in your basement collecting dust.

Because habit rules.

As a training company, we look at many techniques for changing emotions and behaviors.
Understanding your Emotional Drivers are fundamental. First step is awareness.

Knowing that emotional drivers can and do change.

Ask yourself is the current primary drivers that you have what is needed to achieve your goals ?

Do you need to change your drivers ?
What emotional drivers do you need to attain your goals ?
How do you then develop the right habits because they are linked.

To help us eliminate “bad” habits and replace them with good ones we need simple mental conditioning using mental pictures where we are in the pictures.

We need to see ourselves doing the things we need to do, developing the right habits and therefore reaping the benefits it will give us.

After all, we humans have just three dominant senses:
Our sight (past, current and imagined future vision),
Our hearing (remembered, current and imagined), and
Our feeling or emotions (from the past, present and imagined futures).
Sow a Thought ( a mental picture ) and we will Reap an Action
Sow an Action and we will Reap a Habit
Sow a Habit and we will Reap the benefits, the success, the goals etc……it start with the thought …that mental picture !

By using mental pictures, and re-enforcing it with right words, speech etc as we do in our thought and behavior modification work.

This is where our environment come to play, whom we associate with, what they say, what we allow ourselves to hear and therefore how we let our environment also influence us. A supportive environment / group / will enable to get there much faster !

We can quickly change emotions, and our Emotional Drivers which directly affects all decisions and actions.

And isn’t that the whole purpose behind “self-help” and “personal development?”

Isn’t the purpose of it all to change how you feel and what you do?

Do either of those two things – change how you feel and change what you do – and all of your hopes, dreams, aspirations, ambitions and goals will be yours.

Isn’t that so?

So if you do not feel how you want to feel and if you cannot get yourself to do what you need to do, to make those dreams come true, then they won’t happen.

So once again, we come to grips with a powerful tool….a tool to help you change your habits, a tool to help change your emotional drivers, and therefore a tool to change the outcomes, the results, the attainment of your goals and accomplishment of your vision.

“ If I can see it, then I can do it “ – R. Kelly
But remember its up to “Moi” !!!

Burnt Scones – Gratitude & Acceptance !

Mom liked to make scones for tea every now and then. And I remember one time in particular when she had made scones on a saturday afternoon. That afternoon, mom placed a plate of scones which were extremely burnt in front of dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed.

All dad did was reach for his scones, smiled at mom and asked me how my week was at school. I don’t remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and strawberry jam on that scone and ate every bite.

When I got up from the table, I remember hearing mom apologizing to dad for burning the scones. And I’ll never forget what he said: Darling, I love burnt scones.

Later that night, I went to kiss Dad good night and asked him if he really liked his scones burnt. He wrapped me in his arms and said, “Your Mom puts in hard work everyday running this house and all you children and she’s rarely appreciated  – a little burnt scone never hurt anyone!”

You know, life is full of imperfect things…..and imperfect people. I’m not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else.

What I’ve learned over the years is that learning to accept each others’ faults – and choosing to celebrate each others differences – is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship.

Because in the end, you are the master of your own life, to be happy or unhappy, to be positive or negative.

It’s up to “Moi”.

We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship , be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship.

Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket – keep it in your own.

Yes it’s up to “Moi”, how many times do I have to remind you!


So please pass me a scone