What does Attitude mean to you?

Today was my 400th Twitter Tweet and in celebration, I’ve published a short piece from a book I’m writing on NLP and how to become a great NLPer.

The article is about attitude and is followed up in the book by a chapter on how to go about building attitude and using it to become even better at whatever you do. I hope you enjoy this so please comment and let me know your thoughts.

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it. – Ella Williams

John La Valle says that “It’s not about having AN attitude, it’s about having attitude” and when you’re from New Jersey that goes without saying. Attitude is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of being good at NLP and at the same time, it doesn’t really exist. This means that even though it exists inside our heads and is exhibited in our behaviours, it’s a concept and not an object that exists in the physical world. What we’re talking about when we use the word attitude is a collection of beliefs and values that when brought together, create actions and thoughts that go in a specific direction and get specific results.

One evening when I was watching Richard Bandler teach an introductory seminar on NLP he said something along the following lines: “When I watched Virginia¹ working I started taking note of how she did what she was doing. When I asked her followers whether they could do what she did, they replied that ‘No, only Virginia can do what she does’”. This a fantastic comparison of attitude vs non-attitude. The fact is, if you look at what you want to be able to do and you do it in a way that inside you say to yourself:

How does this person do what they do and if i had to teach someone else to do it, what would be the key steps

then you start to create inside yourself an attitude and determination that allows you to do more things.

I remember talking to a friend of mine who’s one of the most motivated people I know. I asked him one day about how he does his motivation and determination and he told me the following: “When I decide what I want and it feels like something I want to do, something inside me rumbles and I know I’m going to achieve what I want”.

This was a key element in my own learning and as i found out more and more about how he did his determination and motivation, and I began to try out his strategy for myself, the more motivated and determined I became about the things I wanted to do.

When I think about my own attitude and what that means for me, I get the following answers:

• Attitude is about being curious.
• Attitude is exploration.
• Attitude is about being tenacious.
• Attitude is walking away when it’s right too.
• Attitude is loving every moment of doing what i do.
• Attitude is always knowing that deep down, whatever happens in the outside world, I get to be in charge of what goes on in my inside world.

To be great at NLP you have to be curious about what it is that makes things how they are. You have to be willing to explore and question the things you don’t already know about and often the things you do know about. You have to be tenacious about the way in which you go about doing what you do and at the same time, you have to do this in a way that makes you feel amazing from the inside out and creates a light inside you that motivates you even more to learn new things and discover what’s yet to be discovered.

This is what I call the NLP attitude and this is just the beginning!

How about you? What does attitude mean for you and how do you use it?

Footnotes:
¹ Virginia Satir was a family therapist who Richard met and studied whilst at university, the result of which formed a large part of Richards first book (co-authored with John Grinder) – The Structure of Magic.