Change your thinking Change your life

The following is a quote from Frank Palmer, DDB Canada
When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs
When you change you beliefs, you change your expectations
When you change your expectations you change your attitude
When you change your attitude you change your behaviour
When you change your behaviour, you change your performance
When you change your performance, you change your life.

Your attitude is the only difference between success and failure

On the face of it the above makes some sense, as it puts responsibility for success or failure on the individual. Unfortunately life is not that simple. Success is not only a matter of attitude, it is a combination of luck, circumstance and influence. So even with the right attitude success may be elusive. What is not elusive is your personal understanding of success or failure. If you have believe in yourself and are committed to the positives in life, then you will define success and failure in your own terms.

I agree with Palmer, start by changing your thinking; do you have the perspective of life as the glass is half full or do you have the perspective of life as the glass is half empty? Once you change your thinking then you start to change your beliefs, but the beliefs we have of the world, have been successful for us to this point in our lives for most of us. I think as we struggle to change our beliefs we should set aside expectations. If we expect something and it happens or it doesn't happen we feel happy or sad (depending on what we want to happen) because of that external happening. If we have no expectations then we can focus on ourselves, what we need and the hard work of changing what we believe about the world. Once we change our beliefs then we can start to change our attitudes toward the world. However, changing attitudes does not automatically mean we will change our behaviours. Many of our behaviours are habits learned over many years and we those of  you who have tried to kick a bad habit know how hard it is to change your habits, the same energy has to be applied to changing behaviours.