Attitude Is More Important Than You Think

It may seem your life is completely out of your control, and for the most part, it’s true. Many things are out of your ability to control; however, your attitude is the one thing you do have control of that, if displayed correctly, it can make your life just a little bit easier to deal with.

Attitude Is the Ultimate Secret to Success 

You can have a great business idea, great products or services and still not receive profits due to poor service. To be successful, you need to have the right attitude. Think about the last time you purchased a product or paid for something. Was it a positive or negative interaction, and are you likely to do it again? This is precisely what happens when you communicate with others. You either leave them with a poor or positive impression that can alter your future or success.

Attitude Is Contagious and Reflective

Like laughter or seeing someone smile, a good attitude makes you want to do it too. When you have a positive or negative attitude towards someone, it can change their day instantly. Often negative attitudes can cause more damage as it results in negative emotions or pain. If you are hostile towards others, they are likely to reflect this behavior towards you. It was ultimately, you making your day more difficult due to your bad attitude.

Attitude Affects Your Self-Worth 

A negative attitude can creep into your mind leading to low self-worth and a poor view of the world. Trusting your abilities and being confident in yourself no matter what is vital for leading a successful life.

A great technique to increase your self-worth is to practice words of affirmation. Each morning look into your eyes in a mirror and tell yourself things you love or like about yourself. Dig deep within yourself and believe every word you say. As you continue this practice daily, you will gain more confidence and find yourself taking on more challenges you never thought you could do.

Attitude Affects Your Happiness and Overall Health

Negativity is known to increase cortisol levels and other hormones responsible for stress, reducing happiness. Stress can lead to many illnesses over time if left untreated. Problems like general anxiety disorder, depression, and heart disease rise with more negativity.

Don’t let a negative attitude get in the way of your success. Smile more and inspire others to be positive, achieve goals, and make the world a better place.

6 Characteristics of a Good Leader

Leaders get things done and are responsible for the success of organizations, communities, and nations. Without proper leaders, the world would simply cease to exist or slowly crumble around you. Good leaders are crucial to influence or guide others and make crucial lifesaving decisions and keep things functioning. The following are six common characteristics that a good leader possesses:

Empathetic

Being empathetic means that you can feel others' pain or emotions without physically experiencing the situation or trauma itself. This is important leadership quality as it allows you to be open and transparent with communication. If you understand your employees' needs or situations, you can better relate and find ways to communicate effectively.

Mindful

Good leaders are mindful of others, their actions, and body language. You are a good leader if you understand the importance of proper body language and how it can affect those around you. You won’t see good leaders talk without permission or over others.

Respectful

Good leaders understand that respect is a two-way road. You cannot expect respect without offering it yourself. Successful leaders don’t use roles to communicate or control the room; It starts with respect.

Influential and Inspirational

Being a good leader isn’t about dictating to get important things done. It is about having the ability to inspire or influence another. This is best done by example. Show up to work on time, complete tasks on or before your deadlines, and offer tips, tricks, or advice that work for you instead of being demanding.

Confident and Committed

Having confidence in your abilities and being committed to the work or improving is essential. You cannot expect others to follow your lead or finish tasks on time if you don’t care about or are confident in your work.

Manifest Integrity

Being a leader means the result is up to you, and only you to get it done. That’s why good leaders must manifest integrity or honesty. Always committing to your morals is another way to inspire people to do the right thing. If you are always consistent in your action's others will want to be the same.

If you don’t possess these traits, it’s unlikely that you will be successful at leadership. However, it can be learned and trained just like any other skill. Learn to adapt and practice these traits to improve and become a better leader.

7 Ways to Show Compassion

For a society to truly function at its best, people must have empathy and compassion for others. Compassion is genuinely caring for and empathizing with others. You show your compassion for others when you take steps to assist them or help them meet a goal.

Compassion is having the understanding that some people may not have the same opportunities as you, and they need help. Your compassion makes you realize that you can spare your time and energy to reduce their suffering.


Be Selfless

This is the main idea of compassion. It is caring more about others and doing what you can to reduce their suffering. To be selfless, think about how other people are feeling. When you help, don’t expect anything in return. Do more things to make people happy, don’t hurt others to gain more, and always choose the option that helps the most or causes the least amount of harm.

Volunteer Your Time

Volunteering in your local community and will increase your happiness as well. Volunteering provides a great way to practice your gratitude as you will likely be helping those less fortunate than you. Local homeless shelters and soup kitchens always need help and donations.

Be Understanding

Stop being judgmental and find a way to be more understanding. Find ways in which you relate to everyone. Even if they seem less fortunate, there will always be something you have in common. Don’t resort to assumptions and always lead with an open mind.

Be Supportive

Be emotionally or physically supportive. Offer a hand up or words of encouragement. The support you offer will be different for each person or group, so ask what is needed before you make an offer they don’t need.

Show Kindness

Open a door, smile often, talk with someone, laugh together, pay for someone's meal, or donate to a local food bank. These are all great ways to practice acts of kindness.


Express Gratitude

Be thankful for those around you and everything you have in life. Express your gratitude by telling people “thank you” often. Tell them why you are grateful and who you are grateful to and for in your life.

Be Helpful

Offer help where you can and where you are needed – if you see someone struggling to open the door or walk, offer help. You’ll be surprised to find that the more you help in seemingly boring ways, the kinder and gentler the world around you starts feeling.

Compassion is vital if you want to live in a thriving and healthy society. This is because everyone doesn’t have the same opportunities or skills. So, some people need a little help to succeed. That’s where you come into the picture. Use these seven ways to show compassion, inspire your community, and help others.

How to Be More Assertive in Life

There is a secret to getting more what you want out of life, and it is no surprise that it starts with the way you communicate. People are either aggressive, giving demands, while some are too quiet and passive, ultimately letting others walk all over them.

However, the secret to good communication and success in life is to be more assertive. Being assertive is the ability to successfully communicate your needs, wishes, thoughts, or feelings without disrespecting others and, in turn, getting more of what you want out of life. Use the suggestions below to help you be more assertive in life.

Practice and Take Chances

Put yourself out there more and take chances to be more assertive. If you sit back and expect things to happen, chances are you won’t change. Take on more responsibilities at your job or within the household, attend more local events or anything you can to get you out of your comfort zone.

Mind Your Manners

Being assertive doesn’t mean you should be rude or disrespectful. It includes understanding how conversations flow and when is the most appropriate time to speak up. Learn about proper communication techniques to improve your conversations, making them more effective and productive.

Stay Positive

Don’t allow negative energy or thoughts to manifest in your interactions with others. Even if the conversation you need to have is difficult, always keep negative thoughts in control. Find the positive outcome of the situation and make sure your body langue, tone of voice, and speed match.

Always Expect Positive and Negative Reactions from Others

Don’t assume a conversation or reaction from others is always going to be your way. You can’t control them or even teach them to communicate “properly.”  Expect any outcome to happen and be mindful of yourself and the situation in each given moment. This way, you are more prepared to make the right reaction.

If you don’t expect others to have a negative response towards you, you might not be prepared for the reaction you will take, ultimately leading to an aggressive response. Assertive behavior includes standing your ground and being respectful towards other people's feelings, thoughts, and opinions when you do.

Practice Empathy and Compassion

Remember, being more assertive is a balancing act between aggressive and passive behaviors. Therefore, you need to be empathetic and compassionate to those around you. This way, you can learn to understand everyone's perspective and get what you need easier and more appropriately. If you assume everyone is like you, you will be viewed as aggressive or egotistic, for example.

Take Time to Understand Others

The more you understand those around you, the better you can effectively communicate your needs or wishes respectfully. Ask challenging questions so you can be on the same page faster.

Remember always to stand your ground respectfully, be true to yourself, and keep practicing. No one is perfect, and that is the beauty of it. If you fail, at least you are trying.

5 Techniques to Communicate Assertively

Assertive communication is the type of communication that everyone should aim for when talking with others. It is the balance between passive communication and aggressive communication. It is communicating your thoughts, feelings, and opinions clearly and effectively without disrespecting others around you. Use the five techniques below to help you communicate assertively.

Be Confident

Be confident when you speak or walk into a room. Confidence means that you believe in yourself and your abilities. When other people see your confidence, they won’t feel the need to question or challenge it to do your confident behavior.

Be Clear

Make sure you deliver your message clearly and concisely. Be sure your talking points are aligned and flow with the direction the conversation is moving. Don’t confuse people with too many talking points or subjects that don’t align with one another.

Be Controlled

Be calm and controlled with your tone of voice and the speed at which you are talking. You want to sound relaxed and not rushed or irritated. Talking fast can make people feel confused, which will not make them feel trusting.

Stop Being A People Pleaser

Assertive communication does not mean you will change everyone's mind and get your way every single time. However, assertive communication does include making sure those around you know who you truly are while preventing them from trying to walk all over you. People pleasers, as lovely as they are, tend to get taken advantage of because they want to make sure everyone is happy.

Be Present in The Moment

When communicating, be present and in the moment. Don’t dwell on past mistakes or think about others who are not in the conversation unless it leads in that direction. Truly listen to what is being said. Repeat the message to be sure you and they know you understand them. Pay attention to every word they say, don’t say, and their body language, too, so you can respond appropriately. Missing details or bringing up other things can cause distrust and will ultimately lead to aggressive communication.

Practice Fogging

Fogging is an excellent technique designed to eliminate hostile confrontation in a conversation with passive or aggressive communicators.

For example, if a co-worker asks, “Why didn’t you turn in the assignment, you said you would help me with? I am over your lying and trying to deceive me!” You can reply, “Yes, I did not turn the assignment in when I thought I would. I can see this has upset you.” The idea is to have a response that is calm and truthful but doesn’t fully agree with what they are saying to prevent arguing or a negative response.

Developing assertive communication skills takes time and practice. Remember these techniques, and you will be more successful in your career and relationships.

Analyze Your Efforts Over Time

Everything you do is a process of leveling up. You start out as a complete newbie – an unknown – and grow into a formidable entrepreneur who starts to set the pace for how things go in your industry.

In order to achieve that level of expertise and authority, you’ll want to periodically analyze how you’re doing things. Every successful company does this – looks at ways to improve over time.

It’s the same for online marketers. You need to know when to drop something or add something to your business. You have to know when you should replace a strategy with something new, or pursue something you had hesitated on before.

To improve, it means you embrace the process of wearing both your employee and your boss hat when you analyze your efforts. Be blunt with yourself about how things are going.....

Stay Ethical and Align Yourself with the Right People

Ethics in this industry are paramount to your success. Reputation is everything, and if you ruin it with poor decisions, and a poor understanding of how others can affect you, all of your efforts will be wasted.

The first thing you have to do is maintain a system of ethical standards for yourself. For example, what’s your rule on refunds? Is it one rule across the board, or are you flexible?

It’s okay to be hardnosed about it, but you need to ensure everyone is made aware ahead of time, and don’t sneak some small print into your copy that hides it from your prospective buyer.

What about things you recommend? Are you the type who sees it as a free-for-all where you’ll promote anything and everything to your customers, and say it’s their fault if they buy something wrong?

Or do you shoulder the responsibility of giving your audience good advice on what to spend money on, even if it’s not something that you, yourself are selling? Think of how you would want to be treated.....

Get Committed to the Routine of an Entrepreneur

Routines are important when you’re working for yourself. It holds you accountable to whether or not you’re making progress versus allowing yourself to get away with being a slacker just because you can.

Not only that, but it helps you step up and serve your audience better, too. They rely on you for consistency, and if you’re not in a routine of carrying out tasks like posting to your blog or emailing them, the random communication will wear thin.

The first thing you want to have in your routine is to check emails. You want to stay on top of customer support issues, so that if someone needs your help, they know they’ll have your attention right away.

You may want to do it more than once a day – such as checking morning, afternoon and evening. You want to set up a schedule for how often you do things, such as creating a blog post or email – or posting to a social networking site....

Develop a Love of Learning

If you’re going to be a leader or coach of any kind, helping people with their goals in any niche, you have to develop a love of learning. This isn’t the typical school type of learning you couldn’t wait to escape.

This is driven by your passion to help people. One thing that intimidates many people and prevents them from succeeding is that they mistakenly believe that if they have no degree or certification, they can’t compete in the marketplace.

But when you’re helping others with things as a leader or coach, you don’t need all of that. As a doctor or lawyer, you would – but not for these purposes. Your job is to stay informed!

You just need the ability and desire to help people. To do that, you should want to stay informed of cutting edge information and a variety of strategies that you could pass along to your audience.....

Be Your Biggest Supporter, Not Your Worst Enemy

A lack of confidence is a dream killer, so if you go into this business assuming you’ll fail, you’re probably right. One of the things that intimidates most people is comparing themselves to other, already successful marketers.

You see their incredible earnings and hear their tale of rags to riches and it sounds like lightening couldn’t possibly strike twice. The most basic mindset you have to possess is that you are capable.

You’re going to have enough people not believing in you along the way – your friends and family who have no idea about online marketing and think everything is a scam, your prospective customers who look at everyone suspiciously until they prove themselves, and affiliates and others in your industry who wonder if you’ll be a legitimate and ethical person or someone who ruins their reputation....