Attitude is Everything

Good morning, everybody. Dennis Engelbrecht with The Family Business Institute and the CEO Roundtable Program for
Contractors, Digging Deeper.

Attitude is everything. Now, you've probably heard that; it's a pretty common sort of statement. I've been reading a few
articles lately and it really kept sort of hitting me across the head. Attitude is everything. And I really believe in many ways
it is. As a leader, so often if you believe, everybody else will believe. And you show that belief with your attitude.

Attitude is a choice. Now, what do I mean by that? Okay, well, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and I'm miserable
today and I make everybody around me miserable. Well, that's a choice. Things will happen to you. Circumstances will
happen. But you have a choice to either let the circumstances affect your attitude or to control your attitude. Don't let
the circumstances decide. Make your attitude a choice and make it a positive one.

First of all, your brain is hardwired to be emotional. So, it's natural to sometimes feel down, to be angry, to be frustrated.
This happens to us. Your brain is hardwired to take these things in, react to it. But now we internalize that and we reflect
it to all of those around us, and it has a tremendous effect on everybody else. We can create our own reality. We can take
the circumstances of the day and we can place them over here and we can create our own optimistic or pessimistic realm
with those we come in contact with and interact with in any given time or any given day, and really throughout your entire
life.

So, in some of my reading lately, one of the things I read, I'll call it the gas station story. So there was a group of people
that was thinking of moving to a new town and they were in their car and they went to this new place and they're kind of
looking around, and they stop at the gas station to get gas. And the fella asked the gas station attendant, "What are people
like here?" And the gas station attendant looks at him says, "Well, what were they like where you come from?" He says,
"Well, they were mean, petty, and selfish. And the gas station attendant says, "Well, they're pretty much the same here."
Essentially, he decided he didn't want this person in his town, because if that person saying everybody has mean, petty,
and selfish, it's likely that the person coming with the story was the one who was mean, petty, and selfish. They have
created their reality, and he didn't want it in their town. And I thought that was really funny because yeah, the people in
this new town are probably going to be pretty much like the people in the last town.

So, be in control of your fate. Don't let anger, frustration, despair be your enemy. Take control of those, take control of
your emotions. Reflect, and this comes specifically to construction, reflect the appropriate urgency without the frustration
or the anger. Reflect the appropriate planfulness that you want for your organization by being planful yourself and
encouraging others to take the time to be planful, to be organized. Reflect the concern for detail that you want. If quality
and cleanliness are important to you, reflect that in your conversations, but you can still do it with a positive attitude.
Same for safety.

If you want to do an experiment to see how much in control you can actually be with your attitude, just go in to work
tomorrow and put on a grumpy face. Now, do this for the entire day. Just put on a grumpy face, walk around and looking
grumpy and acting grumpy and see what happens around you. Observe what everyone else does. And I think you'll find
that the attitude of the office will be very poor. Productivity will go down. A lot less will be done. And now go in the next
day, or maybe some other day, and come in with an engaging smile and engage people and show enthusiasm with each
person you meet and see what the reaction is there. And I think you'll learn an amazing lesson, and the lesson is to lead
with your attitude. Attitude is everything.

Again, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper. Thanks for tuning in.