The Power of Your Attitude

Improve Your Attitude by Improving Your Daily Habits

Quality improvement is a term we hear most often in business, but it can be applied to your life as well. When we talk about quality of life, many people think about issues related to illness or aging, such as diminished physical capacity or chronic pain. But there’s more to the quality of your life than the things you’re able to do. What I call total quality life is experiencing a high level of success and satisfaction in four areas—mind, body, resources, and spirit. I’ve found that it’s more difficult to gain and maintain a positive attitude when any one of these areas is chronically out of alignment. A positive attitude springs from a total quality life. To complete the transformation of your attitude, you’ll need to bring other areas of your life into alignment so they’ll support your goal.

In the last chapter we talked about the specific ways to transform your attitude by renewing your mind. Changing your thoughts is critical to changing your outlook. However, your body gets a vote here too. How you feel, your levels of stress, your health, your resources—all these things can impact your attitude. While it’s possible to keep a positive outlook in spite of illness, poverty, or extreme stress, it’s only wise to recognize that your daily actions and habits with regard to your health and finances also shape your outlook.

That brings us to the second critical arena in which you must exert control over your life if you’re to make the transformation to a positive attitude: your daily habits. In this chapter, I’ll show you how to support your attitude transformation by making simple, practical changes to your lifestyle. I wrote extensively about this process in my book Total Quality Life: Strategies for Purposeful Living. If you’re starting from scratch in developing positive personal habits, I highly recommend that book as well.

For our purposes here, let me give you some practical actions that will further the lifestyle that supports a positive attitude.

Realize That You Need a Life Change

The first step to developing a positive lifestyle is to realize you need to make changes in how you live in addition to how you think. As we’ve already seen, there’s an undeniable link between your mind and body. How you think affects how you feel, the choices you make, the habits you develop, and, ultimately, the future course of your life. It’s vital to recognize that this connection is a two-way street. That means your habits affect the daily choices you make, which in turn affect your feelings and thoughts.

Think of your mind and body as a V8 engine. Those powerful, compact motors have four pistons on each side, but they all push on the same crank. For the engine to run smoothly, all of them must work in harmony. Though they appear to be opposing one another, the pistons are really pushing in the same direction. Your mind and body are like that. They must work together to produce a wholesome, healthy outlook. It does no good to fill your mind with positive thoughts while ignoring your body, or worse yet, doing things that undermine the positive choices you’re making. To maintain a positive outlook, you need to get your mind and body working in concert, like a finely tuned engine.

This could require some major changes in your life. If you’ve been steeped in negative thinking for years, your entire lifestyle may be negative. Eating habits, physical condition, work habits, money management—any or all of these may be out of alignment due to a chronically negative outlook. If so, you’ll need to dedicate serious effort and attention to developing a total quality life. Reading this book on positive thinking is a great start, but you must bring your body along with you on this journey to transform your life. To do that, you must embrace the fact that some major changes are needed. Change begins with a decision. Decide today that you’ll develop the healthy habits that support positive living.

Develop Healthy Daily Routines

We’ve already seen that your habits predict your future. The good news there is that if you can enlist your daily routines in supporting your lifestyle changes, your success is practically guaranteed. The secret is to turn these positive behaviors into habits—things you do daily without thinking about them. For example, you don’t make a decision every day about whether to brush your teeth. You make one decision, develop a habit around it, and before long you’re doing it without a second thought. When you automate a positive behavior, it will support your positive attitude for years to come.

Here are five healthy habits you should add to your daily routine if they’re not there already. Each of them will improve your physical health and thereby support your transformation to a positive attitude.

Eat Properly

North Americans generally have terrible eating habits, which accounts for the multibillion-dollar diet industry. We eat poorly, then pay people to tell us not to! If you struggle to maintain your weight, suffer from diabetes, or have another health condition that’s impacted by your diet, you must recognize the negative impact that poor eating will have on your body, your emotions, your sense of well-being, and ultimately your attitude. To support your positive attitude, improve your health by eating properly.

I’m certainly not a physician, so I don’t give dieting advice. However, I believe that the best eating plan is one that’s balanced, provides adequate nutrition, and enables you to maintain or lose weight as necessary. Avoid food regimens that promise instant weight loss, a quick fix to health problems, require the purchase of supplements or specific food products, or aren’t validated by scientific medical studies.

Eat nutritious, balanced meals, and you’ll improve your health, your sense of well-being, your energy, and your attitude. If you’re used to overeating, consuming junk food, or other unhealthy dietary habits, this will take a significant effort to change. Enlist the support you need, and determine that you’ll create healthy habits around your eating.

Exercise Frequently

As with dieting, there’s an entire industry built up around supporting individual exercise and physical conditioning. Again, I don’t claim to be an expert in the field, but I do know that an active lifestyle with consistent physical activity makes for a healthy body and a positive outlook. In my opinion, you don’t have to be an athlete to be healthy. You can develop positive exercise habits around walking, biking, or other forms of low-impact activity. Done properly, these can deliver enough activity to keep most people fit. Remember, physical activity is anything that makes you move your body and burn calories.

How much exercise do you need? Your doctor can tell you for sure; however, to maintain overall cardiovascular health, the American Heart Association currently recommends at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity at least five days per week, or at least 25 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity at least three days per week, plus moderate- to high-intensity muscle-strengthening activity at least twice a week.1

Clearly, to hit targets like that you’ll have to be intentional about it. In other words, you’ll need to make physical activity or exercise a daily habit. Do it first thing in the morning, or in the evening, or whenever works for you. Just do it consistently, and you’ll have more energy and a better outlook.

Get More Rest

Most people need about eight hours of sleep each night, but many people get far less. Lack of sleep is now a recognized issue in our society, with the Centers for Disease Control labeling it a public health problem.² If you have difficulty falling asleep, waking up, or sleeping through the night, or if you nod off unintentionally during the day, you may not be getting enough sleep—or enough quality sleep. Lack of sleep depletes your physical and mental energy. It makes simple tasks harder, undermines your creativity, and makes you more vulnerable to stress. In short, it’s an attitude killer. To support your change to a positive attitude, you need healthy sleep habits.

Here are some tips that may help you get more rest, feel better, and maintain a positive outlook.

Set a consistent bedtime and rising time. Successful people often have highly structured sleep habits, including a set bedtime and end-of-the-day routines. Get to bed at a consistent hour, and you’ll be more likely to get good sleep.

Don’t eat a lot in the evening. Digesting a heavy meal will keep your body awake when your mind is trying to fall asleep. To fall asleep faster, eat sparingly after dinner.

Avoid caffeine. I love a good cup of coffee, but I avoid it in the afternoon and evening so the stimulant effect of caffeine won’t interrupt my sleep. Remember that many soft drinks also contain caffeine.

Create a bedtime routine. This may sound juvenile, but it’s part of building a habit. Doing the same things each day before falling asleep prepares your body to relax. Whether that’s brushing your teeth, reading, putting the dog out, laying out your clothes for the morning, or other actions, developing a shut-down pattern will help you sleep faster and sounder.

Take a consistent day off. I believe everyone needs one full day each week for rest and restoration. Working seven days a week increases your stress level and drains you mentally as well as physically. Take a consistent day off and relax.

Get adequate rest, and you’ll feel better. Feel better, and it will be that much easier to maintain a positive outlook.

Meditate Daily

There’s more to you than meets the eye. I believe each of us has a body, a mind, and a spirit—that unseen part of you that’s the “real you.” To be healthy and whole, you must tend to your spirit as well as your mind and body.

As a pastor, I’ve seen up-close the effect that neglecting the spirit can have on a person’s well-being and that of his or her loved ones. My own spiritual practices involve daily prayer, reading of Scripture, and personal reflection. These simple activities keep me spiritually centered and at peace. Without those daily times of prayer and reflection, it would be much more difficult to maintain a relentlessly positive outlook.

Use the spiritual practices that work best for you, and don’t neglect your heart. It’s impossible to maintain a positive outlook when you have disharmony within.

Balance Your Stress

Stress is anything that places pressure on you, mentally, physically, or emotionally. You undoubtedly have many sources of stress in your life, some positive and some negative. It’s impossible to avoid all stress, and you wouldn’t want to. Hosting a party involves stress, but it’s also a delight. That’s a positive stressor. Having a run-in with your boss causes stress too, the negative kind.

You can’t avoid all negative stresses, though you can mitigate them. If you have a difficult relationship with a family member, that’s a negative stressor. However, you’d rather relieve the stress—or balance it with positive things—than eliminate the relationship.

The problem with stress is that it drains your reserve energy, thereby making it harder to keep a positive outlook. When you’re overstressed, it’s much easier to entertain negative thoughts and allow your attitude to drift.

Here are practical strategies for balancing the stress in your life so that it doesn’t siphon off your momentum toward positive transformation.

Avoid negative stressors when possible. You probably already know the people or situations that cause you the most stress. Some of them can be avoided entirely. Choose not to place yourself in situations that are loaded with negative stress.

Alleviate negative stressors that you can’t avoid. You can’t avoid bad weather, flight delays, traffic, or deadlines at work. These things may be stressful, but they’re a fact of life. When you face negative stressors, minimize their impact by expecting them, preparing for them, and taking control of them when possible. Saying “Ugh, on top of everything else, it’s raining!” belies a victim mentality. If you’ve read the weather report and prepared for inclement weather, you can say, “Glad I brought an umbrella!” Though the stress is still there, it impacts you less. Think for a moment about the major negative stressors on your mind, body, and emotions. Now that you’ve recognized them, what can you do to anticipate them, prepare for them, and take control of those situations?

Balance negative stress with self-care. Pushing toward a major project deadline is stressful. You may not be able to avoid that stress, but you can balance it by tending to your physical and emotional needs. After working hard to meet a goal, reward yourself with an activity you enjoy. If you have to spend time with a person who stresses you, perhaps you can balance that by spending that time at your favorite restaurant. I’m not talking about being self-indulgent or using food or other substances as a coping device. I simply mean that you should pay attention to your physical and emotional needs, and balance the negative with something positive.

Manage positive stressors. When dealing with positive stressors, it’s important to know your limits. Because these stressors often result from things we enjoy, it’s tempting to say yes to too many positive stressors at once. For example, you might enjoy participating in a bicycle race, attending a friend’s wedding, and building a fence around your backyard. But you probably shouldn’t attempt all those things on the same weekend! Each one is good, but each also brings busyness, expenses, physical exertion, and a drain of emotional energy. Those may be positive stresses, but the combination is overwhelming. Know your limits, and keep your positive stressors in balance. Above all, keep a good attitude. The best stress buster is a light heart. Remain hopeful, humble, and joyful, and stress will have less impact on you.

Develop Positive Financial Habits

Before we leave the subject of the mind-body connection and its impact on your outlook, there’s one additional area of life we must consider: your personal finances. Perhaps no other aspect of life has greater potential to impact the total quality of your life as this one. While it’s true that people of very modest means can have a great outlook and the wealthiest of people can have a terribly negative attitude, it’s also true that money—either its lack or its abundance—can dominate your thinking, generate stress, and impact your physical health. To build and safeguard a positive outlook, you need positive strategies for thinking about and handling your resources.

Here are some good financial habits you need to develop.

Never Make Wealth Your Goal

The first step to developing positive financial habits is to develop the right attitude toward money. Think of money as a means, never as an end. While there’s nothing wrong with profiting from good ideas and hard work, those who make the pursuit of wealth a primary goal in life often place themselves in line for a variety of heartaches. Money makes a great servant but a terrible master. Aim to provide for your family, succeed in life, build a thriving business, write a bestselling book, become a notable musician, or compete in the highest levels of a sport—any of those are great ambitions. Aiming to get rich is not, though that may well be the result of your success in other areas.

To ensure that your shortage of money doesn’t derail your positive attitude, keep money in its proper place in your life. Treat it as a tool, not an object of desire.

Live Within Your Means

While that may sound obvious, it’s anything but that for the millions of people who accrue more and more debt each year. If you’re carrying balances on a credit card or consumer loans, that means you’ve been living above your means, borrowing money to fill in the gap between income and spending.

Living with debt is stressful, and it inhibits your ability to give generously, which should be the natural byproduct of a positive attitude. To begin (or continue) living within your means, you need to develop a household budget. A budget is simply a spending plan. When you budget your income, you’re planning how you’ll spend your money before you actually spend it. That helps you make wise choices. There are many free tools available for budgeting, but the idea is simple: (1) list all your anticipated income, (2) list all your planned expenditures, (3) adjust the expenses to ensure that they’re less than your income each month.

Save and Invest

Once you begin living within your means, you’ll have extra money that you can save or invest. First, put away some “rainy day” money—for emergency spending. Second, apply your financial strength to paying off debts. Third, invest money to build financial strength for education, major purchases, or retirement. When you begin to build some financial reserves, your stress level due to finances will be greatly decreased. As a result, you’ll enhance your ability to keep a positive outlook.

Avoid Debt

As we’ve noted, if you’re borrowing money, it means you’re living above your means. Borrowing money is a poor financial choice for most households, other than to buy a home. When you’ve been diligent at managing and saving money, you should build the financial strength to handle household emergencies, home repairs, and even a replacement automobile.

Building financial strength is invigorating, and it’s great for your attitude! Debt, on the other hand, is demoralizing and places negative stress on your mind. Avoid debt, and you’ll strengthen your ability to maintain a positive focus.

Give Generously

Generous giving has two benefits in terms of building your positive attitude. First, it feels wonderful to bestow a financial or material blessing on those who need it. What a boost that is for your positive outlook! Second—and this is something you might not expect—giving money away actually makes it easier to manage. It sounds odd, but it’s true. When you commit yourself to giving to others, either to your church, a favorite charity, or some other worthy means, you force yourself to value your remaining funds more highly, and to think more carefully about your spending. The result is that your finances will likely improve even though you have less money to work with. Generosity is a blessing both to the giver and the receiver. Try it and see.

Build Your Support System

While we’re talking about the mind-body connection, let me give you some interesting facts about your own body. Are you aware that you have 206 bones in your skeletal system? (That is, unless you’re one of the two-tenths of 1 percent of the population that has an extra rib, just above your collarbone.) Though the old folk song says that “the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone,” there’s one bone in your body that’s not connected to anything. The hyoid, a horseshoe-shaped bone in your throat, located between the chin and thyroid cartilage, is the only human bone not connected to another.

Some parts of your body have many more bones than others do. For example, each hand includes 26 bones, and each foot comprises 27. That means your hands and feet together contain more than half the bones in your body.

Bones are incredibly hard; pound for pound, they’re harder than steel. And they’re so important to your health and well-being that doctors have been creating prosthetic bones to replace damaged ones for centuries. While modern physicians seem to have perfected the artificial knee and hip, credit goes to the Egyptians for inventing the very first prosthetic bone—a big toe—some three thousand years ago.

Feel your elbow right now. That bone places you among the mere 2 percent of all living creatures that have a skeletal system. That means you, unlike spiders, mollusks, and of course the jellyfish, have an internal structure that gives you support and strength. No one looking at you can see your skeleton, but it’s there, supporting every move you make from your smile (the mandible and maxilla) to your speech (the hyoid) to your cheerful wave (the humerus, radius, ulna, and all 26 bones in your hand). Without a strong skeleton, you wouldn’t be able to walk, talk, or stand upright. It’s your unseen support system.

Your lifestyle habits are just that for your positive outlook—the unseen system that supports and enables it to continue. Your consistent daily, weekly, and monthly practices set you up for success in the life transformation you’re attempting, and they support you in maintaining a positive outlook day after day, year after year. Eating properly, getting enough sleep, balancing stress, meditating, saving money—each of these “bones” in the skeleton of your lifestyle underlies the positive choices that you wish to make. Being well rested enables you to choose perseverance. Being free from financial stress helps you make the choice to be generous. Being physically fit and energetic makes it so much easier to choose perseverance when things get tough. You need the unseen skeleton of positive daily routines and habits to support your life transformation.

So again, let me challenge you to action. Which of the habits that support your strong mind-body connection are you lacking? Which do you most urgently need to develop? What might your life look like if you were able to develop total quality in your health, emotional life, and finances? What’s the next step you need to take to develop healthy life habits? And when will you do it?