STEP 6
Be pre-active.
This step helps you understand the importance of being prepared, never giving up, never quitting, knowing you will overcome. This is the mind-set you need to help you turn attitude into action.
Several years ago, I was invited to be one of the closing speakers for a big IBM rally in San Francisco. There were more than eight hundred people there. I was still working for Big Blue at the time, and I considered it an honor to be invited to address my coworkers, including a group from my hometown, Seattle. I was excited. I wanted, and needed, to be fully prepared. For two and a half weeks I worked on my presentation. I practiced my voice inflections. I worked on my introduction, my main points, the body of my speech, my stories, and my close.
After all that preparation, I was fired up. I scarcely remember the trip from my house to the airport, I was so excited. Once I’d parked the car at the airport garage, I ran to the ticket counter, only to be advised that the flight would be delayed four hours. Now some may have taken that as a negative development. I looked at it as an opportunity to practice for four more hours, and I did, up and down the concourse. Out loud! As I practiced, an older lady approached me and asked, “Sir, excuse me, but to whom are you talking?”
“I’m talking to myself. I’m getting ready for a motivational presentation.”
“Well, what I‘ve heard so far sounds really good.” It was just the encouragement I needed.
Finally it came time to board the plane. I was seated next to a gentleman who for four and a half hours didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. I motivated him the whole way. When the plane landed, he jumped up from his seat and gave me a standing ovation. “I’ve never been on a plane with a motivational speaker, but boy you’ve got me fired up! You’re going to do great!”
I thanked him and hurried off the plane, still fired up. My designated escort met me at the gate. She noticed my enthusiasm immediately and asked how my flight was.
I responded, “Anytime I get from point A to point B, it’s always a pretty good flight.” She then went on to explain that she had some good news and some bad news.
I asked her two questions, “Am I speaking today? And is the audience breathing?”
She responded yes to both. So I told her, “It all sounds like good news to me. I’ve been preparing for two weeks, and I’m ready to make a difference.”
“I like your attitude,” she said. “But we have to move your speech from one-thirty up to four-thirty. Also, you now have to follow Debbi Fields of Mrs. Field’s Cookies, who is one of the top speakers on the circuit. None of the other speakers on the program wanted to follow her. We hope you don’t mind.”
Still I hung on to my positive attitude. “Let me tell you something. It’s been two and a half weeks of preparation, followed by a four-and-a-half-hour flight. I’m so ready I’ll follow anybody. And I hope she brought some cookies!”
When we arrived at the ballroom where the conference was being held, Mrs. Fields was concluding her talk. My host asked if I wanted to go in to listen to her closing remarks. I declined, explaining, “I would love to go in and listen to a great speaker like Mrs. Fields, but you have given me a challenge. And I’ve learned from my grandma that anytime you get a challenge you should break it down to an opportunity. I’m going to stay out in the hallway and practice my speech. I’ll know when it’s my time to come in.”
She said, “Good luck, break a leg.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but if it was anything good, I was breaking two. I started walking around the hotel lobby talking to myself. Don’t worry about Mrs. Fields. You know what you’ve got to do.
All of a sudden, I heard the roar of the crowd. A voice came into my head: Oh, she’s good. Three minutes later I see two people leaving the ballroom. They’re eating chocolate chip cookies. I said to myself, Oh no, you didn’t bring them anything to eat. Just then a friend came running up and offered these words of encouragement: “I saw your name on the program. Oh Keith, you’ve got to follow Mrs. Fields? I’ll be praying for you because I don’t think you can be that good.”
My attitude went from an all-time high to a basement-level low in a matter of seconds. My positive internal dialogue automatically switched over to negative. My inner voice said, Give up. They don’t want to hear you speak. They want to go home. You didn’t bring them any cookies. In life everyone fails, and today is your turn!
I believe there is a coach and a spirit that lives within me, and I believe there is a coach and a spirit that lives within you. When times get tough and you’re faced with the hazards of life, call on your coach. In the middle of the hotel lobby, I yelled out, “Be quiet! You didn’t stay up two and a half weeks and fly four and a half hours to come out here and fail. You’ll make a lousy Mrs. Fields, but you can make the best Keith Harrell in the world. You’re here to make a difference. Let’s go get busy.”
I entered the back of the room. I was all prepared to run down the center aisle. The top executive was introducing me, going through my bio. I was so keyed up I was jumping up and down. He kept going on and on with the introduction. My patience ran out. “Hurry up!” I yelled. A woman seated to my right glared up at me. “Oh, you’re the next speaker. I feel sorry for you. You’ve got to follow Mrs. Fields and she was g-o-o-d!”
I looked down at her with a million dollar smile and said, “Let me tell you something. Don’t feel sorry for me. The reason I’m following her is because she can’t follow me. You better hang on to your seat and buckle up because I’m going to have an impact!”
I ran down that aisle, jumped up on the stage, and gave my best presentation ever. I had that group so fired up, I had Mrs. Fields baking cookies for me!
Attitude is everything!
TTO—Take Trash Out
What started those negative thoughts running through my mind as I waited to speak to the crowd that day? As innocently as they may have been intended, the words of others entered into my mind as negative input and began to eat away at my confidence. I didn’t take a PAI to protect my ear-gate. I had allowed garbage to come into my mind.
Just as we take the trash out of our homes on a daily basis, we must get the garbage out of our minds. Why should we let people rent space for free? Especially if they’re moving in with garbage!
Whenever you discover negative input in your mind or trash in your attitude, you simply need to take it out. Make the decision to Take Trash Out—TTO—then make a conscious effort to keep it out. Trash affects your ability to think clearly and make good decisions. It derails you.
Trash often builds up over a period of time in the form of negative inputs that may sound something like this: “You’re no good,” “You’ll never get that promotion,” or “You don’t have what it takes to be successful.” You must simply recognize those inputs as false data and decide not to internalize them.
I have found that a physical action helps me purge that trash from my attitude. I take my hand to my forehead and wipe out the trash. At the same time, I make a sound—whoosh. I visualize the garbage leaving my mind. I then throw it on the ground and step on it. Whether the trash in your mind is old or new, it may be holding you back. It’s time to TTO and move on with positive, internal programming.
Maintaining Control
in Spite of Attitude Hazards
That situation turned out fine, but many times in life it’s the hazards of negative comments from others and what we say to ourselves that contribute to our failures, destroying the support we need to stay focused and in control.
You must be clear on your goals and be vigilant about maintaining a positive attitude. When you approach life knowing there are going to be problems, you are able to understand that the problem is not the problem. The “problem” serves as a marker, or an indicator, that allows you to recognize where you are in relation to where you desire to be.
Learning to manage minor hazards is an important step to staying positive. One winter night, I was driving my grandma and my cousin Michael, who happens to be blind, home from Christmas dinner when I heard a thumping noise that sounded like a flat tire. This time I was 100 percent correct. I carefully pulled to the shoulder of the road and got out of the car. As I headed to the trunk, my grandma leaned her head out the window. “Honey, if you need any help let me know. I’ve changed a few tires in my day, and I still remember how.” About this time Michael chimed in, “I can help you, man. Tonight I can see as well as you can out there.” I said to myself, What great attitudes. An eighty-six-year-young grandma and a blind cousin offering their assistance. They were positive and willing to put their attitudes into action.
We’re all faced with life’s minor inconveniences and hazards. How much needless energy do you expend on inconsequential matters instead of facing up to the situation and continuing on your journey? I’m reminded of a time when my flight came in unusually late and I was exhausted. All I could think about was getting home. Two weeks earlier, I’d parked my new car in the airport lot and was anxious to get on the highway. When I turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. The battery was dead. This wasn’t what I expected, particularly with a new car, but life is like that too. Unexpected situations occur constantly. Our ability to maneuver through the benign as well as the traumatic changes makes all the difference. If you’re constantly stressed by the minor annoyances, chances are you’re not going to handle the catastrophic changes well.
Pre-Active Versus Inactive
That’s why I believe in being pre-active, being prepared to take action before a situation occurs. Pre means planning your response before an event happens. Active involves taking action to put that plan in place. As with taking a test, you know there are certain things you need to do to be well prepared. By being pre-active, you anticipate a situation before it arises. Though I wasn’t expecting the battery of my new car to be dead, I did have road service membership, jumper cables in the trunk, and a charged cellular phone handy. By being prepared, I was able to handle the situation with a minimum of stress.
As we all know from experience, stress is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid. But you can combat stress by choosing to be pre-active. Making the decision to incorporate pre-planning in every facet of your life gives you tremendous power. When you are pre-active, you learn to accept responsibility for your own attitude before things happen to you. You can meet a stressful situation head on and no longer tighten up, but lighten up.
I recently had the opportunity to be pre-active in what has become a very familiar setting for me—the airport. My speaking schedule keeps me in the air almost as often as my feet are planted on the ground. You don’t have to be a frequent flyer to know that travel can be stressful, especially when schedules are disrupted and flights don’t go as planned.
On this particular day, I found my own travel plans delayed due to weather. Not just any weather—a hurricane. Now, hurricanes aren’t like other natural disasters. Earthquakes shake things up without any warning, and tornadoes aren’t much better. Hurricanes, on the other hand, announce their impending arrival long before they strike land. I knew a hurricane was coming. And I knew I had a flight to catch in a few days. Common sense would have told me that the hurricane might cause commercial airliners to cancel flights. I could have flown out a day early to avoid getting caught up in that kind of airport chaos. Rescheduling my departure would have been a pre-active move on my part. It was a move I failed to make.
As you have probably already guessed, when I got to the airport, all flights were canceled. Yet rather than stressing out, I took the opportunity to be pre-active in that moment. While the anger grew among other travelers who stood in line, complaining to ticket agents who could do absolutely nothing about the weather, I decided to call the Marriott for a hotel reservation. If I wasn’t flying anywhere that day, I might as well plan for a comfortable night’s sleep. I left the airport and the complainers behind me and made productive use of my time. When I returned the next day, those same people were still complaining. They had slept in chairs and on the floor because all hotel rooms in the area were booked. Because I had been pre-active, I was well rested, had a positive attitude, and was ready to go.
In the scope of life, my flight cancellation was a minor event. Yet life often deals us catastrophic challenges that are beyond our control. Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, the death of a loved one, unexpected illnesses, an unfaithful spouse, and random acts of violence are examples. Though major hazards are beyond our ability to control, they are definitely a part of the human experience, particularly natural disasters. They’re inescapable, regardless of where you live.
Years after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, a friend of mine who went through it still has a clear image of what happened that day. She told me she was in the middle of hosting a reception for prospective students at the college where she worked when the earthquake struck. It was fifteen seconds of terror. When it was over, sixty-seven people were dead, more than three thousand injured, a major freeway had collapsed, more than a hundred roads were closed, the San Francisco Bay Bridge was broken, and nearly eight thousand more people became homeless that evening.
I’d been in earthquakes before, but this one was different. I knew the drills. I’d heard them all my life: Stand in a doorway. Get under a desk. Have an escape route. Keep an earthquake kit—flashlight, batteries, portable radio, food rations, bottled drinking water. Basically, Keith, I was being what you’d call pre-active. I’d practiced drills in school and even at church. On that day I knew a doorway wouldn’t do. With all the talk of the next “big one” I still wasn’t prepared.
Earthquakes give no advance warning or mechanism for determining when the hazard is going to occur. Many of life’s hazards are the same—disastrous, unpredictable, and beyond your control.
Fear for my life was the motivating factor here. By the time I got everyone out of the building and made it back to my office, the campus seemed deserted. I got in my car and reluctantly headed home. I didn’t know what to expect. When I arrived, I found my neighbors standing outside afraid to go in. A gas line had ruptured, and they were waiting for emergency crews to arrive. I went inside to take a quick look at the damage, gather a few belongings, call my parents and a friend to come get me. I was afraid to be alone. While I didn’t smell gas, I heard the groans of the building as it shifted. For the next few days, we experienced hundreds of aftershocks.
Whether you go through an earthquake, divorce, or any major catastrophe, you can expect aftershocks. An aftershock is a continued disruption or a major inconvenience that occurs after the initial hazard appears to be over. After an earthquake there’s the rebuilding, the insurance to deal with, major detours, and traffic delays. After a divorce, there’s the distribution of financial assets, custody issues, and emotional challenges.
My home had always been a place where I felt safe, but hazards have a way of making familiar and trusted places seem unstable and unaccommodating. I stayed with friends for two nights. At the end of the week, I returned to work, even though there wasn’t much to do since our offices were being relocated across campus. Just being among my colleagues and the students was comforting. On my way home from work I stopped by a store to replenish my earthquake kit—batteries for my flashlight and radio, bottled water, supplies for my first-aid kit. I withdrew emergency money from the ATM and invested in a cell phone. I decided to be as prepared as possible for the next one.
Catastrophic life hazards have a way of throwing you completely off balance. When devastation hits and you feel as if your life is no longer yours to control, it’s important to reestablish a routine. This could be something as basic as getting up at the same time each day and having a set time to meditate or pray or eat. The shock may linger, the memory certainly doesn’t go away, but you can adapt and eventually recover. How well you recover from life’s earthquakes and hurricanes determines your ability to handle the next aftershock or storm.
Let’s look at what my friend did to take control of the disastrous situation:
Facing the Hazard of Fear
Whether the hazard is major or minor, expected or unexpected, what normally surfaces and hinders our ability to take action is fear. A woman shared her story with me about the hazards of flying:
I’d been back East for a number of meetings and a conference. The day I was to travel from Boston to New York, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to drive or fly. I returned the rental car and went to my gate to discover the flight was indefinitely delayed. With each passing hour, I told myself there wasn’t anything to worry about, probably just my usual anxiety about flying. It didn’t help at all when the plane finally arrived. It was one of those small twelve-seater commuter planes. I definitely didn’t want to board, but forced myself at the last minute. I hated flying, yet I’d accepted a job that required me to travel four months out of the year. I’ve always believed in facing my fears. Years earlier, I’d actually undergone hypnosis to see if it would help. It did for a while, but the fear never completely vanished.
I struck up a conversation with the woman seated across the aisle from me. I was barely buckled in when somehow I managed to tell her about my fear of flying. She reassured me that everything would be fine. She said she frequently took the short flight into Manhattan. Plus, her husband was a pilot and had flown the same type of plane. She seemed to know the safety record and it was good. I looked around and everyone seemed calm except for me. I told myself to stop stressing. In a few short hours you’ll be in New York trying on shoes. I said my prayers and readjusted my seat belt.
About twenty to twenty-five minutes into our flight we all realized something was wrong. All conversations stopped. The plane didn’t seem to be responding as it should. It suddenly lost altitude. We started a rapid descent. People started screaming. The man in the seat in front of me threw up. The woman in the aisle across from me grabbed my hand and started praying. The plane was still dropping. Time stopped. Somehow the pilot managed to level off, but there was obviously a mechanical problem. As he struggled to keep the plane airborne, a sense of dread overtook the cabin. My companion and I continued to hold hands and pray. As we approached JFK, I looked out the window and saw the fire trucks lined up on the runway. As scared as I was, I knew I’d survive and prayed that the pilot’s will to live was as strong as mine. It was a rough landing, but we were all fine. Traumatized, but fine. As we all hugged and cried tears of relief, I managed to regain my composure, claim my luggage, and hail a taxi to my hotel.
I was a grateful wreck. It was an unexpected hazard, one that I was able to walk away from, but I knew in three short days I had to get back on a plane and make the five-hour flight home. All my old fears resurfaced. I had a choice to make. How was I going to get back to California? More important, how was I going to keep my job if I was too afraid to fly? Fortunately, I was meeting friends, and they managed to calm my frayed nerves. They gave me the pep talk I needed and convinced me of the impracticality of taking the train back to California. Through the help of friends, a major attitude adjustment, and trusting in my faith, I was well on my way to overcoming my fear of flying.
How did this person take control of a disaster?
Keeping Your Faith
When you put your attitude into action, you start to overcome the hazards you’re facing. Once you accept that there are going to be hazards and challenges in life, you’re better prepared and able to adjust your attitude, do what you need to do to take action, and then start rejoicing, because you know your victory is on the other side. When you go through problems or hazards, have faith.
It’s important to walk by faith, not by sight. Remember, don’t let your vision fool you, because you may look around and see that things are not immediately getting better. This is where faith comes in. Faith is the evidence of things not seen but hoped for.
When you are in the midst of hard times, and negative things are happening, remain faithful. Know that the circumstance is temporary, so don’t worry.
Victory Lies on the
Other Side of Each Challenge
I’ve heard it reported that some people spend upwards of 92 percent of their time worrying for no good reason. You can’t get through life without experiencing some type of hazard, but worrying about what lies ahead is foolish. Although there are going to be problems, remember, your victory is on the other side.
I was cruising along, a few years back, filled with purpose, passion, and a positive attitude. Then I got blind-sided. I noticed strange swellings in both lower legs. I was supposed to catch a flight to Los Angeles to speak to employees of the Mattel Corporation, but I decided to make a quick trip to the doctor’s office first. When the doctor examined my legs, he calmly offered his diagnosis: blood clots in both legs.
Initially I looked at this as a minor challenge. I asked the doctor to write a prescription because I had a plane to catch. That’s when he told me that it was a far more serious problem than I’d realized. “If you move too quickly, and one of those blood clots releases and goes up to your heart, you won’t have to worry about your flight, your speaking engagement, or anything else,” he said.
My attitude adjusted immediately. I called my contacts at Mattel and told them we would have to reschedule. I then went straight from the doctor’s office to the hospital, where I stayed on my back for two weeks to prevent the clots from moving into an artery. There were plenty of opportunities to let my attitude slide into self-pity and frustration, but I chose to be thankful that I’d gone to a doctor who identified the problem.
Sooner or later, we all get hit with challenges that set off the Attitude Hazard alarms. A loved one becomes ill or gets injured, a shift in technology threatens your work, a sudden change in the weather turns a routine trip into a test of survival. Stuff happens! You can’t spend your life hiding behind your fears, worries, or self-doubt.
So what do you do? How do you prepare yourself to deal with things that you can’t control? By focusing on those things that you can control, and by being determined to get a positive result out of even the most negative experience. Whenever you undertake a new endeavor, it’s important to know the rules of the game. Whether it’s a new job, a new relationship, or a new challenge, there’s a process you must go through in order to learn the rules. As this learning process unfolds, we encounter problems and complexities that can easily give rise to additional Attitude Hazards, including:
Response Versus Reaction
It’s amazing how quickly a positive attitude can be shut down by a few bad experiences and negative thoughts, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so important to monitor your attitude and respond rather than react.
When you respond, you make a positive and constructive mental adjustment. When you react, it’s purely emotional and rarely does anything to improve the situation; often it makes it worse. That’s why they have Emergency Response Teams, not Emergency Reaction Teams. If your doctor has prescribed a medication and told you to come back in two weeks, wouldn’t you rather hear him say that your body is responding to the treatment rather than reacting to it?
Still not clear on the distinction? Let’s say you’ve just received word that you’re going to be downsized in six weeks.
A reaction would be I’m losing my job and my source of income. This is going to devastate my family and throw us for a loop.
A response would be I’d better get the résumé updated, contact a headhunter, and begin exploring my options.
When you simply react, you go with your gut emotional instinct, with little thought of the long-range consequences. When you respond, your brain is fully engaged and your self-awareness is high. You have the long-term big picture in mind.
Negative thoughts are going to creep into your mind. The key is to be prepared with a game plan that responds offensively and defensively rather than one that merely reacts. When you choose to be pre-active, you remind yourself that you are predestined for greatness. Pre means there is a plan for your life. Being active keeps you moving toward that plan. When you learn to accept responsibility for your own attitude before things happen to you, you no longer waste precious time making excuses, but instead take action to improve yourself or the situation around you. When you are pre-active, you have the power to successfully navigate any circumstance you may encounter. Choosing to respond instead of react helps you stay in control of your attitude and your life. It’s the difference between having an attitude that sends you flying out the door eager and excited each morning and having an attitude that keeps you under the covers hitting the snooze alarm.
Remember, hazards come in all shapes and sizes, designed to set you back, knock you down, or destroy you. In life there are going to be challenges. Stay positive, have a solid plan, take action, and you will be equipped to face all of life’s challenges. Keep your faith!
Attitude Tune-Up
Fear cannot scare a person who is at peace with God. There is no room, opportunity, or place for fear in such a person. Remember, you must have faith.