October - December 2015 •
The Lion King
• 39
Does Attitude really determine altitude? |
Productivity
DOES ATTITUDE
REALLY
DETERMINE
ALTITUDE?
By Paul Uduk*
K
eith Harrell’s book screams, Attitude is Everything: 10
Life-Changing Steps to Turning Attitude into Action. Jeff
Keller not to be outdone goes a step further and shouts,
Attitude is Everything: Change your Attitude, Change your
Life. Two of the fathers of modern motivational literature,
Napoleon Hill, and W. Clement Stone, had in 1960 written
what many consider the definitive treatise on attitude when
Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude was published.
Though it did not have the word attitude in its title, Dale
Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People was on
positive attitude and was first published in 1937.
The Self Help industry according to The Guardian, is $11bn
strong in the US alone, with books in this space such as
Chicken Soup for the Soul series selling over a billion copies.
The book The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, published in 2006,
and the follow up film starring Bob Proctor, made waves
the whole world and was translated into 46 languages. The
book has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. The
book is based on one of the several tendencies in the self
help industry called the law of attraction. According to this
law, what you think about, you attract. If you think positive
thoughts, you attract positive things. The reverse, accord-
ing to the author, is also true. Viola! Change your thinking,
change your life. John C. Maxwell, Wayne Dyer, Daniel
G. Amen, Brian Tracy, and Marilee Adams are some of the
more well known authors that have books on how thinking
positive help change our lives.
So back to our question: does attitude really determine alti-
tude? For the non cognoscenti, altitude refers to the level
of your monetary success, the height of your achievement
glory, the stupendousness of your wealth. A deep look at
some of the most successful people on the planet, whether
in politics, sports, academia, business, and entertainment,
to mention a few, however, shows no causal relationship
between attitude and success, however defined. George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, Nelson Mandela, Steve
Jobs, Williams Shakespeare, Bill Gates, Ben Carson, and
Oprah Winfrey, Tony Elumelu, Aliko Dangote, and Richard
Branson, to mention a few, are some of the most success-
ful individuals on record. How did each and every one of
these individuals achieve stupendous success? One word:
through grit.
By success, I don’t just mean financial wealth, because
Nelson Mandela, one of the most successful leaders that
ever lived was not a multi millionaire. So the one and only
ingredient that separates successful people from others
is grit, by which I mean hard work, burning the mid night
oil, iron determination, standing for something, sacrifice.
Malcolm Gladwell tells us to succeed in any endeavour,
you need 10,000 man hours of continued practice, that is,
about 10 years in the trenches. Ten years of learning, ten
years of focus, ten years of faith, ten years of passion, ten
years of sacrifice are what you need to reach the proverbial
tipping point.
Attitude is a state of mind, of always expecting the best
no matter what the world throws on your path. But attitude
(the software) without hard work (the hard ware) will not
put bread on your table, even if you are a comedian. As a
comedian, you have to continually come up with fresh rib
crackers otherwise you will become stale, and that calls for
extreme hard work. John H. Johnson of the Ebony Magazine
empire fame said “there is no defense against excellence”,
and the boxing maverick, Don King, once said, “If you set
yourself on fire, the world will come and watch you burn.”
Don King was talking about passion, zeal, determination,
to go out and make something out of yourself, not waiting
for a dole out, social security or manna from heaven. Are
you ready for success? Then wake up, put on your running
shoes, fold your shirt sleeves, put your hand to the plough
and never look back and the gods of success will show up.
Only hard work will see you to the Promised Land because
the maker of all the universe Himself decreed that he who
does not work does not eat. Attitude alone my friend is not
enough. You need a ton of grit to stand on.
*Paul Uduk is the Author of “The Celebrity Speaker: Speak Like The Orators of
Old, Impact the World and Grow Rich”, and “Bridges to the Customer’s Heart”
