Keith Harrell’s book screams: Attitude is Everything: 10 Life-Changing Steps to Turn Attitude into Action. Jeff Keller, not to be outdone, goes one 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 written what many consider to be the definitive treatise on attitude in 1960 when Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude was published. Although it did not have the word attitude in its title, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People had a positive attitude and was first published in 1937.
The first positive attitude book was titled Self Help and was written by Samuel Smiles, a Scottish doctor, in 1859, and sold 250,000 copies. Oliver Swett Marden latched onto Self Help and in 1891 published his Pushing to the Front, which he said were notes of “inspiration and help for those who are struggling to be somebody and to do something in the world,” culminating in his lunch of the SUCCESS magazine. in 1895. According to the editors of SUCCESS magazine, in SUCCESS, Marden “sought to inspire and encourage, to teach and present models of success as a beacon to others who aspire to be equal.” With SUCCESS magazine, Marden launched the “success movement,” also called the “self-help movement.”
Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, which came out in 1937 literally set the success on fire and the movement has never looked back. By the time of Napoleon Hill’s death in 1970, it had sold more than 20 million copies. Leading figures in this movement, excluding founder Marden, and not necessarily in any order, include such early fathers as Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone, Earl Nightingale, Norman Vincent Peale, Denis Waitley, Wayne Dyer, and Og mandino. Following are later followers like Zig Ziglar, Harvey Mackay, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Les Brown and Tony Robbins. With the advent of the Internet, a new generation of success gurus led by Brendon Burchard burst onto the scene with millions of followers. Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, is in a class of his own. His Think Big and Kick Ass In Business and in Life is one of the definitive bibles of the success movement.
The self-help industry, according to The Guardian, is worth $11 billion in strength in the US alone, with books in this space like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series selling over a billion copies. Rhonda Byrne’s 2006 book The Secret and the follow-up film starring Bob Proctor caused a worldwide sensation and were translated into 46 languages. The book has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. The book is based on one of several trends in the self-help industry called the law of attraction. According to this law, what you think, you attract. If you think positive thoughts, you attract positive things. The opposite, according to the author, is also true. Viola, change your way of thinking, change your life. John C. Maxwell, Wayne Dyer, Daniel G. Amen, Brian Tracy, and Marilee Adams are some of the best known authors who have books on how positive thinking helps change our lives.
So back to our question: does attitude really determine altitude? For the non-cognoscenti, altitude refers to the level of your financial success, the height of your glory of achievement, the magnificence of your wealth. However, an in-depth look at some of the most successful people on the planet, whether in politics, sports, academia, business, and entertainment, to name a few, does not show a causal relationship between attitude and success, regardless of how it is 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 name a few, are some of the most successful people on record. How did each and every one of these individuals achieve tremendous success? One word: through the sand.
By success, I don’t just mean financial wealth, because Nelson Mandela, one of the most successful leaders who ever lived, was not a billionaire. So the one ingredient that separates successful people from everyone else is determination, by which I mean hard work, burn the midnight oil, iron determination, stand up for something, sacrifice. Malcolm Gladwell tells us that to succeed in any endeavor you need 10,000 man-hours of continuous 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 your way. But attitude (software) without hard work (hardware) won’t put bread on your table, even if you’re a comedian. As a comedian, you have to continually find fresh ribs, otherwise you will go stale, and that requires extremely hard work. John H. Johnson of Ebony Magazine said “there is no defense against excellence,” and boxing maverick Don King once said, “If you catch fire, the world will come and watch you burn.” Don King was talking about passion, zeal, determination, going out and making something of oneself, not expecting a handout, social security, or manna from heaven. Are you ready for success? So wake up, put on your running shoes, roll up your shirt sleeves, put your hand to the plow and never look back and the gods of success will smile on you. Only hard work will take you to the Promised Land because the same creator of the entire universe decreed that he who does not work does not eat. You need a great attitude. But attitude alone, my friend, is not enough. You need a sand tone to stand.
