Sunday, January 21, 2007

Attitude

Attitude=A state of mind or a feeling; disposition
That is one, of numerous definitions, for attitude. How does attitude affect your job search?

In many ways actually. Having the proper attitude is probably the single most important element of moving on to your next opportunity. The ironic part of this is when your attitude changes you'll find everything else changing.

This reminds me of two stories: When my son was about to come home on his first leave after boot camp, in the Marine Corp., he was reminded by his Drill Sargent that when they got home they'd be noticing how everyone was different. When in all reality it was them that had changed.
Number two is when I teach a safe driving class we talk of frustrations. Normally the first frustrations discussed are cell phone drivers, trucks, and people doing stupid and/or dangerous maneuvers on the roads. Having watched the roads for years and paying even closer attention now, due to the class, I have found that the majority of folks drive decently and that includes trucks. We get extremely frustrated when someone cuts in front of us, or tailgates etc. As humans we seem to remember those and not all the courteous drivers. Pretty soon we find ourselves thinking all drivers are dangerous, stupid and rude.
The flip side is I pay attention to good deeds and don't dwell on the irritating ones, rather I use the acronym FIDO, forget it and drive on, to relieve stress. Since I won't be able to correct the miscreants and rude drivers there is no reason to stress over it. By looking at the positive side I find my attitude has changed. Now that my attitude has changed it sometimes seems as if others have changed too, on the road.

Over the years some folks have stopped by the group and shared the same fact, they found things began to changed when they changed. Ergo the idea of Having fun, Meeting people and Learning something, when we change so does everyone else.

2 comments:

Richard Garber said...

Attitude is everything. Remember that you usually don't have to reinvent the wheel, just to borrow a hubcap or two.

Woodrow Wilson once said that: “I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow”. (This quote appears at the beginning of a ten page Complete Guide to Informational Interviewing and Networking posted by the University of Houston).

You can borrow ideas on job search from the brains at some of the best universities. See

http://www.jobfinderssupport.com/images/Ideas%20on%20Job%20Search%20from%20the%20UniversitiesRev011407.rtf

Richard Garber said...

Richard