Let Your Actions Lead Your Attitudes

“There is no microwave version of self-change. You have to commit to it and persist in it”.

Feelings and attitudes are not the same thing. To greater or lesser degrees we are all governed by our feelings.  While we sometime think of feelings as something we cannot control, we can all think of examples of behaviors that we can engage in to change our mood and “make us feel better”. We intuitively understand that feelings are transient – they can, and will change.

Attitudes are different in that they are a settled way of looking at something or someone.  Though we sometimes use the two interchangeably, attitude is more akin to a long held point of view or orientation than a feeling. Unlike its transient cousin, it is much more stable and much more difficult to change.

So if you find yourself with an attitude toward an individual or department within your organization that is not productive or doesn’t allow you to maximize the relationship how do you go about changing your attitude?  Change your actions.

Leverage Human Nature

The human psyche seeks congruence between what we do, say and feel.  Have you ever seen a public figure say something that they should have apologized for, but instead they choose to double down and alter their behavior to become consistent with their words?  At least part of this is related to his or her need for internal consistency and congruence between words and deeds.

Knowing this need for congruence exist, you can now put into practice purposeful actions to change your attitude.  In a previous post we covered a practical step to Jump Start Your Motivation by setting a specific time with the only expectation being that you start the task and work for a pre-determined period of time (giving yourself the option to continue as you accrue momentum toward completion).

The below steps work in a similar way with a focus on just getting started:

• Identify an attitude toward something or someone that you would like to change
• Analyze your current attitude toward that someone or something
  • Be conscience of what you say
  • Be conscience of your non verbal’s when other people are talking about the someone or something
  • Be conscience of your facial expressions
    • Do you involuntarily frown (for example)
    • Does your heart-rate increase
    • Do you fold your arms
  • Identify a specific way you can behave in a different way toward that someone or something with an eye toward changing your attitude
    • In the work context, I recommend focusing on changing a negative orientation or attitude to a positive one, but the congruence principle operates in either direction
  • Take action and persist in the practice of that behavior

You may be skeptical, but try this though experiment.  Think of something or someone that you have a positive attitude or orientation toward.  What would happen if you begin treating them poorly and concentrating on their flaws and what do you think the result will be overtime? Would your attitude change for the worse?

Remember: There is no microwave version of self-change. You have to commit to it and persist in it.  Commit to let your actions lead your attitudes and not the other way around and keep running with it.

Have you ever tried to change your long term attitude toward something or someone by purposely changing your actions?  In your estimation, how realistic is this? Let me know in the comments below.

Visit thyrone.com where you can read past blog posts and we can connect on LinkedIn and other media.  Follow me on Twitter @thyrone and if you are in the Columbus, OH area @careercolumbus.