Attitude more than Skill get’s the Job
Harvard and Stanford Universities have reported that 85% the reason a person gets a job and gets ahead in that job is due to attitude; and only 15% is because of technical or specific skills.
Interesting, isn’t it? You spent how much money on your education?  And you spent how much money on building your positive attitude?
Ouch. That hurts.
Now here’s an interesting thought. With the “right” attitude, you can and will develop the necessary skills.
So where’s your emphasis? Skill building? Attitude building? Unfortunately, “Neither” is the real answer for many people.
Perhaps if more people knew how simple it is to develop and maintain a positive attitude they would invest more time doing so. So here we  go. Five steps to staying positive in a negative world:
1. Understand that failure is an event, it is not a person. Yesterday ended last night; today is a brand new day, and it’s yours. You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win,  prepare to win, and then you can expect to win.
2. Become a lifetime student. Learn just one new word every day and in five years you will be able to talk with just about anybody about anything. When your vocabulary improves, your I.Q. goes up 100% of the time, according to Georgetown Medical School.
3. Read something informational or inspirational every day. Reading for 20 minutes at just 240 words per minute will enable you to read 20 200-page books each year. That’s 18 more than the average person reads! What an enormous competitive advantage . . . if you’ll just read for 20 minutes a day.
4. Enroll in Automobile University. The University of Southern California reveals that you can acquire the equivalent of two years of a college education in three years just by listening to motivational and educational cassettes on the way to your job and again on the way home. What could be easier?
5. Start the day and end the day with positive input into your mind. Inspirational messages cause the brain to flood with dopamine and norepinephrine, the energizing neurotransmitters; with endorphins, the endurance neurotransmitters; and with serotonin, the feel-good-about- yourself neurotransmitter. Begin and end the day by reading or doing something positive!
Remember: Success is a process, not an event.   Invest the time in your attitude and it will pay off in your skills as well as your career.
So a few hundred dollars worth of self improvement tapes may be more valuable than my college degree and the loans I’m paying back?! : ) Â
Keep yourself Growing….
Kirk Out
August 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am
This reminds me of my favorite saying. I first saw this when I started with my current employer Emerson Network Power aka Liebert Corp. When I attended my first training class, Total Quality, it was on the backside of the name tent we use to see each other’s names during the class. I LOVE it!
_ MAry
ATTITUDE by: Charles Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.
August 24th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Kirk - I gotten question this 240 words per minute thing?
. Read something informational or inspirational every day. Reading for 20 minutes at just 240 words per minute will enable you to read 20 200-page books each year. That’s 18 more than the average person reads! What an enormous competitive advantage . . . if you’ll just read for 20 minutes a day.
August 26th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
My 92 year old grandfather (still in great mental and physical shape) has often said, “in today’s economy a man cannot get a good job unless he has a college degree …â€. I keep trying to tell him this isn’t true, a degree is helpful but looking at many college grads entering the workforce they lack many of the qualities that will truly advance their career – such as attitude, or social skills, motivation, etc., this is what will truly payoff. Hence I continue to help my kids ‘grow’. Can’t wait to read today’s T4D to them at dinner.