Our attitude determines much of what happens to us in life. Attitude can be described as a particular way of looking at the world, of interpreting events and the actions of people around us. If our attitude is essentially fearful, we see the negative in every circumstance. By making our attitude more positive, open, and tolerant of other people, we can spark a different dynamic - we can learn from adversity, create opportunities out of nothing, and draw people to us.
The attitude we carry with us throughout life has several roots:
We come into this world with certain genetic inclinations - toward hostility, greed, empathy, or kindness
Our earliest experiences and attachment schemas
Our attitude is constantly being shaped by what happens to us
Although attitudes come in many varieties and blends, we can generally categorise them as:
Negative and narrow (operate from a basic position of fear toward life)
Positive and expansive (are open to new experiences, ideas, and emotions)
As a student of human nature:
We must become aware of our own attitude and how it slants your perceptions
We must believe in its supreme power to alter ones circumstances
The Constricted (Negative) Attitude
The following are the five most common forms of the constricted attitude
Hostile Attitude
Some childhood experiences (like punishment, weaning, natural separation from parents) may cause some children to view the world as a place fraught with hostility. They seek to control this hostility by becoming the source of the hostility themselves. Their hostility permeates everything they do - the way they argue and provoke, the greediness with which they demand attention, the pleasure they get out of criticising others and seeing them fail.
They project their own hostile feelings onto other people. Their goal in life is to feel persecuted and to desire some form of revenge.
The Anxious Attitude
These types anticipate all kinds of obstacles and difficulties in any situation they face. With people, they often expect some sort of criticism or even betrayal. All of this stimulates unusual amounts of anxiety before the fact. What they really fear is losing control of the situation. Sometimes they can disguise their need for control as a form of love and concern.
Their solution is to limit what can possibly happen, to narrow the world they deal with. This means limiting where they go and what they will attempt.
The Avoidant Attitude
People with this attitude see the world through the lens of their insecurities, generally related to doubts about their competence and intelligence. Their main goal in life is to avoid any kind of responsibility or challenge in which their self-esteem might be at stake and for which they can be judged. If they do not try too hard in life, they cannot fail or be criticised.
Although they are generally motivated by the great fear of failing and the judgments that ensue, they are also secretly afraid of success - for with success come responsibilities and the need to live up to them.
The Depressive Attitude
As children, these types did not feel loved or respected by their parents. They internalise the negative judgment and imagine that they are indeed unworthy of being loved, that there is something actually wrong with them.
As adults they will anticipate abandonment, loss, and sadness in their experiences and see signs of potentially depressing things in the world around them.
A strategy they will employ throughout their lives is to temporarily withdraw from life and from people. This will feed their depression and also make it something they can manage to some extent, as opposed to traumatic experiences imposed upon them. They will also sabotage themselves if they experience any kind of success, feeling deep down that they don't deserve it.
The Resentful Attitude
As children, these types never felt they got enough parental love and affection - they were always greedy for more attention. They see everything in relation to themselves, if someone has more than they do, it is a sign of injustice a personal affront.
The Expansive (Positive) Attitude
Improve the overall attitude and everything else will elevate - creative powers, the ability to handle stress, confidence levels, relationships with people.
A negative, constricting attitude is designed to narrow down the richness of life at the cost of our creative powers, our sense of fulfilment, our social pleasures, and our vital energies.
Some of the ways to develop an expansive attitude
How to View the World?
See yourself as an explorer. With the gift of consciousness, you stand before a vast and unknown universe that we humans have just begun to investigate. As an explorer you leave certainty behind you. You are in continual search of new ideas and new ways of thinking.
This attitude will result in a return to the childlike spirit and curiosity. You explore all forms of knowledge, from all cultures and time periods. You want to be challenged. By opening the mind, you will unleash unrealised creative powers, and you will give yourself great mental pleasure.
How to View Adversity?
Our life inevitably involves obstacles, frustrations, pain, and separations. Some people try to avoid any kind of adversity, even if this means never really challenging themselves or getting much success in their careers.
We should embrace all obstacles as learning experiences - as a means to getting stronger. In this way you embrace life itself. Although adversity and pain are generally beyond your control, you have the power to determine your response and the fate that comes from that.
How to View Yourself?
As we get older, we tend to place limits on how far we can go in life. Over the years we internalise the criticisms and doubts of others. By accepting what we think to be the limits of our intelligence and creative powers, we create a self-fulfilling dynamic.
Whatever you are doing now, you are in fact capable of much more, and by thinking that, you will create a very different dynamic.
How to View Your Energy and Health?
Although we are all mortal and subject to illnesses beyond our control, we must recognise the role that willpower plays with our health. In general, we can push ourselves beyond what we think are our physical limits by feeling excited and challenged by a project or endeavour.
How to View Other People?
You must try to get rid of the natural tendency to take what people do and say as something personally directed at you, particularly if what they say or do is unpleasant.
See people as facts of nature. They come in all varieties, like flowers and rocks. You must accept diversity and the fact that people are what they are. That they are different from you should not be felt as a challenge to your ego or self-esteem but as something to welcome and embrace.
This post is a summary of information provided in the book - The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene