Attitude 2

Yesterday’s subject seemed to touch some of you and I feel compelled to approach the subject again. One thing that some folks do not understand is something I heard Zig Ziglar say one time, “one’s attitude, not aptitude determines their altitude”. Yes I can give an example of this.
When I was in high school I was not the model student. My nick name was “Mr. Cool” and I did everything that I could to live up to it. I was rebellious, unruly, and in simple terms “wild”. I was every teacher’s worst nightmare, and the only thing that my teachers liked about me was that I often skipped school. School was easy for me. I rarely if ever studied. The main reasons for which I went to school were for the girls and playing sports. In spite of all my problems, if I liked the class
and/or the teacher, I made good grades.

I once had a Spanish class with my brother. He was just the opposite of me and was every teacher’s little pet. I sat in the back of the room; he sat on the front row. We often had to stand in front of the class and give speeches in Spanish to the class. While my brother was giving his speech, I crawled all of the way from the back of the room under several rows of desks and under several students legs until I was right underneath him. The class was cracking up with laughter at me, but my poor brother and the teacher who could not see me over her booth, thought they were laughing at him. I started tugging on his pants legs and gesturing to him, and when he saw me he broke out into laughter too.
The teacher ran around her desk and saw me. She was not laughing. I had to go to the principal’s office and received a familiar paddling. (Yes back in the old days they paddled unruly kids, I usually wore two pair of pants because I knew I would get one most every day). Anyway to make a long story short, my behavior did not improve throughout the semester.
When it came time to take the exam however, I scored the highest grade in the class, 98%. Most of the class failed this exam and it was curved as a result. I scored thirty points higher than my brother on the test.
He made an A; I made an F for the class. I never scored less than 95% on any test in that class yet still failed. At the time I thought that this was very unfair. She told me that it was my attitude, not my test scores that determined my final grade. Upon appeal, the principal raised it to a D. He didn’t like my attitude either

Since these bad old days I have tried very hard to modify my attitude to conform to the norms of society. I have virtually turned my life around as a result of changing my attitude. (I just hate that I wasted the first 25 years). During the last 30 years of managing various businesses, I have seen countless examples of the same bad attitude problem, (that I used to have), in various employees. I have had bright employees who could easily handle their tasks and in fact accomplished more than their peers; however their fatal flaw was they had a bad attitude. Often their bad attitude was toward corporate policy, management and sometimes other employees. Those who could not, or would not correct their attitude problems were fired. Just like me and My Spanish class they failed. They will continue to fail as long as their attitude remains dark. Many had accomplished great things for the company; however maintaining a good attitude is an “essential”
ingredient for every successful employee.

We have a choice: We can have a bad attitude or a good one. We will fail with a bad attitude and succeed with a good attitude. Sounds like an easy decision to me.

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Proverbs 14:35
The king’s favor is toward a
wise servant,
But his wrath is against him
who causes shame.




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