ATTITUDES OF SUCCESSFUL LEARNERS

No one can force you to have a good or a bad attitude. It is simply a choice we each make. We can choose our attitudes about anything, including learning. So why not have tremendously optimistic attitudes about learning that will help us grow in ways we have never before?

Choosing the right attitude significantly determines your circumstances. It changes the world around you. This isn’t any sort of magic; it is just how the world works. It won’t cure everything and turn your world into a Shangri-La, but it will significantly improve the world you live in.

For example, let’s say that every day you go into work and gripe about life and work from the moment you get there until the moment you leave. Will others want to be around you? Will others ask your opinion? Will others like you? Will others ask you to join them for lunch? Probably not!

What if you come to work every day choosing to be the positive optimist of the crowd? Will everybody love you? No, but significantly more people will like you than the number who would if you were the office pessimist. Your choice of attitude will determine what kind of circumstances you get.

The same is true with learning. What we feel and believe about learning determines the outcomes of our learning. The outcomes of our learning determine the outcome of our lives.

Where are you with your attitude about learning? Is it positive? Take some time to give it some serious thought. After that, no matter where you find yourself, decide to take your attitude to the next level. If you have a really bad attitude, decide to take it up a couple of levels.

Attitudes of Successful Learners

1. “I can.”

This is the most basic of all attitudes. We simply must choose to believe that we can learn.

In our house we are not allowed to say, “I can’t.” We can say, “I’ll try,” or “I tried and failed,” but not “I can’t.”

Telling yourself that you can’t will make it so. Telling yourself that you can will enable you to learn much more. Even if you achieve only fifty percent of what you tell yourself, it will be much more than if you told yourself you couldn’t.

I have a standard way of going about getting myself off of the starting block. I simply tell myself that, if somebody else has achieved great learning heights, I can too. I have to be smarter than at least one person who has already done it. I have to be able to work harder than at least one other. There has to be at least one other person who has come from more difficult circumstances than me. And if they can do it then certainly, “I can!”

2. “This is a long-term approach.”

Learning isn’t something that happens overnight. Yes, you can learn individual facts and accelerate learning, but the real growth comes when your learning builds on itself and compound for years—when your knowledge meets up with your experience.  If we expect it to happen immediately and it doesn’t, we can get frustrated and stop learning altogether. Instead, we need to take a long-term view just as we do in financial matters, weight management, leadership, and so on.

3. “Learning is valuable.”

Some people avoid learning because we think of it as a chore or something we do only during our school years. But we live in the information age. We must gain knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge if we are going to be successful. We must cultivate the attitude that learning is valuable and that it will affect our lives.

4. “I will make a difference in the lives of those around me.”

People who soar are generally people who have the attitude of helping other people. Yes, they may do it for monetary gain, but they are others-focused. They want to change the way people live for the better. They are difference makers all around.

This trait is can be an important part of the way we learn. We learn first for ourselves, but then we can take what we have learned and help others to do the same.

I live in a town that is very affluent. Most of the people I know, work with, and have as friends are very successful in this world. They have learned a lot about life and how it works. They have learned how to make money and be successful in business. Almost universally, they are not self-consumed, but rather genuinely caring about others and willing to do what they can to help them. In my experience, this is generally true about the attitudes of successful people.

Perhaps people who are successful at getting information into their minds are able to be better and kinder people because of that information. Learn all you can, and be sure to choose the attitudes that will make you a successful learner and a successful person.

Have a great week!

Chris