Fish! series, part 1: Choose your attitude

Image: Nat­ural Woman cour­tesy of Natalie Laure

“There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself” — Ken Blan­chard, Stephen Lundlin, Harry Paul & John Christensen

If you’re new to this series, you may want to read our first arti­cle where we explain the four basic prin­ci­ples that are the basis of the Fish! phi­los­o­phy, and how it can help you ave a hap­pier life. Today, we will dis­cuss the first prin­ci­ple (Choose your atti­tude), the impact it can have in your lev­els of hap­pi­ness, and how you can incor­po­rate it into your life.

Prin­ci­ple # 1 — Choose your attitude

Have you heard of ‘fake it till you make it’? Then you already have learned about choos­ing your atti­tude. Some peo­ple believe that act­ing calm, cen­tred and happy when that’s not how you feel is some­how uneth­i­cal; after all, you are not being authen­tic, or so the argu­ment goes. But truth is, act­ing as if you were happy leads to more pos­i­tive and pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ships , in the long-term; and this will in time cre­ate a hap­pier life.

Choos­ing your atti­tude is not about choos­ing how we feel. As Dan Mill­man once told me, “your feel­ings are  like the weather; they come and go, and you can’t con­trol them. But you can con­trol how you act and react under dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.” Choos­ing  your atti­tude is there­fore about decid­ing how you choose to act to your present real­ity, and how you choose to treat those around you. When you choose to treat oth­ers in the same way you would like oth­ers to treat you, your life becomes brighter and happier.

Cre­at­ing hap­pi­ness by choos­ing your attitude

Choos­ing your atti­tude can help you cre­ate a hap­pier life. Choos­ing your atti­tude puts you more in con­trol of your life; since you are no longer a vic­tim of your life and cir­cum­stances, but rather an active actor in the script of your life, you are likely to feel more moti­vated and happy. By choos­ing pos­i­tive actions to dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, you are also likely to improve the qual­ity of your rela­tion­ships, which will in turn improve the qual­ity of your life and lead to happiness.

So the key ques­tion is how do we choose our atti­tude? The answer is sim­ple: By pay­ing more atten­tion to how we act; devel­op­ing more self-awareness of our inbuilt reac­tions when we are act­ing in auto-pilot; and con­sciously choos­ing alter­nate ways of react­ing and using tech­niques that help us turn these into auto­matic habits.

Tagged as: Fish! series, Happiness, Ken Blanchard, Life skills