By Jamie, Head Ambassador of Youthoughtism
Introduction
In psychology, an attitude refers to a set of emotions, beliefs, behaviors and feelings towards a particular object, person, thing, or situation. Attitudes appear after experiencing or upbringing, and they can have a powerful influence over behavior. Attitudes can change while they are enduring. Examples of attitudes are passion for a sport, dislike for people around you and negativity toward life.
How does attitude form?
1. Social factors
The people in life have a strong influence on attitudes. Social roles refer to how people are expected to behave in a particular role or context. Society’s rules for what behaviors are considered appropriate are part of social norms.
2. Experience
Since personal experiences have a strong impression, attitudes form directly as a result of an experience. In a situation that involves emotions, appreciation will be a more detailed experience and longer trace.
3. Learning
a) Classical conditioning
It involves learning a new behavior or attitude by associating between a neutral stimulus and a stimulus that naturally produces a behavior. For example, if your favorite person is using a particular body cream, you’ll develop a positive association with this body cream.
b) Operant conditioning
It means learning a new behavior or attitude by receiving rewards or punishments to produce a desired response. Imagine a parent sets rewards for their kids if they do their chores and punishments will be received if they don't, it will encourage the kids to do chores.
c) Observational learning
It refers to learning by watching and imitating others. For example, a child may learn to play soccer by observing other children playing the game.
The importance of attitude
Many of you might think that the most important key to success is your skills but actually attitude is more important than your skills. Attitude is the basis for everything in our lives and from the above information, we can see that attitude can influence your ability to move through the world. Your outlook can have an impact on your social life, productivity, mental health, and ability to overcome obstacles. If you treat it with a positive attitude, you might achieve success in your personal life easier and to reach your goals. However, if you maintain a negative or skeptical attitude, the same benefits may not be able to be accessed. Is attitude the most important thing in life? Research has shown that attitude can determine how well you do in life and keeping a positive attitude demands change.
A positive attitude can help you to reduce stress levels, deal with challenges in a productive way, achieve actionable goals and most importantly, it maintains your mental and physical wellness. After seeing the benefits of a positive attitude, let’s take the first step to change from your negative attitude to a positive attitude.
Common negative thoughts of unhappy people (negative attitude)
1. Self defeating talk
It involves messages we send to ourselves which reduce our self-esteem, lower our potential and are less productive. Common self-defeating talk includes: “I can’t…”, “I’m not good enough…”, “I’m not confident …”, “I don’t have what it takes…” ,“I’m going to fail…”
2. Negative comparison with others
This is one of the easiest and common ways to feel bad. We tend to compare ourselves with people who have more accomplishments, have a better living, more followers,etc. As a result, you feel jealous, inferior or inadequate, which means you’re having a negative social comparison moment.
3. Struggle to Forgive yourself
All of us make mistakes in life. When you look back at the mistakes you had done, perhaps there were decisions and actions you regret. As you recall those past events, you may have the sense of self-blaming for the damage you’ve done. In this moment, you must know that you’re more aware to avoid repeating the past mistakes and make a positive attitude.
How to have a positive attitude?
Now it’s time to make a difference, make a positive attitude! To have a positive mindset is a choice, when you choose to look on the bright side of life and make the best out of any situation.
1. Change your mindset and thoughts
When you have positive thoughts, it will lead to positive attitude, as well as negative thoughts and attitude. By writing down the things you’re grateful for, can improve the your sense of well-being, do this before you go to sleep might be a great choice
2. Relish small pleasure
There will be a lot of big pleasures in our entire life, graduation, having your dream career, etc. but they don’t appear very often. Life is made up of those small simple pleasures. Try to fill with joy with anything you do everyday, like eating your favorite food, spending time with your friends, appreciating nature, etc.
3. Limit your complaints
Whining about everything doesn’t lead to a positive attitude. Instead of saying negative things about an event or a person, try to offer a possible solution and accept that there’s nothing you can do to change the situation and that complaining about it just fosters negativity.
Conclusion
I hope all of you’ve learned more about this topic and have found ways to make a positive attitude to all the things you’ll do in the future. ALWAYS REMEMBER: YOU’RE NOT ALONE!
Stay positive and have a nice day ;)
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