An excerpt from Jeffrey’s book, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude

Written By Jeffrey Gitomer
@GITOMER

KING OF SALES, The author of seventeen best-selling books including The Sales Bible, The Little Red Book of Selling, and The Little Gold Book of Yes! Attitude. His live coaching program, Sales Mastery, is available at gitomer.me.

An excerpt from Jeffrey’s book,

The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude

An attitude action plan you can begin to use the minute you read it.

Substitute the words, “I’m sorry,” with the words, “Thank you!”

When people yell at you, or blame you, don’t blame someone else or say, “I’m sorry,” or grovel. Just say, “Thank you!”

Think about how you feel when someone yells at you. Not the most pleasant feeling in the world. Most people have an instant reaction to defend themselves, blame someone else, or apologize profusely. With a YES! Attitude, none of these are acceptable.

If you say, “Thank you, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. Now that I know about it, I can fix it right away,” your words clearly state an implied apology, a desire to take action, and a ton of self-confidence. You are expressing your attitude in the form of positive action.

“I’m sorry” is a state of being. If you state it enough, you become it. If you want to make amends, just say, “I apologize.” But an apology does not indicate action. “Thank you” indicates acceptance, and the words that follow indicate you’re willing to do something about it.

An alternative to this “thank you” action is asking a question. But the question still begins with thank you. For example, say, “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I was wondering if you could tell me how this came about so that I can figure out the best immediate solution?”

With this strategy, you make the person think about what happened and begin to create meaningful dialogue.

Either way, the words “Thank you” have overpowered the words “I’m sorry.” And either way, you’ve turned a negative into a positive in under three seconds. The cool part about this lesson is that you can even teach it to your children.

Attitude perception is all in the first few words: The way the other person hears your words will determine his or her thoughts of you. Your words reflect your attitude. This is where YES! Attitude begins to take over.

Want to start making an attitude change? Take attitude actions.

Think negative or think positive is a choice and a process. Negative is (unfortunately) an instinctive process. Positive is a learned self-discipline that must be studied and practiced every day.

Here are 15.5 chunks of attitude awareness and actions that will help put you (and keep you) on the positive path.

1. Admit it’s no one’s fault but yours. The more you blame others, the less chance you have to think positive thoughts, see a positive solution, and take positive actions towards solution. The opposite of blame is responsibility. Your first responsibility is to control your inner thoughts and thought directions.

2. Understand you always have (had) a choice. Attitude is a choice, and most people select from the negative column. Reason? It’s more natural to blame and defend than it is to admit and take responsibility.

3. If you think it’s ok, it is. If you think it’s not okay, it’s not. Your thoughts direct your attitude to a path. If you think, “This is crappy. Why does this always happen to me?” you have chosen a path. If you think, “WOW, this may not be the greatest, but look what I’m learning” you’ve chosen the YES! path.

4. Invest your time, don’t spend it. Ignore the local junk news. Find a project, or make a plan to sell something or meet with someone who buys (or teaches) instead. Spend (invest) an hour a day in anything, and in five years you will become a world-class expert. The only question is: At what? Most people will become a world-class expert at some kind of local TV news program, or some kind of TV rerun. Me? I read and write while you watch TV. REMEMBER: News = Negative. Books or CD’s = Positive.

5. Study the thoughts and writings of positive people. Read Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. TWICE. Then get his audio series The Power of Positive Thinking with the original Napolean Hill recordings. They are priceless, timeless gems of wisdom that you can convert to your own success thoughts. Listen to CD’s by the positive thinkers of the world. Zig Ziglar, Denis Waitley, Wayne Dyer, amd as many others as you can find. The secret is to listen to a little each day.

6. Attend seminars and take courses on attitude. Start at the top. Enroll in a Dale Carnegie program. The hardest part of taking an attitude course is finding one. Look at any school or university in the world and try to find one course on attitude in any of them. I’ll save you the time. The answer is (and always has been) zero.

7. Check your language gauge. Do you say “half full” or “half empty?” “Partly cloudy” or “partly sunny?” They’re just words, but they are a refection of how your mind sees things, and an indication of how you process thoughts.

Want the rest of Jeffrey’s pointers and tips on attitude awareness? Want to develop a YES!Attitude? Buy the book! Buy Jeffrey’s Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude from bn.com today and receive Jeffrey’s newest little e-book, People of Attitude and Influence, along with tons of other free stuff from today’s top business leaders! For more details, visit www.gitomer.com/yes.