Little Gold Book excerpt 1

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 newest book,

The Little Gold Book
of YES! Attitude

Positive attitude comes from within.

Positive attitude has nothing to do with what happens to you. It’s what you do with, and how you react to, what happens to you.

Positive attitude comes from your ability to process thoughts in a positive way, regardless of the circumstance. And it’s never 100%. That’s why, in spite of your determination to be positive at every moment, there are highs and lows based on your thought process and your vulnerability to others.

Here’s the good news: The more you work on your attitude, the less vulnerable you become to the negative aspect of it.

The most interesting aspect of attitude is that “instant” only applies to the negative part. Someone can make you angry (negative) in a second, but it can take years to achieve the positive. Positive attitude comes from your own thought process combined with your determination to stay in the right frame of mind. It ain’t easy to get there, but it’s worth it once you do.

The YES factor.

Picture in your mind the feeling of crossing the finish line first, or winning a ball game, or completing some big task, or making a sale, and at the end making some gesture of triumph like raising your fists in the air, and screaming, “YES!”

Can you picture it? It’s a happy moment, it’s a joyous moment, it’s a triumphant moment, it’s a winning moment, it’s a positive moment, and that’s why you scream, “YES!” Wouldn’t it be cool if every moment of your life was like that? So, what’s preventing it? BIGGEST ANSWER: You!

The reason that YES! is easier to understand than positive is that YES! is an experience that you’ve had many times. You won the race, you got the raise, your team won the game, you landed the client, and you screamed, “YES!”

A large part of attitude achievement is the visualization. It’s easier to visualize YES! than it is to visualize positive. When something great happens, no one screams, “Positive!” Everyone screams, “YES!” That’s the difference. That’s the YES! factor.

There is nothing new about attitude. except yours.

Positive attitude has been preached since the Bible. Every major philosopher, every major theologian, and especially every major personal development expert has preached the virtue of positive thought, positive action, and positive attitude for centuries. Millions of words have been written (and re-written) on the subject.

You would think, with all this information at their fingertips, that everyone (you included) would have a positive attitude. You would be thinking wrong.

You can read and listen all you want, but unless you decide that you want to become a positive person, a person who thinks positive, acts positive, and speaks positive (both proactive and reactive), your attitude will not be a positive one.

Introducing the most important person in the world. Hint: It ain’t the customer.

In every one of my seminars, I select one person and ask, “Bill, when you’re speaking with your biggest customer, who is the most important person in the world?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, the person I selected will answer, “The customer.”

“Really?” I say. “Suppose there were two people left on the planet, you and the customer, and one of them had to die. Who do you want to see drop dead?”

“The customer!” says Bill.

“So, we’ve now established that you, Bill, are the most important person in the world. But the problem is, when you’re speaking with a big customer, they think they are the most important person in the world.”

You can take the word “customer” and substitute mother, father, sister, brother, friend, or teacher. Everyone feels as though they are the most important person in the world, or wants to feel that they are the most important person in the world. Your job is to treat them that way. And your positive attitude permits that action.

Everyone wants to be positive, and many people even think that they are positive, but they aren’t. They act it in terms of what will serve themselves best, rather than serving others best.

A large part of getting your attitude from negative to positive, and from positive to YES!, is phrasing responses in terms of the other person, NOT in terms of yourself.

The secret of a positive attitude is being selfish on the inside (the way you think about yourself, the personal pride that you have, the person you seek to become, and your thoughts just before you respond or take action), and then helping or serving others because you feel good enough about yourself to help them.

Once you get the fact that positive attitude is all about you on the inside (your thoughts about your actions and responses), you’ve made the first breakthrough.

Want to learn more? Want to develop a YES! Attitude? Buy the book! Buy Jeffrey’s Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude 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.