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Our Attitude More Than Our Aptitude Determines Our Altitude

Guest post by: Jim Clemmer

Article Overview: Our society admires strength and power. Since the early games of the ancient Olympics, we've had contests of strength, stamina, speed, and the like. We've approached brainpower or intellectual abilities in the same way. We're in awe of intellectual giants with memory, reasoning, or complex problem solving abilities far beyond our own. IQ tests were developed to measure this intellectual strength and power. We've come to believe that highly intelligent people make the best professors, doctors, managers, scientists, and so on. Many people believe that high IQ and high levels of success and happiness go together.

Our Attitude More Than Our Aptitude Determines Our Altitude

"There's a thin line between being #1 or #100 and mostly it's mental." - Jimmy Conners, American professional tennis player who won 109 professional singles titles during his career Our society admires strength and power. Since the early games of the ancient Olympics, we've had contests of strength, stamina, speed, and the like. We've approached brainpower or intellectual abilities in the same way. We're in awe of intellectual giants with memory, reasoning, or complex problem solving abilities far beyond our own. IQ tests were developed to measure this intellectual strength and power. We've come to believe that highly intelligent people make the best professors, doctors, managers, scientists, and so on. Many people believe that high IQ and high levels of success and happiness go together.

But many intellectual giants are emotional dwarfs. We all know people who can run mental circles around us lesser mortals, but their lives are a mess. Many "do not suffer fools gladly." Their cutting wit or biting sarcasm often shows an arrogant, superior attitude that arouses resentment and reduces cooperation. This usually results in badly damaged relationships, businesses, families, or teams. Something is missing. We know there's much more to a successful life than a strong head; we also need a strong heart. Intelligence is only part of the equation; we also need to deal with the human factors - the humanness in others and ourselves. We need to deal with emotional factors.

An exciting new field of study is emerging around what's being called emotional intelligence. Many books, studies, and EQ testing instruments are exploding on the scene. Psychologist, author, and New York Times journalist, Daniel Goleman got things going with his international bestseller, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Here's how he defines emotional intelligence, "abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one's moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope." That's a great definition of personal effectiveness. It's also a pretty good outline of many of the timeless leadership principles.

I showed this EQ definition at a leadership development workshop. One of the participants was a sports psychologist who helps Olympic athletes improve their mental conditioning. He instantly responded to the quotation with the observation that it was a great definition of a world-class athlete. As baseball player and manager, Yogi Berra, said, "success in any sport is 90% physical skills and the other half is mental." Nobody ever accused Yogi of being an intellectual giant - nor much of a mathematician.

A well researched book, Emotional Intelligence brings together the scientific proof that it's our attitude more than our aptitude that determines our altitude. Goleman's research leads him to conclude, "at best IQ, contributes about 20 percent to the factors that determine life success, which leaves 80 percent to other forces." This is overly conservative according to EQ researchers and authors Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf. In their book, Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership & Organizations, they write, "- IQ may be related to as little as 4 percent of real-world success - over 90 percent may be related to other forms of intelligence - it is emotional intelligence, not IQ or raw brain power alone, that underpins many of the best decisions, the most dynamic and profitable organizations, and the most satisfying and successful lives."

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Article Tags: leadership
Referred by: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com



Related Forum Posts
Re: THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS ALL IN YOUR HEAD...RIGHT NOW!!! - Yes, you are right Mal. Attitude plays a big role in it. Robert
Re: What to do at the first roadblock? - Upon first discouragement, dig in and see if things are as they seem. Sometimes, even though there are several products out there that appear comparable, they are no match. Maybe they do don't a good job of what they are intended for, or maybe there are several glitches in their system, or perhaps their customer service just plain stinks. Decide how you can "one up" all of these things and decide that you are going to create a better product that more people would want. Attitude is 95% of the battle. If you feel defeated before you've done any research on any of the other products, you're doing yourself a huge disservice. Give yourself a chance and see if you can be the BEST in every way. This will get you far no matter what the venture.
Re: Stay positive! - Great theme My favorite book the ageless "Power of Positive Thinking" and I do not read many of these Motivational Books, Attitude is everything - a positive one is ore likely to bring positive results According to my Pisces horoscope - I am told that by my birth I am to be moody. We all have those bad days, but even though moody by nature, I tried to keep those days down to 4 or 5 a year - not bad for a Pisces Hang with the positives, lose the negatives
Re: Who hates cold calling? - About 15 years ago I worked for this sales company that used to sell anything from Kitchen Knives to Dry Cell Torches. The owner was a very motivating guy and he would ask us to get to the office by 7.00AM and we could sing and dance for an hour before we went to sell the products in the streets, stopping anyone and telling them our products were on discount. We used to sell snow to Eskimos, why were we able to do that? because of PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). The key to cold calling is like beauty, in eyes of the beholder. If you have no PMA, you cannot sell. Remember the law of average that states that if you went to a dance and every girl or guy you approached for a dance decline your proposal. What do you do? Do you stop? If you have a PMA, you continue until you get one person who agree to dance with you despite how ugly you look, that is is PMA and that is the power of cold calling.
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey


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