"It IS Your Attitude" keeps getting on......

In the final analysis, your attitude determines your effectiveness in everything, every time! LGLwww.LuisLobo.Biz

THE LAW OF EXPECTATION

by Brian Tracy

I've found that whatever you expect, with confidence, becomes your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you confidently expect good things to happen, good things usually happen to you. If you expect something negative to happen, you are usually not disappointed.

Your expectations have an inordinate effect on the people around you as well. What you expect from people and situations determines your attitude toward them more than any other factor, and people reflect your attitude right back at you, like a mirror, whether positive or negative.

Dr. Robert Rosenthal of Harvard conducted dozens of controlled experiments over the years to test the power of the expectations of teachers on student performance. In his landmark book, "Pygmalion in the Classroom," he tells of case after case where teachers were told that a student, or sometimes a whole class, was extremely bright and was predicted to make a quantum leap in academic performance in the coming year.

Even though the students were chosen from the school population at large, as long as the teacher believed that the student or students were exceptional, and the teacher expected the student to do well, the students performed vastly better than other students in the same or similar classes, and vastly better than could have been predicted by previous grades or behavior.

In your own personal life, your expectations of your staff, your boss, your customers and even of your own future tend to come true. Your expectations exert a powerful influence on people and events, for good or for ill, so be careful!



In the final analysis, your attitude determines your effectiveness in everything, every time! LGLwww.LuisLobo.Biz

How our opinions are formed.

Several years ago, during the height of the economic boom, I visited with scholars of the CATO Institute in DC. The conversation was about "why people, or some people behave as they do; or what does it take for people to react". Their analysis was driven by socio/economic status research which posed the following pyramid of influence:

5% of the population controls a vast amount of the wealth and intelligentsia, either on the left or the right. This 5% can influence the next 10-15% due to allocation of investments and political pressure.. This combined 20% can, at times, drive the beliefs and behavior of the next 20-25%. So now you have a cascade of influence that can move nearly 50% of the population, but most effectively at the highest 20-25%. What happens,I asked, about the lower 50%? They are nearly immovable, and only with events such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, Katrina, or 9-11 will they respond, for some period of time; then again goes into a placid state. I was devastated by this response, that nearly 50% of the population is detached, mostly.

Today the Washington Post published data by the Pew Research Center: What opinions, habits, surmises, hopes and fears do 20% of us share (recall the pyramid above)

1 in 5 Americans believe:

1. President Obama is a Muslim;
2. socialism is superior to capitalism (2009 Rasmussen survey);
3. reports " excessive sleepiness";
4. believes the harsh techniques used to interrogate terrorism suspects, were torture but still legitimate;
5. fears job loss in the next 12 months;
6. believes in the right of a state to secede;
7. thinks marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol;
8. believes that intelligent beings from other planets have made contact with
humans on earth;
9. skips medical care when sick or injured;
10. believes that the government "enjoys the consent of the governed"
11. admits to peeing in the pool.

So the question now becomes: "whom is influencing whom?"



In the final analysis, your attitude determines your effectiveness in everything, every time! LGLwww.LuisLobo.Biz