Changing Your Attitude
I’ve noticed in the past couple of days that I am having a negative-attitude problem, so instead of just relying upon myself to change things, I did some reading first. I found a really interesting article literally titled How To Change Your Attitude written by Ke o agile (yes, that’s really the author’s name).
I cut & pasted some of the parts that made me think and am going to print some of them out to put near my desk at work (where my negative attitude seems to begin) to help me out.
Attitude “… is a way of responding to our environment that is derived mostly from our generalizations about others and the system. We adopt and express a certain attitude in order to preserve ourselves from “harm” or to maintain a preferred personal status quo.”
Interestingly enough, “your attitude says a lot about your self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-affirmation.”
“your attitude is a result of an interaction between your outcomes expectancies [expectations of a specific result which influence the choice of action you take] and your efficacy beliefs [beliefs of your own capabilities to produce certain results].”
“There are four ways in which an interaction between efficacy beliefs and outcomes expectancies can take place: High Outcomes Expectancies lead to an attitude that spurs you to do something to get a result. Low Outcomes Expectancies leads to avoiding certain tasks/actions or challenges.
High Efficacy Beliefs lead to being prepared to take on a challenge. Low Efficacy Beliefs lead to an “I won’t be able to do it” attitude. ”
So the final piece gives us 4 questions on how we should address attitude changes:
1. Does the present attitude serve me well?
2. What is the “source” of this attitude? (Low OE High EB, High OE High EB, Low OE Low EB, High OE Low EB - using the chart shown after clicking on the link will explain more of these “sources” as well.)
3. Where do I need to make changes? (With my efficacy beliefs or my outcome expectancies?)
4. Do I have the appropriate resources to effect the change?
negative attitude, change, self-esteem, self-acceptance self-affirmation, oucome expectancies, efficacy beliefs
February 23rd, 2007 at 2:45 am
Ooh, good info and great article. Thanks for that, Sarah! Definitely something I’ll bookmard and re-read.