6 Attitudes That Lead to Happiness and Success

Happiness and success are two mental states we’d all like to experience more often. These states rarely happen randomly on their own. It takes an intention to experience happiness and success, and the best way to manifest them is with an attitude that supports them.

Your attitude is under your control. A supporting attitude leads to effective actions, and effective actions can lead you to happiness and success.

Adjust your attitudes for greater happiness and success with these strategies:

1. Gratitude.

If you’re focused on the positive things in your life, it’s a lot easier to experience happiness. But success can also come from gratitude. Gratitude has an almost magical power to bring more good things into your life. If you can feel grateful each day, you can expect to have good days ahead.

2. Life is short.

With this attitude, you’ll be more predisposed to take action instead of stalling. What others think becomes less important to you as you focus on what you want.

3. Failure is good. Most often, success requires failing along the way.

If you can avoid harboring negative feelings toward failure, life is easier to manage and success easier to achieve. Imagine all the things you would try if you weren’t afraid of failing!

• Remember the times you’ve failed in the past but were eventually successful.
•  Now, remember the times in life you gave up after a failure. What do you think would’ve happened if you didn’t quit but kept trying and working toward your goal?

4. You can learn anything.

You learned to walk and talk. You could learn to surf and to speak Cantonese. You can learn to be a great public speaker or an accountant. With few exceptions, you can learn to be or do just about anything.

• That means you can learn anything you need to learn in order to be happy or successful. What do you want to learn?

5. Cause and effect. You have control over the results in your life.

If you drop a bowling ball over your foot, it will fall on your foot. If you do anything, there are consequences, good or bad. The world is very practical. You can create the results you desire through your actions. No hocus pocus required.

• That means you can create results that bring you happiness. You can create success, too. You have this power! Use it to your benefit.

6. Resilience to criticism.

If you’re too concerned by what others think, you’ll be unhappy and unsuccessful. Few people are going to authentically cheer you on in life. In fact, many will try to hold you back. Learn to ignore the naysayers.

• Think of all the times you were told something discouraging. How relevant were those opinions? Were they experts? Did they know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand? Most people have an opinion for everything, but they certainly don’t know everything.

Your attitude matters. Obviously, a pessimistic attitude is unlikely to lead to either happiness or success. An attitude of gratitude would be a much more effective way to approach the world.

Ensure that your attitude is giving you the best chance to experience happiness and success. Your attitude is under your control, so do the best you can with it.