Career - The Right Attitude

Excerpted from
Fun Is Good; How To Create Joy& Passion in Your Workplace& Career
By Mike Veeck, Pete Williams

When it comes to implementing Fun Is Good in your workplace and career, attitude is everything.

Having a positive attitude is the foundation for successful relationships with your organization and coworkers. How your day unfolds depends on your attitude. When people come to work complaining, avoiding coworkers, and making it apparent they can't wait to get home, it hurts them and everyone around them.

Attitude is contagious, whether positive or negative. One negative attitude can dampen the enthusiasm of an entire office. When someone comes to work with a negative attitude, it's that person's responsibility to recognize it and turn it around.

A negative attitude affects every aspect of life and work. At work, it decreases your potential for success. A bad attitude contributes to unhappiness at the office, which is inevitably brought home, where it impacts the family.

Attitude has a huge impact on business. It's much more enjoyable to deal with upbeat, genuinely positive people-not those who halfheartedly say "have a nice day" at the end of a transaction or wear those insufferable smiley-face buttons that make me want to jab a dagger through them. Who wants to do business with someone with a bad attitude?

A positive attitude has a tremendous impact. Admittedly, it's not always easy to remain upbeat. There are ups and downs in all aspects of life, but a positive outlook makes getting through the tough times easier. Not only that, but it helps build rapport with clients and coworkers and brings about a clear, healthy mindset that generates and unleashes creativity.

In our organization, we believe that "Attitude is 90 percent of life." Talent and perseverance play a role, to be sure, but talent means little if you don't have the right attitude. Every office has a couple of people who are supremely talented but never get anywhere because of their attitudes.

Part of having a good attitude means understanding the difference between taking your responsibilities seriously and taking yourself too seriously. With that mentality, it's easier to laugh and deal with obstacles.

Think of someone you know who is constantly upbeat. What you'll find is someone who is genuinely interested in the world and other people. They're comfortable in their own skins. They lighten up a workplace and make it more enjoyable. This happens in sports all the time, where a gregarious new player helps loosen up a tight, stressful locker room.

When I worked for the Chicago White Sox in 1977, we acquired a player named Oscar Gamble. Oscar was an outgoing, fun-loving guy who made life more enjoyable for everyone around him. Between his personality and huge Afro, which looked rather funny bulging out from under the sides of his baseball hat, Oscar turned out to be just the type of memorable person you'd expect from someone with a cool name like Oscar Gamble.

The Oscar Gambles are the opposite of those who are constantly creating chaos and trouble around them to make others as miserable as they are.

I used to be one of those people: I wanted the world around me in turmoil because that's how it was for me. Now I want to be as far from turmoil as I can be. I want things to be peaceful and happy because that's the environment that makes me most creative.

It takes effort to wake up and be in a lousy mood. After all, it requires more muscles to frown than it does to smile. Granted, it takes some work to become one of those upbeat people. Like anything else, the process becomes easier if you find a role model.

During the 6 years I spent working for my father with the Chicago White Sox, I never once saw him in a lousy mood. If you can emulate a person like that, pretty soon that's the cloak you will wear. People have a driving need to be happy, and it's a tough act to pull off if it's not genuine.

So how do you pull it off? First, find that role model. Second, try and hang out with people who are more upbeat than you. Third, try to find something to laugh about or have fun with in everything you do.

Even in times of stress, it's possible to take a moment and enjoy something about it. If you're involved in a fender-bender, there's nothing about it that's going to make you happy. You're late for work. The car is a mess. The other person doesn't have car insurance. It's tough to find something positive there.

Let's say you're trying to get out the door in the morning and can't find the car keys. As a result, you miss the first train into town. Instead of stressing about it, why not take the opposite approach and laugh at yourself? View it as though you're destined to have a little adventure today.

During the writing of this book, my coauthor and his family spent a week with my family and me. One morning, his toddler was up early and crying. I was lying in bed one floor below, and I suppose if I had let it bother me, I could have been upset that the little guy was keeping me awake. Instead, it brought back a flood of memories of when my daughter was that age.

Why not take every moment and enjoy something about it? People make the mistake of viewing life as just a series of goals. If I just get this promotion or house or job, I'm going to be happy. Life doesn't work that way. It's the journey that matters, and how you approach it makes all the difference. The big house, look-at-me car-those things are never enough.

Instead of brooding over something negative, it's much easier to say, "I think I'll have some fun with this."

Years ago, Sammy Davis Jr. performed in St. Paul, Minnesota, right after a blizzard. More than 5,000 tickets had been sold, but only 300 people showed up because of the road conditions. People in St. Paul are conditioned to drive in anything, but this was so bad most of them stayed home.

Sammy could have called off the show, done an abbreviated version, or simply gone through the motions. Instead, he walked on stage and announced, "Thank you so much for coming. I know it wasn't easy, so I'm going to put on a show you won't believe so that you can tell everyone what they missed."

He performed for nearly 3 hours and was spectacular.

Attitude is everything. One of the great lessons in life is that as you get older, time seems to pass more quickly. The key is to approach life as the great adventure that it is. Recognize that if you go to a job that you love, the trip becomes the reward.

At the end of my 35 years in baseball, I'm not going to look back and admire my nice house or wish I had bought that Jaguar convertible. I'm going to look back at all the people I shared a few laughs with, all of the kids I (hopefully) inspired and those who inspired me. The material rewards obtained and goals not reached won't matter.

Everyone has a few elements of their jobs that make them uncomfortable. It's tough to approach them with a good attitude and a sense of humor.