Thoughts on Thought & Attitude

"Attitude is an inward feeling expressed by outward behavior. People always project on the outside what they feel on the inside. Some people try to mask their attitude, and they can fool others for a while. But it does not last long…attitude always wiggles its way out. Attitude is:

The vanguard of the true self.
Its root is inward but its fruit is outward.
It is your best friend or your worst enemy.
It is more honest and consistent about you than your words.
It is your outward look based on your past experiences.
It is what draws people to you or repels them.
It is never content until it is expressed.
It is the librarian of your past.
It is the speaker of your present.
It is the prophet of your future.
It colors every aspect of your life. It is the mind’s paintbrush."

(Excerpt from John Maxwell, The Difference Maker)

“I can make you rise or fall. I can work for you or against you. I can make you a success or a failure. I control the way that you feel and the way that you act. I can make you laugh…work…love. I can make your heart sing with joy…excitement…elation. Or I can make your wretched…dejected…morbid. I can make you sick…listless. I can be as a shackle…heavy…attached…burdensome. Or I can be as the prism’s hue…dancing…bright…fleeting…lost forever unless captured by pen or purpose. I can be nurtured and grown to be great and beautiful…seen by the eyes of others through action in your. I can never be removed…only replaced. I am a THOUGHT. Why not know me better?” (Bob Conklin)

Coaching is all about your current life and what you're going to do with it. Coaching work starts with the belief that people should be designing their lives. Most people are not designing life at all. People just wake up into a life - and that's it. When you start to address designing your life, everything changes. Are you designing your life? People don't realize that their lives are based on their thinking. Your philosophies and the voices in your head (the itty-bitty-shitty committee) are making all your decisions and choices - they are literally shaping your life. Do you even know what philosophies you're living in and what they're doing in your life? The brutal truth is that anyone can look at what is in your life and tell you exactly what philosophies you are living by. Most people think that what they have is a result of circumstances. We at emergentcoach.com say there's something you're not seeing. If you understood the dynamics of your own thinking and philosophies, you can change so easily. Your mind is busy. If you figure out what your mind is doing for a living and what philosophies you are living in, then you can deal with the fallacies. Coaching is about using the best philosophy for change. We know how to help you to change your mind. We also know how to help you change your actions.

Emerson on The Objection to Conforming

"The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation. "

Ralph Waldo Emerson in Self-Reliance


Emerson also said, "Your goodness must have an edge to it - else it is none." Do people know the precise man or woman that you are? Are you wearing the prison-uniform of the party? One way to get free: admit the weakness of your position. Let down your guard and be honest about how messed up things really are. Allow yourself and the people around you to explore deeper and wider than they have been allowed to up to now...let yourself ask the unthinkable questions and live your life "out loud" in the real world. No more forced smiles.

Walt Whitman on reexamining

"Love the earth and sun and the animals,

Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

Devote your income and labors to others,

Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

Have patience and indulgence toward the people,

Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

Or to any man or number of men,

Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

And with the young and with the mothers of families,

Read these leaves in the open air,

Every season of every year of your life,

Reexamine all you have been told,

At school at church or in any book,

Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

And your very flesh shall be a great poem."

-Walt Whitman

At every season of your life, reexamine all that you do and all that you've been told. This is a necessary process in our day and age. It's amazing how easily we drift off course. It's also amazing how few like-minded souls we encounter that can help us navigate our way. You will need to get away, perhaps for a weekend alone and ask yourself what stays and what goes in your life.