WINNING LEADERSHIP: How to use your infinite mindpower to great effect

For most organisations, the need to attract and acquire the best talent is a considerable undertaking even if it is only a single position to be filled.

Perusing numerous resumes, short-listing, interviewing, reference checks and eventual hiring and on-boarding employees is intensive for even the most experienced HR practitioners.  Involving as all this may be, it is only twenty percent of what is required to have the right people.

Beyond all the neatly done resumes with impressive qualifications and seemingly good and relevant experience, freshly laundered suits, and succinct responses to well-rehearsed interview questions, employers seek talent with good attitudes.

Attitude is one of the most commonly used yet most misunderstood words.

Parents, educators, employers, doctors and counselors hinge heavily on the attitudes of their children, charges, employees and patients for success in raising, teaching, training, healing and guiding them.

I am right with you if you would expect that anything that obviously packs this much importance would be a subject that is taught from our very early lives and yet if you were to pick five or six brains on the subject, you would end up with five of six different notions of the meaning and impact of attitude.

With a clear understanding of what attitude is and how our attitudes are formed, it becomes quite apparent that only a few of us are in control of our attitudes.  In reality, most of our attitudes are shaped by the media, other people, conditions and circumstances around us. 

When appreciating dear Aunt Jemima’s signature stew, you would compliment her on the beautiful taste of the wholesome dish, not a specific ingredient.

This is because any dish is mixture of various ingredients in specific quantities put together in a particular sequence.

Your attitude really is the same.  It is a composite of your thoughts, feelings and actions expressed in your actions.

To better understand this, it is imperative that you relook at the relationship of your mind to your body, how your conscious and  subconscious minds work and how they direct your body to act giving you the reactions you then experience as your life.

Let’s delve a little deeper into the thought part of your attitude. 

The law of vibration decrees that nothing rests.  Everything is in a constant state of movement - vibration.  There is creative power flowing into your consciousness at any given time.  This power has no form.  It just is.  It is neither good nor bad.

As you begin to exercise your higher mental faculties, you give form to this energy.  This is the first stage of attitude.

You build either a negative or positive image that is then expressed on a conscious level through vibration i.e words, gestures and so on.  You may or may not internalise the image.

You could be witnessing a disturbing situation like an unfortunate street mugging or listening to a child rape report on the radio without any of it having any emotional effect on you.  I am not in any way suggesting you become insensitive at all.

You see; on a conscious level, you have in you the ability to accept or reject any idea whether you pick it up from your environment or originate it yourself.  The main import here is whether or not the idea is internalised.

When you internalise an idea, it is dumped straight into your subconscious mind.  Bearing in mind that the subconscious mind is deductive, it cannot reject any idea impressed upon it by the conscious mind.

The subconscious mind cannot differentiate good from bad.  It accepts all ideas impressed upon it.  The subconscious mind being the feeling mind, instructs the body to act based on feeling.

Your subconscious mind is the universal side of your personality that connects you to other people.   It communicates through vibration.  When people connect with each other, their vibrations are in resonance.

They are vibrating on the same frequency relative to the same concept or idea at the same time.  This is how when you have a group of people who resonate well with each other, they create a brilliant composite and become an extremely powerful force towards the achievement of a common goal.

The nature of the idea that is impressed upon your subconscious mind determines the emotion you express.  Your feeling, that is.

If the idea is negative, you will express negative vibrations while if it is positive you will express positive vibrations.  Your intuitive factor is your strongest mental faculty with regard to feeling others. 

Seraphine Ruligirwa-Kamara is an expert on Attitude and Human Potential