Building An Attitude For Success

Rowan Blair Colver
4 min readNov 16, 2020
Lucid Leadership by Rowan B. Colver

Bad Stuff Happens All The Time

When sailing the turbulent ocean of life, we never know how the wind and waves will affect us. We don’t know what other ships are out there, we don’t know what the weather is like over the seventh crest. What we can do is engineer our mindset to be prepared for making the most out of what happens. No one is successful all by themselves, even if they had the idea and did the work, it depends on many social circumstances and outside factors. The world, in some way, has to be willing to let you be successful. This is not completely in our hands. What can we do then so that whatever happens, our direction is always forward? We can adopt a mentality that allows us to navigate the whims of the world with a clear direction.

Confidence Pushes On Regardless

The most important element of being successful is confidence. Everyone gets setbacks, nothing happens exactly as we planned, and sometimes things don’t work at all. If we can accept this as a natural part of our journey, confidence can instil trust and likeability in times when others break from standard. Finding confidence isn’t easy for a lot of people. I found Alexa Fischer’s 1000W Presence course extremely valuable. The key to being confident is to filter out the negative thoughts that stifle our own inner light. We need to continually address the shadows of our minds that flow from our opinions and feelings based on how we perceive ourselves and others.

People Like To Know What They’re Getting

Consistency requires a level of dedication that transcends mood and workload. Every end result is as if it were the only one and it matters as much as the person who asked for it. Can you always be there to do what is needed in order to provide the best input? Can your teams and networks rely on you to provide and relate in a way they are happy with? Sometimes we are too tired or we are in a mood that might reflect badly on our output. It is therefore imperative to have secondary processes that can take over when the primary one isn’t at hand. Manage your workload with realistic recuperation time.

Land Ahoy! Even If No One Else Sees It Yet

A mindset for opportunity was the theme of a previous article in the Lucid Leadership series. Having the vision to notice potential positive and negative outcomes among the routine standard will always give you ladders to new aspects of the way forward. If we settle for tried and tested all the time we will always be reliant on other people to have a vision. If we can implement our own vision to the things we do then our potential for success is greatly improved.

Show You Care And Show You Mean It

Lots of people are smart and they’ll all talk the talk, you have to put in the extra mile. Where cleverness is over-rated and everywhere, hard workers are rare. If you can combine your intelligence with a genuine desire to work hard then this alone can put you ahead in any direction you choose. As the phrase says, go the extra mile because it’s never crowded. There are many distractions that prevent us from getting work done, we all like to take time out, so spending your time efficiently at all times will make sure you get in front.

Take Heed To Speed The Steed

Good background knowledge and a willingness to listen to peers takes work. We have to do this work, surrender to previous wisdom, give in to the authority. We like to feel independent and capable however a lot of people have made it their work to help you to do that. If we accept that help and act on the good advice we can save ourselves many expensive lessons. Going with consensus if we don’t agree is necessary from time to time. Not assuming and making sure we know what we are talking about is always necessary.

Show Don’t Tell

Show your achievements and demonstrate your skills. You will need to work hard in order to be useful in the world. A skill we can exchange for an income is something we have to learn. Make your journey visible, let everyone know what you’re good at and how you put it to use. People will associate you with your skills and your name will come to mind when they might be needed. Some people like to think they can do things as well as you can and assume they don’t need your service. This is why we have to show them the difference that makes us a professional.

Network Network Network

Once we have a great approach to our work, we can begin to look at how we engage with other people. Confidence plays a big part in this, being relaxed and not easily rubbed the wrong way will make sure that people who interact with us come away feeling positive about us. A casual and formal attitude can work hand in hand meaning that we’re never too stressed but we never drop our graces either. People will get to know us in a good way and this will build a good personal reputation.

You are a product and your work is your art. Position yourself in such a way that sells you, treat every public engagement as a marketing opportunity for yourself. We don’t want to adopt a salesperson attitude however if we can represent ourselves in a cool and collected way that invites interest, the public will take it upon themselves to look into what you do.

Rowan Blair Colver is the Editor of Alternative Fruit.

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Rowan Blair Colver

Music writer and humanities educator from Sheffield in England. Democracy of philosophy, comments are welcome. ko-fi.com/rowanblaircolver