Five Ways to Improve Your Nasty, Foul Attitude

Your attitude is everything. (Here’s an attitude checklist)

Your attitude is mostly made up of your beliefs, your blueprint of how the world works. But you don’t even need to get to changed beliefs to get a giant head start on improving your nasty, foul attitude.

I’ve been working this recipe for some time now. Nothing revolutionary, just highly effective.

Get a good night’s sleep: You might be able to survive on less sleep than seven hours. But you shouldn’t. On seven hours sleep I am something close to the Dali Lama. On five and half hours sleep I am about as tolerant as Josef Stalin. If you want to massively improve your attitude, try to sleep seven to eight hours a day. Too little sleep will put you in a crooked mood right out of the gate.

Eat clean and never late: The better you eat, the better you feel. Drop the fast food, drop the snacks, and drop the sugar. Never eat tacos and pizza in the same day (ever). Eat mostly lean meats, fruit, and vegetables. Stop eating late at night, too. You’ll sleep better, and you’ll have more energy upon waking. Oh, and for God’s sake don’t wait too long between meals; your low blood sugar will make you a monster.

Drink water: No, seriously. Drink more water. The research indicates that 70% of us walk around dehydrated. It effects your attitude, and it is one the primary reasons you are so tired—and grouchy. (As it turns out, coffee isn’t water. I checked . . . I hope to someday be proven wrong.)

Get some exercise: You don’t have to go crazy (like Chris Brogan, who has probably finished his daily workout before many of us roll out of bed). A half an hour of running and a twenty-minutes of weights every other day will do wonders to improve how you feel—and it will improve your attitude. You were made to do physical work of a heavier burden than banging on the keys of a keyboard and shuffling a mouse back and forth across the desk.

Decompress: Meditate. Get a massage. Take a hot bath. Sit someplace quite and read. Do whatever works for you, but do something to reduce stress (and life is full of stressors, regardless of how well you believe you are functioning). The time you spend recharging is what allows you to reengage with the world with a positive, empowered attitude. If you are in a foul mood, wind down a bit.

You might believe that this has nothing to do with your sales or your business results. You would be wrong. Your brain is trapped inside your tired, bad-food-eating, dehydrated, stressed-out body. Your attitude and your energy are directly correlated to your results—in sales and in life.