I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about attitude lately. What works, what doesn’t, the extent of the impact it can have, who has the right attitude, how did they learn it, how can I better use my mind to shape my behavior, how can I identify and eradicate my unhealthy attitudes, how can I cultivate better thoughts…This post is pretty basic, but it’s the first in a series of articles about attitude and how we can all improve our thoughts.
I can or I can’t. Either way I’m right.
There are plenty reasons people will point to as explanation for why they can’t succeed. And many of them are actually very real and significant. For example, it’s obviously harder to start a business when you’re still paying student loans, or if you have kids, or if you didn’t finish high school, or if you don’t have the same access to financing that someone with rich parents might.
Compassionate as we should be about other people’s situations, though, none of this thinking does us very much good when applied to our own lives. It may even do us a disservice by making ordinary challenges appear more daunting and impossible than they otherwise would. I know people who have started successful businesses despite having kids, debt, and the rest. It took extra effort and discipline on their part, but they found a solution to each obstacle in turn. And that’s the difference between, “it can’t be done,” and “it can be done if I work hard enough.” Really, it all comes down to “I can,” vs “I can’t.” Harder doesn’t mean impossible.
Proponents of the “I can’t” philosophy are experts at finding reasons why something won’t work. To hear them tell it, their lives are way more challenging than anyone else’s, and they’re giving everything they’ve got just to stay afloat. How could they possibly spare any extra effort to get ahead? They’ve got student loans, their rent is too expensive, their job sucks, and the economy is bad. Whatever the hurdle, it’s someone else’s doing, and it’s going to hold them back forever.
The “I can” people, by comparison, get shit done. It’s incredible. They find what needs doing, and do it. They’ve got obstacles too, but for some reason, they’re never held back . These barriers are merely another problem to be solved.
Immigrant entrepreneurs in particular represent a great argument against “I can’t”ism. They’ve often got every obstacle in the book: weak English, no meaningful job experience in the US, no money, often some racial bias against them…It’s actually faster to list all their advantages, of which they have two: Attitude and effort. And yet, despite these circumstances, there are a ton of successful immigrant entrepreneurs. In fact, they create something like ¼ businesses in the US despite representing only 13% of the population (according to the podcast Open for Business, episode 1: “The Entrepreneurial Mind”). That should be a testament to the fact that actual circumstances matter a lot less than attitude.