Sunday at church before the preacher started his sermon, he made some announcements and one of them was a 99th birthday celebration of one of the members. He asked the man to stand up and the man did. When the man seated back down, the preacher recalled a short conversation he had with the birthday celebrant. He asked him if he ever had any negative days in his life. The celebrant said “I do not have time to be negative.” What a great outlook, is it not? I am pretty sure he did not say that because of his age, although it does make sense if you think about it. I think he lived that long because he had that outlook all along. Most of the corporate training programs I facilitate greatly deals with attitude shift. Whether it is about customer service or team building or even leadership and management programs, it will almost always involve an attitude shift. You may also know it as a paradigm shift since changing your attitude depends largely on changing your current outlook in a situation. Whenever I create and design training programs that deals with attitude shifts, I always ask the same question as any training professional asks. “Can you really teach an attitude?” My answer would always be, you can guide them the to the ideal attitude you want yo convey however, the changes will happen if the attendees are open to it and willing to learn to accept the change. If they do not, then you certainly will not expect any attitude shift to ever happen once the are done with the training. There are no guarantees because the results depends solely on the person. Openness and willingness. These are the two keys in attitude shifts. You do not have to be a 99 year old birthday celebrant to say “I do not have time to be negative” in life. Why not start now – at whatever age and stage you are in your life. Have that outlook that being negative is a waste of your time. When you think about it – it is, anyway! So start now. Shove the negativity out of the way and move forward with positivity in mind every day – starting this minute.