The innermost drive of these successful nay-sayers is probably a positive one, since productivity is surely a positive thing. Most of the men quoted here emphasize the "I-can-do-it" attitude, and I would be guiding you falsely if I said otherwise.
There is no question that you should get down to the business at hand, without all the ifs, ands and buts. Produce, no matter what your view of life is. If you prize your caustic wit, you would do well to express it with caution on the job. Your sour outlook may not stop you from being productive, but it could have an adverse effect on co-workers and subordinates-to say nothing of superiors. Although getting your boss's job is still possible, it will be more difficult.
So let us concede this one to the formula men. Develop the "can-do" frame of mind, and you will be surprised how much you really can do.
This "can-do" attitude applies to your application for new jobs as well as to tasks on your present job. If you approach interviews with the idea of testing the company's suitability for you rather than your suitability for the company, your confidence will be immeasurably improved.
One word of caution: although a positive attitude is recommended, make certain that your approach is realistic. Avoid living in a world so dreamlike that any setback will upset you.
Experts on Mental Attitude
What a man can imagine or conceive in his mind he can accomplish. Impossibles are impossible as thinking makes them so. - Henry J. Kaiser
A young man on my staff once said to me that a good general should go into battle knowing his lines of retreat. I sacked that young man. - Leonard Matcham
One must work, if not from taste, then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure. - J. Pieper
Don't be a fault-finding grouch; when you feel like find ing fault with somebody or something stop for a moment and think; there is very apt to be something wrong within yourself. Don't permit yourself to show temper, and always remember that when you are in the right you can afford to keep your temper, and when you are in the wrong you cannot afford to lose it. - J. J. Reynolds
The world has a way of giving what is demanded of it. If you are frightened and look for failure and poverty, you will get them, no matter how hard you may try to succeed. Lack of faith in yourself, in what life will do for you, cuts you off from the good things of the world. Expect victory and you make victory. Nowhere is this truer than in business life, where bravery and faith bring both material and spiritual rewards. - Preston Bradley
Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. - Walter Lippmann
"I can't do it" never yet accomplished anything; "I will try" has performed wonders. - George P. Burnham
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. - Bruce Barton
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs. - Andrew Carnegie
Nobody can think straight who does not work. Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease. - Henry Ford
There are two kinds of discontent in this world: the discontent that works, and the discontent that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants, and the second loses what it has. There's no cure for the first but success; and there's no cure at all for the second. - Gordon Graham
My general theory is that sound management is merely sound thinking coupled with effective execution. The problems of all businesses are essentially the same. Yet there is some justification for the man who insists that his business is different. It is different. Therefore, while the principles of management are undoubtedly the same throughout business, the applications differ of necessity, and it is in the application of principles which anyone can understand that management proves itself good or bad. - Herman Nelson
You all have powers you never dreamed of. You can do things you never thought you could do. There are no limitations in what you can do except the limitations in your own mind as to what you cannot do. Don't think you cannot. Think you can. - Darwin P. Kingsley
