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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of image group international, an award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old-school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies and hacks for the new tech world. Here you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image and reputation.

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Hello, everybody, and great to have you with me here today. Our topic today is about one of my favourite subjects. And that is an attitude and how it's directly related to your and your team's success. As Zig Ziglar, a well-known American author and seminar presenter, said a long time ago, it's your attitude, not you have to tune, that will determine your altitude. And what that means is really that, you know, having positive physiology around yourself. And a mindset around the heights that you can achieve is definitely a more effective way of living than seeing how things are not possible. In other words, how things cannot be achieved. And the fact is, attitude is more important than skill, privilege, intelligence, and even education. And yes, you heard me correct. And I mean by education, I mean formal education. And Harvard and Stanford have stated that 85% of the reasons a student gets a job and continues in that job are due to his or her attitude, and 15% are due to technical or specific skills. Now, this is an important statistic because, of course, most people would think, you know, I'm gonna get a piece of paper, and I'm going to cruise through life. And we all know that's not true unless you have the gumption along the way to take risks to look, you know, at things from a possibility, perspective, etc. And that's all part of a positive or what we call is a joyful attitude, as opposed to a negative, or constantly focused attitude that particularly brings a lot of stress, and anxiety to plus a recent research study conducted by Stanford Research Institute, and Carnegie Mellon Foundation shows a strong correlation between the right attitude and long term job success. Now that we have the statistics out of the way, what does that all mean? Obviously, we all know a good attitude is really something we're attracted to. And the way I prefer a positive attitude is a more joyful attitude. But you know, we'll go for positive as well, because joy is obviously a positive way of being as well. So they're sort of interconnected. But it's a must if you are to attract opportunities to you. And this is very important because we know that relations and relational skills are essential if you are going to grow tracked opportunities to you, including partners on a personal level, including business partners, including finance, investment, and sales, including customers, etc. So one of the leader's most important jobs, and skill sets, obviously, in a workplace is to set a positive and self-confident tone, exuding an attitude that the team will win, no matter what. And by that, I mean, of course, there's always room for failure, right? But no matter what is how you set it up, and we're gonna go for and give it our best shot, you can only give it your best shot if you're coming from a good place, and in this case is, you know, a joyful, a positive attitude. It's the same confidence that a captain of a football team projects every time they come out of the locker room. You know, imagine coming into a locker room with a negative attitude. And you'll see exactly what happens. Now, this is really interesting. There are specifics that some individuals, right might come out with a negative attitude as a self-motivating trigger, you know, to get them to a positive state. Now, that's, that's not easy to do. And of course, if somebody does that and gets a real winner, good luck to them, but that's obviously more the rarity than the majority. So, in my own lived experience, some of the tips I can share with you in reference had to cultivate positive, self-confident feelings because they all start from self. And consequently, you know how to influence yourself, yourself, and your team's attitude. I'm going to share some of that right now. And some of those examples are very important to consider because you want to have thought about him this way. And we know that you know, the great scientist, Alexander sojourn Knutson said basically the physiology of optimism also indicates aspects of health and long-term vitality. What it means in reference to that is this. And there are all sorts of great work out there. But a particular study was done by Steven James in work called the totally subjective non-scientific guide to illness and health. And virtually, your attitude will also impact your health, you really want to get this; of course, doctors don't talk about it in that sense. But everything's related to Mind, Body Spirit; okay, the body does not get sick by itself. It's got a mind that's all interconnected. And of course, the spirit is, you know, the whole concept in Bing. But to keep it simple, have you noticed that on a day when you've had a bad attitude, that potentially day, you might have ended up with a headache or migraine, or worse, heart palpitations, etc. Everything is interconnected, you know, so when somebody gets sick over time, you want to investigate that as well. And this is very important because we're living in times where people are getting sick, people are getting really sick, and people are dying, like the statistics show, certainly not like previous times. And what's important about that is, you know, Lincoln in how you view life, your whole worldview, and your attitude around that will impact all aspects of your life. And of course, there's nothing more important than your health. So my next tip is to practice positive self-talk. And what that means is I'm not talking about airy-fairy stuff, you know, look in the mirror and go rah, rah, rah, rah, you know, I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna get it. I'm not talking about that stuff I'm talking about specifically. Now that, you know, whatever you are sort of aiming to achieve, what possibilities you're looking to create, make them a positive experience. And that what that means is, it's much that following one simple rule, don't say anything to yourself, that you wouldn't say to anyone else, okay? Just keep it alive from the perspective of empowering and enlivened approach during the ask for a want or a need in yourself talk. And I'm going to be really clear on that one. In other words, don't pray for something good to happen; I want to, I need. This is very important because from a self-talk perspective, what it does is does the opposite. What you want to take on board is you want to be grateful for what you've got, doesn't matter what it is; what happens is, when you start practising gratitude in your life, in your self-talk, what that does is attract different energy to you. And I don't want to sound airy fairy, but what I request is, okay, is that you give it a shot, and you'll see the difference over time and over a short time. So be grateful in yourself, talk with whatever you've got right now. You know, so basically, if I got some negativity happening, or you got some circumstances that you know you'd like to change, just be grateful that you haven't. And what that means is, you're accepting them, and you're taking them on board that this is part of the course, on your journey. Okay? And whatever you've got now, to this moment, it's something you're wanting and needs is all you've got that's required, even if you're going through major financial stresses, okay, relational stresses and any other form of stressors, just be really, really grateful, okay, for what you've got. And that gratitude is what opens up new possibilities. And with enough authentic self-talk around that, miracles happen, as long as you're willing to let go of past paradigms around what that means and stuff around yourself. And with that, I mean, be gentle and encouraging with yourself. Look, we don't need to keep on beating ourselves up to a point to a point where we basically, you know, a feeling down and out. And, of course, that happens every day of the week. And you see people you know that you might even know; I certainly know some people like that. They beat themselves up to the point where you can tell just the moment they enter a room, the shoulders look like they're carrying the world on their shoulders, okay? And energetically, that's not good. That sort of attitude will not attract people to you and even loved ones to run away from that over time. So another tip to break this negative energy cycle at the workplace, especially for We're looking now from a leadership point of view, is when you see one of your team members in a rut of unproductive professional behaviour, address it and download faster now, you know, I've been around this game for a long time. And I remember workplaces when you had authentic conversations with your team members, you sit down, you have open conversations, and you're both basically coaching mentoring each other, you know, and it came from a space of real care, and love, of course, today with political correctness gone insane, okay. Even HR managers that are supposed to have the miracles of the workplace handled, and they don't, okay, at times, specifically apt to afraid for whatever reason to be authentic anymore, and just play political, legal games, as opposed to sitting down with a colleague and say, Look, your current attitude specifically is not helping you. And I want to speak to you as a friend, okay, let's take the professional titles out of the way I care about you. Okay. Now, how your energy reflects out there specifically creates all sorts of relationship issues. And the opportunity is here to get some feedback on that. Now, you might have a different approach, and every individual will have a different approach. But if you don't treat this from the perspective, especially your team members, it will fester and worsen. Authenticity is the key here, the gate, it's the key, but it's how you do it. And you're not going to do it. If you've got no trust, okay, and you've got no respect, people aren't just gonna listen at all because there's going to be no buying. So it's very important that you are authentic and open your heart when doing this. Is there a risk in this? Absolutely. But there's a risk every morning when you get a bit to go and face the world. So let's, let's not talk about ridiculous concepts here. Okay, because people, you know, will say, Well, there's a risk doing this, there's a risk assessment we're going to do before we do that, you know, what about a crisis management plan? Look, we're talking about simple human aspects here that people specifically might need a little bit of help with. Okay? Now, if they have been told every day, everything's good, everything's great. Bang, bang, bang, and then the assessments come in reference to who's performing well, and who's not and you get sacked. Okay, you're gonna say what the hell happened? I wasn't even aware. I thought everything was going well, yeah. Because you thought everything was going well because you were told many lies. And the worst thing about it is you believe them. Okay. So, you know, I'm really specific about this, I've seen a lot of good people get burned, okay, because at times stuff was going on in their lives, their energy, their emotions, we're a little bit all over the place, and no one had the courage to tell them to share with them to sit down with them put an arm around the back, of course, you're not allowed to do that anymore, right? You might even get charged for some form of assault by doing that. No connection, you know, we've gone crazy, right? Things are going crazy right now but don't matter. I mean, you can't change what we can't change; all we can do is be who we're going to be. So soft leadership comes into play here. And my last tip is to be an emotional regulator in your workplace. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to sort of jump in to try to keep everything under control. If you do that, you will also end up going crazy. But what I mean is, if you're a leader, especially if you're a leader, but as I've already explained, in many episodes prior, we're all soft leaders, leadership starts with self-leadership. So for example, the family, parents, okay. By the way, can you even say parents anymore? Joking must be the emotional regulator or chaos that rules the home. In your business, this is also your responsibility. If you're there to keep basically the house in order, it starts from the top, it starts from leadership. Okay. So basically, you know, the self-leadership starts with all of us individually. And then, of course, we go into group leadership. Now, the key here is, as I mentioned, without the right attitude, without the right attitude, all sorts of things happen, okay? And we don't normally equate them to attitude. But if you go and do the research, study human behaviour, and study the whys of the past, you know, what you want to be clear is age-old wisdom is called age old for a reason. Because it's lasted eons. It's lasted for 1000s of years. Here's so don't get hooked into all Google's gonna give me all the answers right now. No, you've already got the answers, okay? Sometimes you're not willing to look at those answers as you know those responses to yourself. And you're plodding along hoping that will go away, nothing goes away unless you do something about it. And that's also part of the attitude, and our chat sort of completes for today. Now, if you liked what you heard, I kindly ask you to write the show on Apple podcast. And if you do, please send us an email confirmation, and we will send you our ebook the real-world yards of authentic personal branding. You can find me on social media. My Twitter is Jon_Michail, my LinkedIn is Jon Michail, and you can find me as Image Group International on Facebook. I want to thank you all, and I look forward to seeing you next time as always, have a great week. Cheers! 

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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass" Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists, based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence and authority in the business world. To learn more and apply for your personal coaching, seminars and group workshops please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.