Attitude is defined as “a way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person’s behavior.”
So are you going through your day with a positive attitude or a negative attitude? How does your attitude affect the people around you? Is your attitude infectious or contagious?
Let me share a true story with you. I am an attorney in private practice. For over a decade I had a law office in downtown Chicago, IL on S. LaSalle street. For those of you who do not know Chicago, LaSalle Street is a street (similar to Wall Street in New York city) that runs through what is considered to be a portion of Chicago’s financial district and the Chicago Loop.
On the street level of my building was a Starbucks that I would visit every morning when I got off my commuter train and before I went upstairs to my office to start work.
One morning, one of the baristas, an older African American lady asked me, how I was doing? So I smiled and said “Fabulous!” That same barista asked the same question for five days in a row during her morning shift and my answer was always the same, a smile, and me saying I was “Fabulous!”
That week, I become “Mr. Fabulous.”
From that point forward all the baristas called me Mr. Fabulous, whenever I walked into Starbucks. When I would enter Starbucks in the morning, one or more baristas would always say, “Here comes Mr. Fabulous!”
I was tested from time-to-time, by new baristas or baristas that worked there a long time to see if I would ever say anything different. I did not. My response was always the same, a smile and saying I was feeling fabulous.
One week, when I was completing a big legal project with a short deadline, I went into Starbucks late in the afternoon for another cup of coffee and I heard one of the baristas say to another barista, “I know your feeling down, but here comes Mr. Fabulous. Talk to him, you will feel better. His smile is contagious.”
So was my Mr. Fabulous positive attitude infectious or contagious?
One mind-body-spirit definition of infectious is a “exposure to a pre-determined number of emotions, feelings or attitudes required to create a change in an individual exposed to the emotions, feelings or attitudes.”
It took me about a week of smiling and saying the same thing to become infectious to the morning shift Starbucks baristas and create a change in their attitudes.
One mind-body-spirit definition of contagious is “an emotion, feeling, or attitude likely to spread to and affect others, person-to-person.”
So only about a week after my Mr. Fabulous positive attitude become infectious to the morning shift baristas, it also became contagious among all the baristas at that same Starbucks on all work shifts in downtown Chicago.
Positive attitudes can be both infectious and contagious, but so can negative attitudes. So be careful which attitudes you project to infect the people around you and make contagious.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States actually has a mathematical formula called R-nought that is used to predict how many people a contagious individual will actually affect during a contagious outbreak of an actual disease.
What is your positive impact R-nought factor? How many people can you infect with your own personal positive impact attitude and have that posivite impact attitude become contagious?
One goal Love Infinity and I set for Positive Impact Global was to infect a billion people with our positive impact attitudes and create a contagious outbreak of positive impact events spreading person-to-person all over the globe.
When you encounter someone in your life that is feeling discouraged down or sad, has a lack of confidence or enthusiasm, infect that person with your own positive attitude by sharing a smile and some kind, loving or supportive words with that person. You just never know how your approval and belief in that person will affect the trajectory of that person’s life moving forward or how that person’s change in attitude will become contagious and spread to and affect others, person-to-person in that person’s environment.
Out There on the Edge of Everything®…
Stephen Lesavich, PhD
Copyright © 2019, by Stephen Lesavich, PhD. All rights reserved.
Award-winning and best-selling Author, Entrepreneur, Visionary, CEO of 2 different companies, Attorney, Tech Expert, Certified Solution-Focused Life Coach, Experienced Business Coach.