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Researchers have now established what motivational experts such as myself have been teaching for years; having a positive attitude is so powerful that it can even extend your life. Wealth and success generally go with a positive attitude as well.

The Ohio Longitudinal Study Of Aging and Retirement, a 20-year study of people that were 50 years or older found that our attitude about aging affected how long we lived. The study showed that people that had a more positive view about aging lived an average of 7.8 years longer than those than those who did not hold positive views about aging.

Obviously many factors beyond attitude affect our life span, but since the study covered 1,157 people, a number of these other factors were balanced out.

So if our attitude about ageing can affect our bodies to some extent, what else can a positive attitude affect?

The short answer is almost everything. Hence the old saying 'attitude is everything'.

So what would you like to affect in your life? Your income, your health, your happiness, what? Make a list of things you would like to affect, but keep the list to less than seven items, so you can focus on them. Next, do some serious soul searching about the attitude you really have in these areas. Check with others to see what they say your attitude in those areas as a reality check on what you believe. Also check to see if your actions match what you think your attitude is. If you have to choose between what you think is your attitude and actions that don't match it, go with actions as the guide to your attitude, since they show where you are really at.

Now study your attitude in each area to see if it is productive for you given your goal. Write out the attitude you want to have in each area that needs change and turn the attitude you want into an affirmation. For instance if you want to have an attitude that it is okay to be rich, you could start repeating the sentence 'I am a person that thinks it is okay to be rich' several times each day. Affirmations are very powerful ways to change your attitude about something in a relatively short time.

It is helpful if you can enlist the aid of your friends in your effort to change to more productive attitudes. Tell your friends of you effort to change your attitude and ask them to let you know when you show signs of moving in that direction. This will build your morale and self esteem and speed the change process. On a personal note, I find that people know me as a motivational expert and as such they always expect me to be 'up' and positive. People are quick to note when I am not in the mood they expect and I am able to adjust my attitude back to where it should be. I tell my audiences that one of the curses of being a motivational speaker is that you are never allowed to be in a bad mood.

I was so impressed with the power of our attitude, that I included this passage in my book Sixty Seconds To Success:

'Be your own fortune-teller and predict good things for yourself. Here is a trick that fortune-tellers use to predict someone's future that you can use on yourself. Fortune -tellers quickly get a sense of what a person is thinking-are they positive or negative. Then they can project what will happen given that type of thinking. You can do this for yourself. If you are positive, good things are going to happen to you: if you are pessimistic, things are going to go badly for you.

If you want to predict a good fortune for yourself, act positive, think positive, etc., and the world will be yours. Always be positive about yourself when you talk. If you're negative, it causes others to lose faith in you; you also lose faith in yourself. Always be positive in your speech, regardless of whether someone else is around, as you are the most important that will hear it.

Remember, your attitude is contagious to others as well as to yourself, so predict good fortune for yourself and others and it will come true.'

So we have learned that our attitude in a very powerful thing. This force can work for or against you. I urge you to make it a positive force in your life and from this moment on, choose to focus on the positive in your life. Life goes on regardless of our attitude, but your attitude can make you go on a bit longer as well.