[Christian223]

I just found the following, i hope it throws some light into the issue and give you some ideas to get better in life
From here: THE ABC MODEL: BEYOND “ATTITUDE”

For example, when asked to define what makes the people on their most productive shift so good, plant managers consistently say things like this: “They’ve got the right attitude,” “They’ve got pride in their work,” “They care about the company,” and “They’ve just got a lot of initiative.” Asked to identify why the slow shift remains slow, they say: “That’s just a lazy line.” “They don’t pay attention to what they’re doing,” and, “Just a bad attitude all around.”

Explaining things by referring to an “attitude” that is impervious to management control is both the most common and the most aggravating “explanation” that managers give for why a certain level of performance is not happening. It’s an easy copout that shifts responsibility off the manager’s shoulders and identifies some tenuous but immovable “force” as the reason his people won’t perform. “It’s not my fault,” the hidden message reads. “These guys are just bad seeds.” (In other words, they’re just “evil” because they won’t learn on their own which are the right levers to push.)

Anybody who has ever played on a sports team and has seen the dramatic effect that good coaching can have knows that this is nonsense. In professional sports especially, most teams today are pretty equally matched: there’s very little difference in the “talent levels” of the players on a first-ranked team and those on a team in the middle. The difference is in the quality of coaching – which is to say, the quality of “people management.” Invariably in high-level sports, the most successful teams are the ones whose coaches are most skilled in “manipulating” their people toward the kind of Behaviors that win games. Exactly the same principle applies in business, and in every other situation where learning creatures (like people), not robots, are involved. So the manager who complains that his people “just won’t get cracking” is really saying that he doesn’t know how to turn them on. And – here’s a news flash for you – the one who cant’ explain why his best people are doing so well is in the same boat, or soon will be. If the only clue you have to why your people perform is that will-o’-the-wisp, their “attitude,” sooner or later that attitude is going to go “bad.” Because it’s not something you can control.

Because focusing on internal attitudes always leads to a management dead end, we advise the managers who attend our programs to focus on externals instead. Forget about your people’s “ultimate causes” and “real” mental states, we say. You can’t change those things anyway, no matter how hard you plead or preach. What you can change is their external behavior. And you do that by manipulating Consequences. That’s the “ultimate cause” of all good motivation.