When Your Attitude Gets in the Way

In this episode of This Is Nothing New, Michelle explores one of the simplest concepts in personal development—and one of the easiest to overlook: attitude.

Through a candid story about a coaching client and a surprising realization from her own year-end reflection, she unpacks how quickly we can let other people's energy, feedback, or behavior shape our outlook.

You'll learn why attitude is one of the few things completely within your control, how pessimism quietly influences your decisions and relationships, and why the people around you have a bigger impact on your perspective than you may realize.

Because sometimes the difference between an ordeal and an adventure isn't the situation—it's the attitude you bring to it.

Connect with Michelle:

Website: michellegruening.com
Instagram: @michellegruening
LinkedIn: Michelle Gruening

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the This Is Nothing New Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Brewning, and this is a place where we drop the trends and we get back to the basics. And today I want to talk about attitude. This has been an idea that has been coming up a lot for me recently in the books that I'm reading, in the coaching that I'm doing, in my approach to how I'm working. And a real life example of this is last year I was working with a client who always showed up to our calls disengaged, disconnected. I mean, their presence kind of looked like an eye roll embodied. And when you're showing up to a place to coach people where they are so disconnected, it becomes really difficult to show up in a positive place. And listen, I will talk a lot about ways we can improve ourselves, personal development, leadership psychology, all of that stuff. But I want y'all to know it is never coming from a place of grandstanding. I am never putting myself up on a pedestal and saying, oh, you down there, here's how you can get up here. I am constantly a work in progress. I had a coach who once said, you never arrive when it comes to personal development. Because if you feel like you've arrived, you have a lot more work to do than you realize. So that's my little disclaimer as I'm getting into this. So, yes, I have gone through my own personal development journey for the past several years. I've been in masterminds, gone through certifications, had coaches, all of that kind of stuff. And yet I can still succumb to a bad attitude. And it is something that I'm aware of and I consistently work towards. So back to the client from last year. Their lack of engagement and interest in our calls, I was letting that affect me. I was taking it very personally. And some of you may argue, well, yeah, you should take it personally because you're the one who is doing it. And while I understand that argument, if we start taking everything personally, we will get paralyzed with fear and we will lean into people pleasing. And so the bad habit that I slipped into last year was I was allowing that client to determine the energy levels of our calls. And I was matching that energy. Even though it was bad energy, it was not a good place to be. It was a bad vibe. And y'all will learn that one of my ultimate goals in life is just to create good vibes wherever I'm going. And so when I would come into these calls, I would feel like I was showing up to talk to a brick wall sometimes. And that can take a hit on your attitude. So I really struggled for a while. And I would approach these calls with a bad attitude. I really did. And I didn't have that full realization until I was doing my reflection at the end of 2025. Every year I do a kind of a reflection of the year that passed and an envisioning for the year coming. And in my reflection, one of the questions that I asked myself was, what surprised me most about myself in the past year? And my answer was, I surprised myself by how personally I took things. And that wasn't a good surprise, but it was an enlightening one for me. I am always working to gain more self-awareness about myself and how I show up and how I engage with the world around me. And when I gave myself that space to really dig into what surprised me about myself, it was how personally I took a lot of stuff. It comes back to you never arrive. I haven't arrived. I have leveled up, and every time I level up, I've got a new set of problems. And one of those problems that I need to constantly face and work towards is my ability to separate fact from fiction. Attitude can be the difference maker in your success of your work life and in the success of your personal life, whatever success means to you. But attitude is a difference maker. So if you show up with a bad attitude, you better believe people are going to start moving away from you. When you have a bad attitude and you are going after something new in your life, let's say it's a new goal or a new client, even trying to make a new friend. If you have a bad attitude, that is going to set the tone and the energy level for everything that comes after your initial engagement. Our attitude is one of the few things that we actually have full control over. The other one is our effort. And the third one is our level of kindness. So when we think about things that we can actually fully control, our attitude, our effort, and our level of kindness that we show towards other people. And I said this actually in a training last week, and I got a little chuckle when I said the two things you can always control are your attitude and your effort. And somebody kind of chuckled and I asked why. And all he said was, I've heard that from a handful of other people in different settings. And I love that that is being communicated out to a lot of different environments. And what I want you to really take home, if you l if you like don't care about literally anything else that I'm saying, the only thing I care about, you caring about, is the two things that are in your complete control are your attitude and your effort in everything that you do. One of my favorite quotes that I actually have pop up on my phone quite often is attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure. I sit with that a lot, especially when I have like travel delays. Because having a bad attitude isn't going to make my plane come here faster. Having a bad attitude isn't going to change the weather. But having a good attitude, a positive attitude, that can actually change a tremendous amount of things. It changes your energy level, it changes your outlook, it changes your perspective, it changes the way you show up for the rest of the day. It changes whether or not you view your situation as something that has fun and joy available within it. So when you think about your attitude levels, ask yourself do you typically have a good attitude or a bad attitude? And I know that's very vague. Like, what does good mean? What does bad mean? But in general, is your attitude focused on optimism or is it focused on pessimism? Is your attitude focused on possibilities or only the problems? If you find yourself in the pessimism and problem-focused attitude, one, I applaud you for your self-awareness. Good job. But two, you don't have to stay there. You don't have to stay there. Ideally, eventually you're both. Because the people you surround yourself with are going to shape your perspectives and your reality. And that is nothing new. That is not a new concept. You hear it in so many different uh approaches, but it truly matters. The people that you spend the most time with, the people that you allow to influence your decisions, are going to determine your perspective and your reality of the world around you. So who are you around? What are their attitudes? Do they have an attitude of gratitude? Or do they have an attitude of blaming? How can you intentionally choose to elevate your attitude to a better place? And if you're like Michelle, I'm already a super optimistic, positive person. I love that for you. There is still somewhere where your attitude can be elevated. Because remember, we never arrive. That's your challenge. Where can you elevate your attitude to a more positive, grateful, optimistic place? That's all I got for y'all today. This is not a new concept, but it's something worth reminding. So, until we meet next time, see y'all later.