What stops you? Asking myself that question the other day, I came up with this answer: Attitude is a governor.

I found out about governors when I was a teenager. Cars back then had a valve in them that, when adjusted, could limit the top end speed of a car. It was called a governor. Now it’s a computer chip.

So what stops you from going faster? Do you roll along and then, all of a sudden, find yourself slowing down? You set out to do something but then your governor kicks in and you can’t get to the requisite speed to complete the trip on time, or at all.

Our governor is an attitude – a conditioned mindset that we may not even be consciously aware of.

Years ago, I can remember scoffing at the notion of “the fear of success.” I labeled it an old wives’ tale. Who wouldn’t want to be successful? I arrived at the conclusion that people weren’t willing to work hard enough to be successful. That mental balloon received the prick of reality when I was working harder than I knew how but wasn’t garnering success – at least my version of it.

My fear of success kicked in when I was getting close. I discovered it was an attitude I owned about people who were financially better off than I was. I remember driving the 18 miles to work and seeing the homes get bigger and more expensive along the route. I said to myself, “What do these people do, sell drugs?”

I wanted what they had, and because I didn’t have it, I made it their fault. It was shortly thereafter that I found one of the secrets to success: Emulate, don’t envy. Find out how they do what they do, rather than piss and moan about them.

I also discovered that my attitude about them had to change, otherwise I would only go so far with emulation. My conditioning was that “rich” people were somehow evil. Once I examined that attitude in the light of day, I found that rain fell on the rich and the poor, meaning the proportion of “evil” was the same in all financial classes.

Attitude is something that needs consistent work to get to the point of actually changing. It’s not a one-time observation. Every time you notice that old attitude rear its head, interrupt it. Don’t make a counter argument, just interrupt by noticing it. The interruption could be as easy as saying to yourself, “My attitude about ‘X’ is making a statement.” Just that noticing is enough to interrupt the attitude.

Each time you notice, the attitude gets weaker and then, at some point down the road, you find that it has changed. It doesn’t change because you’ve created a mantra about change or took a class about change; it changes when it consistently gets interrupted by noticing.

Noticing is something worth cultivating and if your attitude is anything like mine was, noticing will also increase your net worth.

All the best,

John