Creating Value Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Last June, I was doing some research on the relationship between attitude and a positive mental attitude. I firmly believe that having a positive mental attitude is a powerful determinant of a person's altitude in all aspects of life. I had heard that the attitude of an airplane was the orientation of the plane's nose in relation to the horizon.

My simplistic understanding of this concept was as follows: if the aircraft's nose points above the horizon,. the plane has a positive attitude, and is flying upward. If the airplane's nose was pointing below the horizon, the craft had a negative attitude and was flying downward. In my mind, this was an interesting metaphor.

However, I needed to validate whether or not the image I had created in my mind was true to a specialist. So, I asked the people at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. All though my interpretation was not too far from the truth, the answer that was given to me by Jill Bagdasarian holds more nuances than I was expecting. Jill's response goes like this:

" Aircraft attitude is used to mean two closely related aspects of the situation of an aircraft in flight.

In the simplest use it is the orientation of an aircraft with respect to the horizon. This is a function of two angles: pitch and roll. The pitch angle specifies the orientation of the aircraft's longitudinal axis. That is, whether the nose is pointing upwards, is level to the horizon, or is pointing downwards. The roll angle specifies whether the aircraft is banked left or right, or whether its wings are parallel to the horizon. The pilot adjusts the controls (the stick or the yoke) to adjust the aircraft attitude in order to keep the aircraft on course or turn or change
altitude.

Aircraft attitude is used to describe the more complex relation of an aircraft to its surroundings, particularly airflow and gravity. This takes into account the settings of other flight controls such as the rudder, engine power, flaps or slats and also airflow. Thus an aircraft can be described as being in a climb attitude or a spin attitude, which implies more than simply nose up or nose down. "

Despite the fact that Jill's answer was richer in nuances than I would have liked, I am thankful that she took the time to send it and I'm glad to give it to you today.

If you do a google on the word attitude, you get 148 million results. Do it on Amazon.com's book section and you get 296,084 results. On Amazon.ca, you get 1,446.

Do you agree that our attitude is important for creating value?