Overview

As college students, our attitudes are crucial to succeeding. It can determine our grades, friends, and most importantly our overall experience at the University. Choosing our attitudes daily can help foster positive living and learning environments. If you have a resident that is not interested in having a positive experience here at Whitewater, helping them change their attitude can go a long way. Undergroundsuccess.com offers five great tips to help a person change their attitude.

5 Tips

1. Be honest with yourself

As Resident Assistants, it is important that we are honest with our residence as well as fostering honesty from our residents. If you have a resident that is feeling bad or down and their attitude towards life or work is quite poor, then help your resident to admit it. Don’t let your residents go on as if everything is okay and it is not. Help them to accept that there is an issue, and once they’ve accepted the issue for the way it is, they can make a change.

2. Get some rest

Overworking and not getting enough sleep is a set up for failure. Being sleep deprived not only affects you, but it also affects those around you. Your attitude is highly affected by the amount of sleep you are getting. If you have noticed a drastic change in a resident’s attitude, making sure s/he is getting enough rest at night can be to key ingredient to changing their attitude from negative to positive.

3. Get clear on what exactly is causing you to have such a bad attitude

What exactly is bothering your residents? Is it work related? Their significant other? Their classes? Once your resident has figured out exactly what is bothering them, they can then do something about it and their attitude will immediately changes. Getting to the point of agitation and not denying that this is the cause is key here.

4. Do something to change your attitude

Now that you have established why their attitude is poor, what can you do to help improve your resident’s attitude? For example, if you know that a resident received a bad grade on an exam and is upset, what can you do to help your resident change the way s/he feels?  You could offer to go for a walk with your resident, workout, or any other activity that your resident may need to do to calm down.  Offer options that will help them change their attitude.

5. Change the way you are looking at the situation

Asking them “why does this affect you” can help your resident to rethink why s/he has such a negative attitude. If the reasoning behind their frustration is minor, asking such questions will hopefully get your resident to conclude that it is minor and this should not cause their attitude to shift. Changing the way we view situations is a step towards changing our attitudes. For example, your resident never wants to do their homework because it is way too much work. Instead of allowing your resident to complain about the amount of work s/he has to do, challenge them to complete all of their homework. Everyone likes a good challenge, and this will hopefully change their negative perception of homework. You could even go a step further and create an Academic Bulletin Board that focuses on homework completion. Again, changing how your resident is viewing a situation is a step towards changing their attitude.