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Attitude is everything

  • Published
  • By Maj. Sean McElhaney
  • 15th Mission Support Squadron commander
Today, the Air Force is seeing many deployments, many cuts in our budgets, and many more challenges we must face. Our Core Values, our intense training, and our top of the line equipment are here to help us meet these day-to-day challenges. However, what can set us apart from the next country, the next unit, or even the next person, because we have no choice but to be the best, is our attitude. 

Our attitude can be the X-factor between a winning team and a team that can only just survive on a day-today basis. 

Commanders will most likely always pick the person with a positive, can-do attitude over anyone else because they can greatly increase the unit's work productivity, improve the
learning environment, and more importantly, tighten the unit's esprit de corps. 

All of us have a job to do and its hard work including things from piles of paperwork to customers who demand our attention. Extra duties also seem to consistently get dropped on our plates. No matter how we feel about it, the mission must get done.
However, you'd be amazed at how much can be accomplished if all of us put a smile on our face and told ourselves every morning, "I'm going to have an outstanding day!" Just these two small things can turn an average person into a winner. 

Winners sometimes don't know how to do everything, but they truly believe they can do anything. 

They create an air of confidence that becomes extremely infectious to everyone that works with a winner. This confidence then takes away the self doubt, the unsure nature of the future, and it allows us to put that step forward and get the job done. 

A year ago, many people had doubts about the C-17 coming to Hickam and having active-duty members working side-by-side with the Hawaii Air National Guard. 

Today, we're doing it and those planes are flying. All of us have some amount of self doubt, but a positive attitude will build our confidence and take us to the next level.

 

 

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