Which is more important: attitude or ability?

I saw this quote on my Facebook newsfeed (many of my quotes are posted automatically and I'm just as surprised as you are when I see them!) and it reminded me that this was something that I wanted to talk about.

The original quote that got me thinking about this subject in the first place was this quote by Lou Holtz, famous football coach:

All of us have certain skills or abilities, whether for our jobs, family or hobbies. These abilities determine what we can do, but if these abilities aren't things that we enjoy doing we'll avoid doing them, if at all possible. But if they're things that we enjoy using, we'll be motivated to use them more. We may be good at certain job related skills and even though we may not like using them, we are good at them...but if we have a negative attitude at work, then we may end up doing poor work. In theses cases, we may not necessarily be motivated (other than to keep our jobs), but our attitude is as equally important as our ability.

The same is true even with things that we normally like to do...if we have a poor attitude we will do poor work, whether interacting with our spouse or kids, doing things around the house or even our hobbies. A lot of times, doing things that we enjoy doing can pull us out of a funk but be careful of the results that you get before you come out of that funk.

All three of these things are under our control...we can always choose our attitude, whether good or bad, regardless of the things that are going on around us. Although, it's easier to be in a good mood if the things going on around us are good. But we can control that a lot by being around people who are positive. Positive people are more likely to be able to find something positive in whatever situation they find themselves in. If we have a positive attitude, we can often find ourselves motivated to do things that we didn't like to do before. And our skills and abilities can only improve if we're motivated to use them.

I'm not normally one to disagree with Walter Scott, but it seems to me that attitude may be even more important than abilities because no matter how skillful you are, if you're in a bad mood you will do poor work. But if you have a positive attitude you can always work to improve your skills.

Interesting days

Today - Chocolate Ice Cream Day and VCR Day How many of us still have a VCR? I don't. And DVDs may be going away, too. Almost everything is digital downloads these days  

Tomorrow - World Oceans Day, Upsy Daisy Day and Best Friends Day

Next Tuesday - Flag Day, World Blood Donor Day and Bourbon Day

July 7 - Chocolate Day, Tell The Truth Day, Global Forgiveness Day and Strawberry Sundae Day