Please can people stop using absolutist epithets like this.
Managing your attitude, emotions, and the stories you tell yourself will help a lot.
If you do it badly, it will increase your chances of failure.
Doing it well will not determine your success. That’s just magical thinking. It will predispose you for success if the other conditions are right for it, but nothing more.
There are millions of people having such problems with motivation, attitude and experience lack of success, so these kind of blogs give them exactly what they want to hear. I wasted ton of time on such publications as I was under impression that if only I change my thinking then suddenly I'll get on right track.
Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. What helped me the most is realising that making mistakes is just part of a process and in order to succeed I need to be aware of them and just keep going. It's extremely hard, but it is what it is. If I stop then chance of failure is 100%.
That has been my experience as well. Be positive, but remove the stars in your eyes. Don't give up at the simplest failure, but also don't set unachievable goals that are clearly destined for failure (such as things that require pure luck).
Because "your attitude determines your success" explicitly states that if you fail it is because of your attitude. People fail for many reasons, usually a combination of reasons. Attitude is just one factor.
It is very comforting for people who are high on the social ladder to believe in a meritocracy: it lets one their successes are due to their superior character, and those who are on the bottom of the ladder are there due to a failure of character.
It doesn't say anything about the inverse. You can simultaneously believe success is determined by yourself and failures are just bad luck. It's positive thinking. Some enjoy it, some don't.
Interpreted as a literal propositional statement, it's saying "if you have a good attitude, then you will have success". Therefore if you do not have success, it must be because you did not have a good attitude, which is your fault. It's the contrapositive, right?
If you take "determines" to mean "is the sole determining factor ... at a given instant" then yes. But with a more conventional reading, unless you define a time-frame, deny randomness or otherwise specify an outcome - no.
"Will have" is a stronger rephrasing, but even with this wording it wouldn't necessarily blame your attitude as long as you're alive (and if one believes in afterlife the promise may as well never expire).
The caveat is helpful because there's a lot in life that you can't control. Luck plays a part in both success and failure. If you believe that your failures are solely your fault you will be unreasonably discouraged . If you believe your successes are due to you and you alone you'll turn into a jerk.
It's true that your attitude and behaviors matter. Competence is usually rewarded, and you should act in accordance with that truth. But it's not absolute. Life is not a meritocracy (whatever that really means).
I think the lesson is, no matter how good or bad you have it, things outside your control can make it or break it, so forget about trying to predict the future and just go for it.
Or as an old space pirate once put it "never tell me to odds!"
Being positive through the bad times helps for long term achievement. Being naively positive through something that has clearly ended is just stupidity.
It's not really a caveat, though, is it? It's an entirely false premise, that intent & direction & purpose are irrelevant. That the primary factor that matters is attitude & self-belief. As commenter Zepto rightly pointed out, this article is proposing magical thinking: the conceit that what you want or what you think is the thing that shapes reality all about.
Besides being delusional, it also has all the other obviously bad impact that it's twin the Prosperity Gospel brings: those without riches & success have all failed to be worthy, are all faulty. No matter how hard you work, how good you try to be, judging in Attitude or Belief as the only/primary/core determiner of success doesn't allow for misfortune, or for it to be the world that was wrong. Often, the world _is_ wrong, and only those rebels that hold up their flame & let their light shine are what it takes, what makes humankind & the human spirit so great... but so often those folks are crushed, too. And not for a failure of attitude or belief, nor often strategy nor execution either. Hard things, sometimes, ought be tried & embarked upon, but to internalize success as the judgement of whether the hard thing was right or wrong? That is petty, small, and insufficient. It diminishes the light of the world to require & judge only by success.
Managing your attitude, emotions, and the stories you tell yourself will help a lot.
If you do it badly, it will increase your chances of failure.
Doing it well will not determine your success. That’s just magical thinking. It will predispose you for success if the other conditions are right for it, but nothing more.