The best is yet to come.

In this book I've shared stories of positive leaders who have transformed their teams and organizations and changed the world. I've also shared examples of positive leaders who are changing the world as we speak. In a world where there seems to be more negativity than ever, what gives me hope is that every week I meet and hear from new and emerging positive leaders. They remind me that we don't have to settle for the status quo and allow negative situations and circumstances to continue and exist. We don't have to be stuck in a negative rut. We don't have to allow negativity to rule our lives and our teams. Today we can decide to address problems, find solutions, and find a way forward. I don't know how old you are, where you are from, or anything about your career, experience, title, challenges, or how many people you lead, but I do know that today you can be the positive leader you were born to be. People often ask me if leadership is nature or nurture. Are you born a leader or can you develop into a leader? I believe you have everything you need inside you to be a positive leader. Life and circumstances don't make you into a leader. They reveal the leader you already are.

You don't have to change jobs to be a positive leader. You can be like Tanya Walters, who was a school bus driver in Los Angeles. I met her while speaking in California. One day, after realizing that most of her students were failing in school, Tanya decided to challenge them to do better. She challenged them to study harder, focus more, and improve their grades. When they succeeded, she took them on a marine biology cruise, which led to the idea of a summer bus trip around the country. The purpose was to expose children to a world and life beyond the toughest streets in Los Angeles. She succeeded and now, many trips later, her non-profit, GodParents Youth Organization, has evolved into a powerful mentoring and touring program that takes children to colleges and historical sites around the country. It was even featured on Oprah. Tanya could have just continued driving the bus and ignored the challenges her students were facing. Instead, she chose to commit her life and work to showing them the world, and she's changing lives in the process. She chose to be a driver of positive change and instead of letting the world influence her, she's a positive leader who is influencing the world.

You can also be like Ursula, who was a pharmacy tech for a large drugstore chain. She told me she was a single mom who had been through a lot of hardships in her life but prided herself on her passion for her job. However, after transferring to the roughest store in the city, her passion quickly fizzled as she dealt with all the difficult customers and negativity in the pharmacy. She was ready to throw in the towel, but didn't want to leave a job she loved. After reading a few of my books, she decided her purpose was “To provide selfless service to her coworkers and customers and to make it a fun and uplifting environment.” She said she brought in a huge pot of queso dip just because it was so good and everyone loved it. Then she and her team started listening to upbeat music and the atmosphere—as well as everyone's attitudes—changed instantly. She said, “It was so fun! The difficult customers I used to dread serving are now opportunities for me to shine. My goal is to make sure they leave my presence with a smile on their face. I help my coworkers at every chance I get and I make sure I try to lift them up with encouragement and compliments. I even leave little gifts for them, like a compliment on a sticky note for the new guy or a little picked flower for another single mom. I am loving my job again, I'm living in the moment, and my passion is back!” Ursula didn't need to change her job. She just needed to change her attitude, and in the process she changed everyone around her.

You don't have to continue living life in a negative rut. You can be like me and so many of the people I have met who have gone from negative to positive. My friend Rachel, for example, wouldn't stop complaining to me at a party. For 20 minutes she bombarded me with a series of complaints. She complained about her job. She complained about her company's new policies. She complained about the economy. Most of all she complained about her lack of sales. I wanted to say something but I couldn't get a word in. Finally I stopped her and told her she had a choice. “You can accept your company's new policies, come to work with a positive attitude, and decide to be your best every day or you can find a new job at a new company. But whatever you do, stop complaining because it's not doing you any good.” The conversation was over and so was our friendship, I thought, because Rachel wouldn't speak to me for a few months. Then my wife and I saw her at the grocery store and she told me that while it was hard to hear what I had to say, she had decided to take my advice. She stayed in her job, stopped complaining, and started selling more. Three months after changing her attitude, her sales were up 30 percent. A year later, her sales were up 70 percent. Three years after our initial conversation, I caught up with Rachel again. We hadn't spoken in a long time and I was wondering how she was doing. Rachel told me that during the last two years her sales continued to grow. She has been promoted twice and is now in her dream job, leading a division at her company. It's the job she always wanted and she's more excited and passionate than ever about her work. Rachel stopped whining and started winning!

Andy Green was a young third-base coach for the Arizona Diamondbacks, but because of the way he invested in relationships with his players, worked hard, served others, and led with optimism and belief, he caught the eye of the owners and general managers of other teams and was hired to be the manager of the San Diego Padres. Andy said he wasn't always about other people. As a young baseball player, he was all about his own career advancement, but after being released by the Cincinnati Reds, he told his wife that if he ever got the opportunity to play Major League Baseball again, it would be about others and not himself. He got another shot to play in the big leagues with the Mets and he became a leader in the clubhouse and eventually a minor league manager, where he won back-to-back Manager of the Year awards before joining the Diamondbacks as a coach. Andy's career highlight wasn't his major-league debut or game-winning home run, but rather knocking on one of his minor league players' hotel room door at one o'clock in the morning and telling him that he was going to the big leagues for the first time. The player cried like a baby, Andy hugged him and years later Andy said so far he hasn't had a better highlight than that. I spoke to Andy's team last year and his players told me he's genuine, caring, selfless, and always looking for ways to help them improve in baseball and life. He's a positive leader who decided to make a difference wherever he was and, as a result, he's now leading at the highest level of his profession. I've worked with countless coaches who have been hired, promoted, and built great careers and teams because of their positive leadership. Some were already positive leaders. Some became positive leaders and it made all the difference.

While you don't have to leave your job to be a positive leader, for some people it does require a change in location, career, and calling. You may have to leave the old behind in order to create the new. Niki Spears was a principal of a school in Fort Bend when she reached out to me and said she wanted to take The Energy Bus message to schools around the world and create an Energy Bus for Schools program. Over the years I have had a number of people approach me about this idea, but once they realized the commitment it would take to make it happen, their enthusiasm gave way to reality and they decided against moving forward. I wanted to see it happen because I had a vision for it but knew it would take the right person. When Niki approached me I thought she would be like the others and fade away, but she didn't. She shared the same vision and was so committed to it that she left her job as a principal with no guarantee of success or a salary, and has since created a movement of Energy Bus Schools that are transforming negativity in schools and helping develop positive leaders for the future. I've watched her grow from a principal of one school to now a leader of leaders who is helping tens of thousands of educators and students improve and grow. She tapped into the power of positive leadership and now she's transforming the lives of principals, teachers, students, and their families. She's still an educator. She's just educating many schools and classrooms instead of one.

You may have to leave everything behind to become the leader you are meant to be. You may be like Scott Harrison, who was a night club promoter, drank heavily, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, often woke up hungover, and was one of the top club promoters in New York City. Scott was at the top of his game, but one day he realized he was playing the wrong game. He didn't want to rally people to meet at bars. He wanted to unite people to make a difference. That ultimately led to visits to Africa, where he discovered that each day 1,400 children die from diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. Scott learned that women and children will walk miles, sometimes taking half a day, to find drinking water when there's fresh, clean water available in the ground right under their feet in their village. All that's needed is a well to extract the water and the funds to install it. Scott created Charity Water to fill this need, and he started rallying many of his friends he met through his years promoting nightclubs. Early on, Scott was having trouble raising money to keep the non-profit running, and he refused to use money he had raised to install water wells on operations. He was a few weeks away from closing down Charity Water when a donor gave him a million dollars to keep it going for another year. Scott said that at the time he thought the money was what kept him going but, looking back, he realizes it was the belief. Now, years later, instead of watching people get drunk, he's providing people around the world with water to drink—and saving lives and transforming communities in the process. To date, Charity Water has helped provide 7 million people with clean drinking water and continues to help provide water to 2,700 new people every day.

Yes, there's a lot of negativity in the world. Yes, there are many problems that haven't been solved yet. But instead of focusing on all that's wrong, you can realize that this is your time to make things right. With all the negativity in the world, what a great opportunity you have to be a positive leader and influencer. With all the technology and resources, there's never been a better time to make a positive difference. When Alan Mulally was contemplating becoming the CEO of Ford, despite all the extreme challenges the company was facing, he did his homework and knew all the daunting tasks that lie ahead, but he didn't run from it. When writing notes to himself about the prospect of becoming the CEO of Ford and turning it around, he wrote, “Wow. What fun!” He knew it was a big problem that only a great leader could solve and he was up to the task to try.

Your circumstances might be difficult and daunting and so were Austin Hatch's. He was a rising star in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with a scholarship to play basketball at Michigan when, while flying with his dad and stepmother on a private plane, the plane crashed. His father and stepmother were both killed and Austin suffered life-threatening injuries and brain trauma. He was in a coma for a month. It was a horrible tragedy made worse by the fact that Austin had lost his mother and two siblings in another crash that he and his father had survived years before. Austin has the rare distinction of being someone who has survived two plane crashes. The odds of this happening are 11 quadrillion, 5 trillion to one. Yet as miraculous as this was, the doctors believe it was even more miraculous that Austin not only walked again but graduated high school, attended Michigan, and joined the basketball team, which honored his scholarship. Austin can't play like he used to, but his leadership is a huge asset to his coach and Michigan teammates. While talking to Austin on the phone recently, he told me about not letting circumstances define him. He said he made a decision in the hospital while trying to walk again that he would do whatever it took to walk out of that hospital. He said he wanted to be a miracle for others. He said, “My life is only a miracle if I can be a miracle to others.” And now, as a sophomore at Michigan, he's finding time between studying and basketball to share and inspire others with his message. He's living to be a miracle for others and so can you.

Nick called me a few days ago. He's a young man in the insurance business. We've actually never met. I spoke to his company's leadership last year and his boss told me about him and how he was struggling, and I said I would call and encourage him. I called him and he was a really nice young man just going through a lot of internal struggles. I had him read one of my books and then said we would talk about what he had learned. We did this once a month for a few months and then I didn't hear from him for a while. When he called me the other day out of the blue he told me about the holidays and how his positive attitude had helped him have a great time with his family. He said where there used to be strife with his siblings there was now meaningful conversation and connection. He said because he had changed, everything around him seemed to change, including his career, which is thriving. Most significant of all, Nick told me that his best friend's dad had died, but because Nick had grown as a leader, he was able to be there for his friend and help him through this difficult time. “That would never have happened last year,” he said. “I would have fallen apart and everyone would have had to help me. But now I was able to help him.” Nick was able to be a miracle to his friend and family.

That's how it works. Your one decision to be a positive leader will not only impact your life, but your relationships, your family, your friends, and your team. A life touches a life that touches a life. A person changes and they help others change. A leader inspires others and develops more leaders. The seed you plant today becomes the harvest you enjoy tomorrow. You may not see the harvest but don't let that stop you from planting the seeds. There are seeds to plant, lives to change, teams to transform, problems to solve, and a world to change. When you become a positive leader, you will not only make yourself better, but you will also make everyone around you better—and that's a great place to start!