Do you have a poor attitude? Do you want to get rid of it -- fast? It's very easy to develop a great attitude. You just need a little brain fine tuning. You can turn your saturnine disposition into a happy and sunny outlook within minutes. Here's how....
What is a Great Attitude?
There are two poles of attitude -- a negative, unhelpful attitude or a positive, helpful attitude.
A negative attitude is considered unhelpful because it will:
a) make you feel moodier and more unhappy;
b) sour your relationship with other people (or just attract other negative people to you);
c) lower your motivation and energy;
d) sabotage your life.
A positive attitude is considered helpful because it will help you to:
a) feel happier;
b) get along with others better;
c) have more energy and enthusiasm for your life;
d) and hence, be more successful.
From those generalizations, the obvious choice is to develop a positive attitude. It just has more going for it than the opposite pole! But there's a problem...
The Challenge of Being Positive
Trying to be positive all the time takes a big effort, and it is unbalanced. Have you ever been around someone who you can tell is forcing themselves to be positive? God, they are exhausting, aren't they? Everything is up and just dandy -- but you can tell this whole persona is an act, a tower built on quicksands. You can tell it is going to crumble and fall apart. No, forcing yourself to be positive when you don't really feel positive is counter productive. It will make you sick. But there is a solution. There is a way to feel naturally buoyant and positive about your life...
Great + Attitude = ?
So if pushing yourself to be more positive is not the way to a great attitude, what is? There's a clue in the words. Push them together and what do you get? Gratitude! Yes, that's it. You can get rid of your crappy attitude by making a slight adjustment in the way you look at the world. We are like accountants that look at our lives and judge (or account) all the things that are going on. With a crappy attitude we are life's losers and we look around and confirm it to ourselves by 'counting' all the rubbish things that happen to us. You get more of what you focus on, and so with a negative attitude you simply find more and more reasons to justify feeling negative about life. Now if we look at that as a process that starts in the way we focus our minds, we realize that we have the ability to change the focus and get a different result. Instead of working for the prosecution and looking for reasons why we should punish ourselves, we can work for the defense and look for reasons why we deserve to be happy and free. You can continue appraising your life and counting the negative events (which tells your mind that you want more of these). Or you can refocus and start counting all the wonderful things and events that take place in your life. If you do the latter, you will discover a great secret...
The Secret of the Attitude of Greatness
The mysterious secret of gratitude is that it has the power to turn negatives into positives. Something that with your crappy attitude you judged to be negative can be transformed instantly by gratitude into something wonderful and worthy of appreciation. Thankfulness transforms your world. It's like going from a monochrome world to a world of rainbow color. Imagine how people could transform their attitudes to relationships, jobs, families, finances, health, if they came from asking, what do I have to be thankful about here? Crappy attitude asks what's wrong with this picture. Great attitude asks what is right and wonderful and what can I feel grateful for in this picture?
The Building of the Great Full-ness
At a basic level, we want to feel well-fed rather than starving. We want our lives to be fulfilling rather than empty. We want to have a rich emotional love life rather than a barren, loveless life. We want to be rich and prosperous rather than poor and desperate. The way to fill this great emptiness that many feel is with a great full-ness -- and that's what gratefulness does. Start becoming an accountant for the many wonderful things in your life. Count them up and fill your mental treasure house. What you appreciate 'appreciates' in value and grows. What you show an interest in, pays 'interest'. So start where you are and start simple. You are alive, you're breathing -- wahoo! Look around you and start to just say Thank you. You can thank God, or you can thank Life, or even thank yourself. "Thank you for being alive. Thank you for this air that sustains me. Thank you for these warm clothes. Thank you for the breakfast that I just enjoyed. Thank you for this computer that allows me to access wonderful new ideas and information from all over the world. Thank you for my family, friends and loved ones." And so on...
Changing a Crappy Attitude to a Great Attitude Now!
The truth is you can change a crappy attitude to a great attitude right now by changing your focus. Instead of rejecting what you find in your life start to look at what you are (or could be) thankful for. Unlike those high-strung, ready-to-implode individuals that force a positive attitude, you will be naturally positive because you have learnt to appreciate and value life. You won't be fighting anymore in a battle of good and evil. Through thankfulness and gratitude you transcend opposites and see a whole picture working for your benefit. This is the way of a great attitude.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment