CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE AND TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE

Change your attitude and you alter your life completely. Changing your attitude will enable you create a personal life transformation. This assertion is not an empty one. How you can do that is what this write up is about.

What is attitude?

The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines attitude as: the way you think and feel about something, the way you behave towards somebody or something that shows how you think and feel, confident, sometimes aggressive behavior that shows you don’t care about other people’s opinions and that you want to do things in an individual way, a position of the body.

Three things stand out from this definition; thinking, feeling and behavior.

From the above definition, it is established that attitude is how you think, feel and behave. If you change how you think, it will affect how you feel and influence your behavior. The connection of thinking, feeling and behavior and how intertwined they are, is highlighted by the late sage Mahatma Gandhi who said;  

“Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior.

Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. 

Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”

 

Attitude is more important than the truth

Taking it a little further Dr. Robert Schuller in his bestseller book Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do  said quoting Dr Carl Menninger: “ attitude is more important than fact”  this literally means that how you think, feel and behave towards a fact or issue of life is far more important than whatever the issue or fact is.

Let us illustrate this truism by giving the following scenarios as examples. If a man was informed that he had lost his lives savings in the capital market due to the stock market meltdown. The usual response from a majority of people all over the world will be gloomy due to a bad mental attitude. This man would curse and throw tantrums, and bemoan his bad luck, lose faith in life and believe that fate, had dealt him the worst blow he could never recover from. He would believe that his life had come to an end and is no longer worth living. In extreme cases, he would commit suicide to end it all. 

Most of us are aware of the recent stock market burst and how many defeated victims threw themselves out of their windows to death.  This is a wrong mental attitude.

Let us look at the example of another person with a healthy mental attitude and his expected response due to a different perspective of the same bad news of loss of his savings in the stock market. He would say “It is a fact that I lost all my savings in the stock market meltdown, but I still have my wife and children that love and support me. My money may be gone, but I still have my mind and health intact. I believe with time and little luck, I shall accumulate more money and even surpass what I had lost.” How is he able to weather the storm whereas the first man lost his head?  Let’s find out.  

From both responses, it is clear that their attitude was the obvious difference in their reaction. Attitude is influenced by what both men choose to see, feel, believe and utter with their mouth. The first man saw gloom and death while the second man counted his blessings and saw challenge and an opportunity for a fresh start hoping to surpass what he had before.

Your Choice determines how you react to issues

In any circumstances you face on daily basis, you must choose how to respond. You may choose to be gloomy and negative or have a stubborn hope and be positive. Martha Washington believed that how you respond to issues or problems of life depends on your attitude. She says:   
 

  ‘I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be;

  for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness

  or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.’

 

This belief is clearly illustrated by Opray Winfrey who says “the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”  

Change your life by changing your disposition

Be rest assured that choosing the positive side always takes you a little further than taking the gloomy side of the equation. You see, how high you go in life, may just depend on this choice.  Bestselling author and motivator par excellence Zig Ziglar says “attitude not aptitude determines altitude.” This literally accentuates the point that it is your thinking, behavior and not your natural ability or skill that determines how successful you become.  Adopting an attitude of unlimited possibilities in life can make you soar and surmount all temporary setbacks on your way to greatness.

In book of proverbs chapter 23v7 of the new King James version of the holy bible it says “For as he thinks in his heart so is he”.

Thinking gets you there

My question to you is how do you think?  What is your attitude towards negative facts of life that must hit even the very best of the human race?  What is your response to setbacks? How do you deal with emotional losses such as Loss of a job, a spouse, a child? How do you want to be remembered? The questions are endless.

I have always chosen to follow the footsteps lefts in the sands of time by great men and women who have gone through these same issues of life and triumphed. Accepting their words of wisdom will guide our baby steps. I will borrow these words from the possibility thinker’s creed as published by Dr. Robert Schuller in Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do which states that:

 

“When faced with a mountain, I will not quit,

I will keep on striving until I climb over,

find a pass through, tunnel underneath,

or simply stay and turn the mountain

into a gold mine with God’s help”

You must seek to develop an unstoppable attitude to get ahead in this life. Thomas Jefferson says:

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.  

Think on these things and make up your mind to develop positive outlook of lives issues that buffet us daily.

Final thoughts

I leave you with this view from Winston Churchill who says “attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference”. 

For you to create a lasting impact in whatever you have chosen to do exceptionally and transform your life radically, change your attitude which is the fuel for your quest.