Today's Quotation:

Your attitude is your choice.  It always is.  We live in an age that has developed the art of shifting blame to very high levels, and sometimes we get caught up in that same tendency.  "Well, if you had my job you wouldn't be so positive."  "If you had my kids, you wouldn't feel so good."  "If only my boss were different, I could be a positive person."  In other words, "My bad attitude is not my fault!"
   The truth is, however, your attitude and mine are always our choice.  No matter how bad things are, no one can force you to have a bad attitude if you don't want to.  Now that should come as really good news because it says our attitudes don't have to be victims of our circumstances or of other people.  We choose our responses.

Mary Whelchel

Today's Meditation:

One of the greatest lessons in life is that of learning that our attitude is our choice.  There will be days of sickness or of physical discomfort when we can't put on the positive face that we would like to, but those days tend to be relatively rare.  Most of our days, the way we approach the day is our choice.

Unfortunately, we often let our attitudes be the result of reactions rather than of actions.  When something "bad" happens to us, we let our attitudes change as a result of the happening.  When someone insults us or hurts us, we let our attitudes reflect the "victimization" that we feel rather than the true power of who we are as people.

One of the secrets to having a consistently positive attitude towards life is to take charge of it, and to realize that when we react to others and what they do, we're giving them control over the way we see the world.  If someone does something negative to me, then I give that person extra power over me when I allow my attitude to change because of it.

Our attitudes should be the result of decisions, not reactions.  Once I decide the kind of person I truly want to be, I should try consistently to be this kind of person.  Only when I'm consistent in the effort will the world start treating me as just that kind of person.  And when the world starts treating me that way, then I'll see just how easy it is to maintain a consistently positive attitude all day, every day.

Questions to ponder:

1.  Can you think of a day when you day was "ruined" by something someone else did?  Did your day have to end up that way?

2.  Think of the people you know who have the best attitudes.  How consistent are they with those attitudes?

3.  Do truly positive people allow their attitudes to change based on outward circumstances or happenings?

For further thought:

Everything in the world we want to do or get done, we must do with and through people.  Every dollar we will ever earn must come from people.  The person we love, and with whom we want to spend the rest of our life, is a human being with whom we must interact.  Our children are individuals, each different from any other person who ever lived.  And what affects them most is our attitude--the loving kindness they see and feel whenever we are around them.  If you'll begin to develop and maintain an attitude that says yes to life and the world, you'll be astonished at the changes you'll see.

Earl Nightingale

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