 “Man is what he believes.” - Anton Chekhov What determines who you are and what you believe? Your upbringing, your parents’ values and standards, and your experiences so far in life all blend together to make you the person you are right now. That’s not to say that we’re all experiencing family life the way it’s being seen on television. Most of us didn’t grow up with the Cleavers. If you didn’t experience great parenting, your upbringing brought with it different standards and beliefs. This directly affects the way you deal with challenges. A person with more positive attitudes and beliefs will deal with adversity differently than a more pessimistic personality. What one person considers a failure or a loss will be viewed as just more of life’s many changes to another. It’s a fact, however, that you will learn more from adversity than triumph. What makes one person turn that adversity into positive energy, while another wants to turn up their toes and be done with it? This is where your belief system comes into play. Those who believe that nothing good will ever happen to them have doomed themselves from the start. Virgil said, “They can conquer who believe they can.” This is where you need to change your self-talk, as well as your focus. Stop telling yourself what you can’t do and start convincing yourself that you can do whatever you put your mind into. What you say about yourself will affect your whole life and everything you try or attempt to do. If you’ve already made up your mind that you can’t do something, it’s all over; the handwriting is on the wall and the fat lady has sung. Things not working out exactly as you hoped or planned? Maybe it’s time to try something new. A positive attitude makes the transition easier and less painful, not to mention less scary. Taking risks is pretty scary; but if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you have the right stuff. Give yourself the wake up call before it’s too late. Taking a risk can make you feel alive and eager to move on. Let’s face it. Just getting up in the morning is a leap of faith some days. Have confidence in yourself and your ability to handle change and risks. Handling things well when everything is going along smoothly is one thing. Maintaining a positive attitude when everything is falling apart is the real challenge. And when things are not going well, it’s easy to wish you were anywhere else, doing anything else, than where you are. We’ve all heard the old homily about the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. But the truth is, the grass is greener wherever it’s been watered. Handle things where you are; make them better, rather than wishing you’re elsewhere. Accept the situation as it is, then find the positive side. That’s how we grow and learn from our experiences. Acceptance makes it easier for us to see how we can improve that situation. Then change your attitude and watch as your life begins to change as well. Katherine Mansfield said, “Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.” Martha Beck said, “Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.” You must never say never. Believe you can have whatever you want in life; and understand that doesn’t mean wishing and hoping. It means working, learning, and striving for what you want in this life. At the same time, don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t think that if everything hasn’t come out right, that it’s just because you didn’t think hard enough. Developing a positive attitude doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a lifelong process, but it will happen. Start by removing negativity from your life as much as possible. Watching television news and reading the newspaper will unfortunately fill your life with bad news on a daily basis. Try taking a newsbreak; turn off the set and put away the paper for a while. It’s sad to say, but another source of negativity comes in the form of friends and relatives. There are those that constantly put out negative vibrations. Every thought and emotion from them is negative and becomes more than we can bear. They never find a positive side to anything. For them, the glass is always half empty and they never see the silver lining to that cloud. They don’t mean to do it, but they make it very difficult to develop that positive side of ourselves that’s so important to our well-being. And it’s human nature for them to pour out more and more negativity. Due to their influence, we also tend to put out positive vibrations. You may have to spend much less time with these toxic folks, at least until you find your footing in the positive side of the world. |
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