attitude

Want to know how to turn a bad day into a good day or make (almost) any situation fun and enjoyable? The secret to do this lies with your attitude. You hold the power to determine if you will have fun at the birthday party or have a horrible and boring time. You can decide to wash the dishes without complaining and realize you can help your mom or you can convince yourself that cleaning off the plates makes a rotten job. Guess what…it is your decision. Like Colleen Barrett said, “Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.” The way you view things makes a world of difference in your life and in other peoples’ lives around you.

Attitude is everything. Happiness, sadness, anger, excitement, sorrow, joy, love, bitterness, contentment, worry, and elation are all attitudes. And we can choose any attitude to accompany us from the time we awake to the time we drift off to sleep! Any situation can house any attitude. However, often times we feel that certain surroundings call for a certain attitude. When I have to do something I resent, like pulling weeds in the back yard, I tend to form thoughts of reluctance and discontentment. “Why do I have to do this?” I ask myself. However, instead of looking at my circumstances in this negative way, I try to get back into a positive perspective. I can rejoice that I have this opportunity to get some fresh air and help make the yard look beautiful. With this new attitude, the once undesirable job has become enjoyable (especially if you add music). Voltaire states this idea perfectly, “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats”. When one saunters through life with a positive attitude, which everyone can do, his or her life becomes more enjoyable, healthier, more fulfilling, and more effective.

Attitude is contagious. When you interact with an optimist, their happiness can rub off on you and then you soon desire happiness as well. Or the reverse can happen. On my softball team, sometimes a fielder would make a bad play and get down on herself. Then some of the other players would catch this negative vibration. Nobody likes being in that situation. But you have the power to change it. A positive attitude can build up and encourage the team. When someone sees how interested you are in something, he or she also become interested. If people see that you are serious, they will take you seriously. Whether we realize it or not our attitudes affect the people around us.

So, you can rejoice or complain, get excited or become depressed—it all depends on your attitude, not your situation. “If you don’t like something change it, if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it” (Mary Engelbreit). By living out this statement and by looking on the positive side of things, my life has become more relishing, fruitful, and relaxing.