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What is Attitude?

When you hear this word, what comes to mind? I tend to think of attitude as an inward feeling expressed by outward behavior! Some people attempt to mask their attitude and in fact they can fool other people for a while. However, the cover-up does not last forever. Attitude always wiggles its way out.

Your attitude colors every aspect of your life. It is like the minds paintbrush. You can paint everything in bright colors and hues or dreary dark colors. Consider attitude in this way:

• Its root is inward but its fruit is outward
• It is your best friend or worst enemy
• It is the speaker of your present
• It is the prophet of your future
• It is never content until it is expressed
• It is what draws people to you or repels them

Where Did I Get My Attitude?

Personality – Who Are You?

• Each person is unique and different – we all have different fingerprints
• Your personality type – your natural hard-wiring impacts your attitude.
• This is not to say that you are trapped by it, but it is to say that your attitude is impacted by your personality.

Environment – What is Around You?

• The environment that you were exposed to in your early years had an impact upon your attitude. Did your parents divorce? Were you wounded by close friends? Did a close relative die? Were you raised in a poor neighborhood?

The Expression of Others – What You Feel

• We remember harsh words spoken to for decades.
• Verbal scars can be carried for years, in fact all of our life in some cases.
• However, living words spoken in season gives LIFE – HOPE – FREEDOM!

Self Image – How You See Yourself

• Poor self-image and poor attitudes usually walk hand-n-hand
• It has been stated that every label that you attach to yourself is a boundary or limit that you will not allow yourself to cross.
• If you do not change your inward feelings about yourself, you will not be able to change outward behavior toward other people.

Exposure To Growth Opportunities – What You Experience

• Growth opportunities that people experience are not all equal. Higher education is not for everyone in the same way that trade schools is not for everyone.
• We do not all have the same upbringing. We are all influenced by geography, family history and origins.

Association With Peers – Who You Choose To Be With

• Hanging our with the wrong crowd can greatly impact attitude.
• Learn to hang our with people that have a growth mind-set.

Belief – What Know To Be True

• Thoughts can make you rise or fall
• Thoughts can make you a success or failure
• Thoughts can make you laugh or cry
• Thoughts can be nurtured into something beautiful
• Your thoughts can be lived out for others to see
• The sum of all your thoughts comprises your overall attitude

Choices – What You Do

• It is has been said that unless you are willing to change your own disposition you waste your life in fruitless efforts!
• The more that you live the more that life is shaped by choices.

Victor Frankl, a concentration camp survivor that earned his PhD in Psychiatry and Neuroscience, spoke in 206 universities and wrote 150 books once wrote, “Each man is questioned by life and he can only answer to life for his own life, to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

LINKS

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Music: “Gratitude Mood” by David Arivett. You can learn more about his music by clicking on his name. THANKS DAVID!