Choose Your Attitude
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances.” – Viktor Frankl
Choosing ones own attitude is so important.
I had a close friend that was laid off the beginning of this month. She made it through the merger; through numerous restructures and now when you think that your job just might finally be secure, she is laid off. 23 yrs for the same bank and now this – but I know in my heart (and hope that she does) that something great is coming her way – a door of opportunity that she never would have had if this had’t happened.
I heard yesterday that another friend is losing their home to a short sale. She is a contractor and during the past 5 years she just couldn’t stay employed consistent enough to keep everything paid. It is sad that she made it this long and is still losing the home. I know that it is hard for her, but I think that she is also glad that the struggle is ending.
I know that there are days that I get irritated with how long something takes to get done. My weight and other goals and even the car driving in front of me don’t seem to be getting accomplished fast enough. Then I think that I need to stop for a minute and appreciate what I have accomplished, that I am making progress, and just pass up that slow poke car in front of me! (why do they drive the speed limit in the fast lane?)
I know that this seems small in comparison to losing your job or your home. But we all have something each day in which our attitude shows up, not just with the big things, but also with the small things. When life is handing you a challenge in the little things, it reflects what will happen when the big things happen. In your circumstances today, how will your attitude show up?
Focused
“You’ve got to walk right into what you want and not look at what you don’t want. Stay focused on the goal.” – Calvin LeHew
This is way easier said than done. If you are like me you have a mailing list that sends you all of these speaker topics and classes you can attend – waving the new bright shiny object in front of you. It is like walking past the pet shop and the cute puppies or kitties are calling to you pick me, pick me.
Then as you are walking away, you mind is shouting, but they have the perfect thing and if I miss it, I will be a failure, and I have to listen and implement one more thing!
What I have come to realize is that yes one thing at a time is necessary and it is ok to say, I would love to learn more about that but I really do have a full plate today and I would just make myself sick if I try to eat one more thing.
So enough analogies (I just love them) and even though I loved the subject I learned about this past weekend, I acknowledged that I need to work on what I am working on, and get that in place before I add one more item to my implementation workload.
So I have an appointment this week for my branding strategy, I jogged my 3 miles today and I need to get my interview scheduled this week for my image makeover. I think that is a busy week in addition to everything else I do. My focus is on the image that I want to present (letting the class president side of me dress the scholar side of me for a change – thanks Brandy Mychals) both for me personally and the business that I would like to build. I guess that I am sort of implementing what I learned about this weekend, just not diving as deep as I would have like too!
I am staying focused on this goal and once I have made some new progress on that I will be ready for the next one!
Enlarge
“We lift ourselves by our thought. We climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always everywhere.” – Orison Swett Marden
As many of my friends know I have been on a journey for the past 12.5 mo. I have released around 40 lbs, and I am continuing this journey into this year as I have a “weighs” to go LOL!
Some of you may even know that I have been attending seminars to train to be a public speaker. I have been crafting my story and last August I told the 1st part of it up on a seminar stage. A few weeks ago I took a seminar which was designed solely for telling your personal story. I went up and stage and was video taped as I told my story. The instructor would interrupt you and give you direction. So I was taped for almost 15 min for a 5 min story. I received that video last night and watched it.
My 1st reaction was to cry. The tears were for many things – what I still looked like, it’s kind of funny because I see myself in a mirror everyday, but watching that tape I realised that I am a lot larger than I see in the mirror – kind of strange. Inside my head I see a girl that weighs around 110 lbs – still on the journey to get to that girls weight.
Then the courage I had to do it anyway, and watching the standing ovation that I received made me proud that even though I had really resisted making the YouTube videos that other seminar leaders had said to make, I had made sure that I was up on that stage, and I was relieved that I had already released 40 lbs so I could tell her you have made progress. And everyday is another step in releasing another pound.
Then I was happy because one of the instructions from the trainer was to do something with movement. This past week I had already started jogging 3 miles each morning, so at least I could tell the girl in the video that I was still moving forward in releasing more of this weight and following the instructions so that I can be a great speaker.
I am holding this vision or space of myself speaking from a stage; looking like the corporate leader that I am inside on the outside; weighing my ideal healthy weight; and getting more of those standing ovations. And what is so totally cool is that I really believe that this is exactly what is happening! It’s not a wish or a dream, this is my reality!
Courage
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Sir Winston Churchill
We all recognize the courage that it takes to stand up and speak. What we don’t really think about is that it takes courage to listen – really listen to someone else’s point of view.
Most of the time we aren’t really listening. Part of it is because we are preoccupied; and part of it is because we think so much faster than people speak.
But part of it is also because if we really listen to take in another persons point of view, it might mean that we need to change our own. No one likes to be wrong, so if we are listening to something that might not be a match to our thinking, we are usually busy marshalling out thoughts to wage war against their point of view. So we don’t really hear them.
We all want to be heard and so few of us are. Today give someone the gift of really listening to them. You don’t really need to do anything except listen and acknowledge. Most of the time people aren’t really looking for advice, just someone to listen deeply, because they already have their answers and your listening to them will allow them to access their inner wisdom. They will walk away thinking that you are so wise, and all you did was give them the gift of being heard!
Bridges
“People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges” – Joseph Newton
I thought that this was an interesting quote because when we meet someone we form an opinion based on how they look, what they might have said and done, etc… Then each time we see them again we look for confirmation of our original judgment; because we are subconsciously wanting to be right in that judgment, so we look to find the facts to make us right.
We are busy building a wall between them and ourselves. We are not looking to build a bridge where we are looking to give them the benefit of the doubt and see what wonderful gifts they are bringing to our relationship.
We do this with our team members at work; our relatives, and our close friends. We assign everyone a role, maybe your brother can’t hold down a job; your cousin drinks too much; George at work never completes a project on time. The wall that we build holds them in place so that these judgments become self fulfilling prophecies.
When we are around our cousin, we look for evidence of drinking and because we are holding to this judgment, the cousin buckles under the pressure and drinks too much. We don’t trust George to keep up with team assignments and instead of helping him, seeing what we could do to get the ball rolling, etc…, we are harsh and demanding and so George drags his feet because he doesn’t feel wanted, appreciated etc…, and he in turn makes the project late and we are vindicated that once again we are right.
What if we began looking at every relationship for the good qualities that they have and let me know how much we appreciate the talents that they have? What if we began praising instead of complaining. Asking them to show us how they get something done so perfectly? Building little bridges to them so that we can tear down both sets of walls? Think of the wonderful relationships that would blossom from this space!
Changed
“Not everything can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced” – James Baldwin
Action
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
– Dale Carnegie
Action is the fear killer. I always liked the line in Dune about fear being the mind killer. Fear freezes you in place so that you can’t move, thus creating inaction.
It is like the man or woman that lifts up a car off a child. If you ask them how they did it they don’t know. They just knew that they had to do something. They couldn’t just stand there frozen in panic and fear. Any time you hear about any courageous act they always say something like, they didn’t think about it, they just went into action. So action somehow bypases the fear and panic.
Notice this is not about planning, or research, or getting someone’s opinion as to the best course. It is going forward in action. What fear is holding you frozen in place and what action can you take today to free yourself?
Circumstances
“Nothing great has ever been achieved except by those who dared to believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.” – Bruce Barton
Attitude Change
“A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitious opportunities that were somehow absent before the change” – Earl Nightingale
I was thinking yesterday about law of attraction; about commitment; about how you could get to a goal in such a way that it forever changes your life – so that you could never go back to where you were before.
I think that it is when you “know” not just want or desire. Take my current goal of getting back to what I consider as my “normal” weight (pre 4th pregnancy). It is not because I would be healthy; or I would look better; or to be more attractive to my husband; or any of the other reasons that you would assume or tell me why I should lose weight. I have tried all of those and the weight came back.
There is a place that is stronger than motivation; and it recognizes that it is necessary to achieve my life purpose to make this change, and because of that I know in my bones that this will be permanent. This is due in part because I have uncovered the self sabotager from my childhood and she knows that she doesn’t need to protect me any longer, that it is now safe for me to be seen. When you are obese, people tend to slide their glances past you and it makes it easy to be invisible. Now that little girl from my past wants to be up on stage with me, to live out loud.
I think that when we reach beyond all the easy answers down to the core, you truly do connect magically and the world turns you on to opportunities that always existed, but you never saw before, because you were in the dark. When you reach out to the stars the rocket boosters needed to gain altitude burn away the fears,and excuses and you become lighter; free to do things you never even considered possible before.
Snow
“When it snows, you have two choices, shovel or make snow angels” -Unknown
We spend a lot of time asking – as children we are taught “may I have….,” and we are taught to pray and ask for God to bring us the things we want. We grow up and we ask for a college to admit us; we ask for a job; we ask for a raise and we may even ask for someone to marry us and love us forever.
What if you were to change the dynamic from “asking” which puts you in the mental place of they are going to deny my request because I am not good enough to “expecting”? Not from a place of pride, because we actually knew that we deserved to be happy?
If we choose to be open to possibilities, then we should expect that possibilities will show up. If we choose to change our attitude, then we should expect that people will treat us differently because we became a better person. If we choose to take action, then we can expect results.
So this expectation comes from a place of our “choosing”, which is a place of action. We choose the life we want (whether we know it or not) and we can choose to change our life a little bit at a time, and we can expect those actions to help us overcome our fears, be true to ourselves, and even to even make life “easy, playful and fun” as making snow angels (no more shoveling).
Stress
“Give your stress wings and let it fly away” – Terri Guillemets
One of the ways according to Terri to give your stress wings is to know and live your purpose. I had never thought before about how not living your purpose would be giving you stress, but it does.
So make sure that if you are not living your purpose because you don’t know fully what that is, that you make it your purpose to find out. And if you do know what your purpose is, that you start fully living it today so that you let can that stress fly away. tell it to go south for the winter and then north for the spring, then east for the summer and west for the fall – keep it in flight far, far, away! You’ll exhaust it that way and it won’t have time to fly around your head and fill it with negativity. When it shows up you can say, don’t you have somewhere else you are supposed to be?
Change Fear
“The key to change . . . is to let go of fear” Rosanne Cash
Whenever your mind shows resistence, look underneath to find the fear.When you look beyond the excuse and uncover the fear, you have to find a way to figure out how to remove the excuse and face the fear, because it means that your subconscious has already recognized that this choice will grow you and change you – that is what it really fears and that is why you have to do it. So that you can grow and change!