Lesson 1: Mastering Your Life

4 - Choices: Selecting Attitude

More important than who you are, where you are, or what you possess is how you feel about it. This means attitude. Did you realize that most unhappiness is self-manufactured? Not only do people lack positive attitudes about their daily circumstances, but they lack appropriate attitudes toward themselves. You have two basic choices—either lift yourself up in life or put yourself down. Which pathway will get you the farthest in life’s journey?

What is the self-image and how will it affect your attitude? The self-image is one’s own conception of oneself. One’s self-image depends on past successes and failures. Your emotions, attitudes, goals, and behaviour are all consistent with your self-image. Your everyday experiences, either good or bad, strengthen and reaffirm your self-image. Any ideas consistent with the self-image are accepted; those that are not consistent are rejected. Therefore, if you carry a negative self-image, you may be rejecting many beneficial ideas that come your way.

Your attitude may defeat you before you even begin a project. How can the self fulfilling prophecy be either beneficial or damaging? The self-fulfilling prophecy is a preconceived notion about a situation. This preconceived “hunch” determines your actions, and eventually these strong thoughts about an event actually do come true. Everything falls neatly into place as expected and the person can then say, “I told you so” or “I knew that would happen”. People are guided by a life dream based on their childhood experiences. That means that you map out a pathway for your life around your past experiences. Once the life dream has developed, every experience that follows is seen in such a way to reaffirm the original belief. The self fulfilling prophecy is very dominant in such a situation. People internalize beliefs they have about themselves. If you believe you are good at something, then you begin to act as though you are good, and then it becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, one of the star players for the Toronto Blue Jays knew he was going to make a key play during the World Series baseball games. Sure enough, he got the winning home run.

Remember, your particular set of circumstances in life is not determined by outward conditions but by your thoughts towards these conditions. Thus, the first step is changing your thoughts or your attitude. Do not accept negative circumstances as inevitable. For example, suppose you have a neighbour with two yappy little dogs that make a lot of noise. You can view them as a nuisance or maybe even an outright disturbance. Or you can see them as “security guards” for your house because burglars avoid houses where they can be detected by dogs who make a lot of racket. Circumstances are the same in both cases—two barking dogs. But your attitude can differ.

Believe in yourself, be true to yourself, and insist that you have a right to be happy. Some people spend a lifetime blaming themselves for their previous mistakes. That erodes positive attitudes.  Many people select a motto that has special personal meaning and inspiration to carry them through the dark points in their lives.

You must build confidence in your abilities, and this can be done by monitoring the quality of thoughts that habitually occupy your mind. Remember that attitudes are more powerful than the facts that act as obstacles.