Attitude is everything

  You know those days when you wake up and you just know that today is going to suck?  Like the day where you wake up earlier than normal and can’t go back to sleep, for instance.  Or the time you couldn’t find your keys and you were already late for work.  Or when you found your keys but you realize that you had left them in the ignition of your car.  Maybe it’s when the momentary relief at finding your keys dissolves when you realize that the day before you had left your keys in the number two position of your ignition and that your battery was dead.  So, by now you’re sleep deprived, you’re late for work, your car battery is dead, you’re behind on your school work, you have frustrations, worries and you feel like your day is the microcosm of your life and it is spinning out of control. 

  To make matters worse, the woman you have been waiting patiently to “figure things out” tells you that “It’s not meant to be.”  You, like an idiot, want to know why and she tells you exactly what’s wrong with you.  It could be any number of things that resonate with your own insecurity like, not attractive enough, or don’t make enough money.  It could be things outside your control like you’re family background, or upbringing.  Or it could be the one thing that makes your confidence crumble completely, like you’re 31, divorced, without a college degree and you have never lived up to your true potential. 

  So, by now you’re walking to work, worried about the wrath of the boss, you have no girlfriend, you’re behind on your school work, you don’t have enough money, you’re not attractive enough, you’re sleep deprived, you’re a failure as a student, lover, man, etc.  Can it get worse?!  …yeah, just then it starts raining.  “God?” you ask, “Why do you hate me?” 

  Sure, things could always get worse, but it’s the mindset I want to point out.  You see, this is something that would ruin most peoples day and would make most people want to curl up into a little ball and hide from the world.  It just seems like circumstances like these would sour your outlook for a while and there would be no recovery, right? 

  Nope.  Funny thing is attitude is a choice.  For the unpracticed it may seem like circumstances dictate the color of your day, but the fact of the matter is that you can choose.

  Now, I am not going to feed you some kind of nonsensical rhetoric like “Choose yer tude!”  or “Attitude is contagious.  Is yours worth catching?”  It goes deeper than that.  It comes down to a fundamental sense of who you are.  “Know thyself.”  When you understand who and what you are, it’s easier to place yourself in the grand scheme of things at take a wider view of any given situation. 

  More to follow later.