“Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty- four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.” – Tom Blandi
The expression, “behind the scenes”, usually implies that there is more to a subject matter than what is obvious to the eye.
The saying that, “Attitude is Everything”, is actually what it is. It may sound cliché after hearing it over and over again, but let us give it a little more thought. According to Oxford Languages, the definition for attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling about something. It is the tendency we have to respond in certain ways to what goes on around us, based on our judgment. Our attitudes affect almost everything if not everything.
“Judgments keep us from building a stronger tribe…or from having a tribe in the first place. Our judgment prohibits us from beautiful, life-affirming friendships. Our judgment keeps us from connecting in deeper, richer ways because we’re too stuck on the surface-level assumptions we’ve made.” – Rachel Hollis
In order to respond appropriately to something, we would have to judge situations or circumstances correctly. Behind the scenes of our attitudes, is our judgment of situations. This makes judgment a direct influence on the attitudes we exhibit.
“It’s not the situation. It’s your reaction to the situation.” – Robert Conklin
We can safely assume that almost everyone we know would like to be tagged as one with a positive attitude as opposed to having a negative one. Working backward from wanting to exhibit positive attitudes, we would have to work on learning to assess situations more objectively.
Before any suggested pointers, each person would have to settle with themselves what their personal and foundational guiding principles are. These would be an uncompromising bedrock upon which to build. Some of these principles include but are not limited to, respect, honesty, integrity, gratitude, and contentment. What might yours be?
Judging Situations Better
“Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean that it’s nonsense” – Lemony Snicket
Listed below are a few pointers we can apply to our ‘behind the scenes’ work on our sense of judgment so our attitude to life is improved.
- Learn to be objective – draw conclusions based on some background information and data. Also, ask more questions for clarity before reaching a conclusion or decision.
- Be open to unlearning old stuff and habits and re-learning new ones, if need be
- Review past thought processes that caused you to arrive at certain conclusions
- Think the best of others
- Be attentive – listen carefully and be observant
- Allow room for your intuition to work
- Separate people from their contributions and actions
- Do not be pressured to take a stand without considering alternatives
Conclusion
Our attitude to life is just the tip of the iceberg, literally. There are factors influencing the ways in which we respond to life situations. It is a good time as we near the end of the year, to take a good look at our attitude(s) and work backward to find out what the influences are or have been, and do something about them, especially if we would want to change some of our involuntary reactions to life.
Would you consider doing this?
Freda Abah-Dakou