The Quality of Your Life Is A Direct Result Of Your Attitude!

Growing up I had not a care in the world. As I became exposed to different situations I was more bewildered or confused than opinionated and would wonder why uncomfortable situations ever happened in the first place.

As I grew through my teens and early twenties I started responding to uncomfortable situations around me as I had seen others respond, I guess a kind of learned behavior. This was then pretty much I became, a set of reactions learned from other people and used because they matched what I had observed in my past. 

It was not until my later twenties when I clearly realized that I could choose my own attitude and my own responses. It took a while for me to realize that if I wanted to be authentic I would have to design who it was that I wanted to be in all the roles my life.

Once I took the time to design the type of father, husband, teacher, brother, son etc., I would really like to be it became easier to make the hard choices with my attitude.

For example, if I decide I want to be a loving husband then I needed to have an attitude of love towards my wife. This would exclude giving her short shrift in any given situation or not listening to her or my patience in times of pressure. The same would go for all the roles in my life.

Having designed how I would like to be, I have found that it is much easier to say than do. 

It seems that our habits become our comfort zones and any behavior that stretches us outside of our comfort zone becomes uncomfortable, so we often slip back into the old behaviors and let go of the change, even if that change is for the better.

To ensure change, consistently committing to our designed lives is crucial. Daily actions of reviewing our day and how we did are powerful and beneficial habits to ensure we become consistently committed to the new way of being.

The more frequently we reflect on our actual attitude in relation to our chosen attitude the better positioned we are to adjust our plan of how to improve ourselves daily.

This is not a practice that is sorted out and completed in a matter of weeks or even months, it is an ongoing commitment to choosing our attitudes so that we can deal with what happens to us in life as the person we designed ourselves to be.

When it comes to time management, having a positive attitude to situations we have no control over can save us a lot of time as well as a lot of stress.

I used to teach managers of a large company, and in one class I would ask them to describe a situation in their lives that would make them feel really good and totally relaxed. The responses where things like; being out on the lake fishing, sitting in the backyard with a cool drink and a good book, getting a massage, walking in the country, shopping with plenty of money and so on.

You can easily see the kind of situation in which many people would feel good and relaxed. In all the situations the muscles of the body are relaxed, and the heart is beating at slow steady comfortable rhythm.

Once we have established what “feeling good” looks like I ask them to imagine they are driving to work and running a little late when a person in an old car cuts in front of them and drives slowly, and how that would make them feel. The responses are mostly of anger and frustration such that you can almost feel the unpleasantness in the air.

My next question is; “So what do you do about it?” The responses range from flip the bird and honk the horn to try to cut in front of them and go even slower. I then ask how this response makes them feel and they invariably say that it makes them feel good. Interesting! We had just established in a calm moment what being relaxed and feeling good looked like and now suddenly it looks completely different.

What I observed happening was that people were losing their patience and demeanor based on a behavior they did not approve of (driving slow in front of them), performed by someone they did not know or respect (the driver of the old car).

The participants explained that their negative action made them feel good. I suggested that saying their reaction made them feel good looked like a justification or rationalization. for the behavior that was a reaction rather than a response. I also asked them to compare that latest feeling good model with the one they had stated earlier.

Some realized that they had fallen victim to a thoughtless reaction and could choose an alternative if they wanted to take the ownership or responsibility to do so. Others hung on to their rationalization and got even more creative about why the anger response really did make them feel good.

What they never realized was that as long as they hung on to that belief they were not capable of a stress-free alternative that would better serve them. The choice of response really is our attitude toward the situation. We may not be able to choose a situation that happens to us, but we can choose our response.

With a constant review of who I am and how I choose to behave I can now recognize very quickly when I am reacting in a way that does not fit in with my design.

Once I recognize this disempowering behavior I can now switch back to my designed response which is one of let it go, it has nothing to do with who I am. Over the years practice has paid off and I now waste little time on behavior that used to give me stress.

I have heard it said that it is your attitude and not your aptitude that will take you to the highest altitude. I do believe that we cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose our attitude.

If choosing the right attitude results in less stress, better results overall and improved relations and productivity then it is really something worthwhile for us to work on in our quest for quality of life.