 Attitude. We all have one or two. We choose our attitudes generally from those that we are closely surrounded by, namely our family when we are young to start. We may choose friends who have the same attitudes, or if we are impressionable, we may take on our friend’s attitudes.
Attitudes can be easily chosen just like the clothes we choose to wear each day. My husband took a sales job early in our relationship, and in their training they taught that “attitude is everything.” He received a pin that said, “attitude.” My personality does not fit the typical salesperson personality, so I didn’t really understand how this piece of wisdom could be applied in my life as well. But I liked the pin. It was a positive statement. I really started paying more attention to my attitude as I really started pulling myself out of a victim mindset. I realized that my attitude drove the mindset I was choosing. Changing our attitude to a more focused and positive one and thus choosing a new mindset, is the most difficult inner work we can do. It’s like a baby learning to walk. She stands up, gets her balance, let’s go of the table or sofa and takes a step, and then falls down. Is she doomed to never walk? Of course not. But she is going to work at it everyday until she gets it. And we are not doomed to keep creating situations that we don’t like. There is no magic to learning to do something new. We just need to work at it daily. I used to try to police my thoughts to stop the negative ones (because they were plenty) and repeat positive thoughts to myself (affirmations). This is very tiring, if you’ve tried it. Dr. Joe Dispenza says that a person can have 50,000-70,000 thoughts per day. That would be a job in and of itself, and it may pay well in the end, but that’s a hard way of doing things. It can be a whole lot easier! Thoughts are a dime a dozen. There is something else that has more value. I believe we can agree that thoughts drive feelings, and feelings drive behavior and our behaviors turn into actions. If that’s the case, then we can check in with how we are feeling. How is my body feeling? Am I holding tension anywhere? Is my face crunched up? Am I smiling? Am I buzzing with energy? Or perhaps I feel like I might be flat-lining! These are our best indicators on where our thoughts have been playing. And we can make the appropriate adjustments in our thoughts. Our feelings are our friends. We can take a deep breath in a moment and remind ourselves of our favorite affirmation. Mine is “the Universe supports me. All my needs are met.” As a side note, if you’re anything like me, you could be surfing a few Big Kahunas from time to time. Do you have big feelings? I used to not know what to do with myself under these conditions. I used to think I had to do something, or make a big decision based on how I was feeling. Boy, that is the absolute worst time to try to decide important matters. Under all that overwhelm? How can we see over any of those waves? We can’t. There is no way we can see clearly, and what a disaster to plan or act from a place of overwhelm or emotional chaos! Imagine what kind of chaos we can create coming from the energy of intense sadness, heartbreak or anger? We’ve all done it. And we already know this is a doomed plan of action. We know when we’re making a good choice for ourselves when we feel peaceful about it. We thought it all the way through (and even talked aloud to friendly ears), and gave ourselves some time to get calm, meditate/pray on it, and the solution appeared. Has that happened to you? You’ve probably experienced that with big emotions, or any emotion act like waves. We ascend to a peak that we think will never end, and eventually it starts to subside and passes through us – if we let it. We can conjure the feelings again and again with the same thoughts, remembering what pissed us off, or hurt us so bad. We can go around and around. Or we can get off the merry-go-round, learn from it – mostly about ourselves – and make a new choice. We chart a new course. I know I want to feel those emotions less, so I am going to give it zero of my energy. We are choosing then to re-focus on what we are choosing to bring into our life. How does that feel? Ah-may-zing!! Why don’t we spend all day doing just that? Back to feelings are our friends. Being in touch with our feelings have many benefits. We are in touch with how we feel, and we can nurture compassion for ourselves as we give ourselves time to process our feelings. We also gain a large bandwidth of patience, forgiveness and understanding for others in our life. We can understand how they feel and can be a wonderful support to those around us. Our relationships can improve! We are also primed by staying in our heart center to easily check-in with our feelings, adjust and tweak them throughout the day to hone the direction of our ship toward the life changes we are currently creating. We are the captains of our ship! Our heart center is the place where we can access the “tuning fork”, adjusting our energy frequencies to emit exactly what we are choosing to create. What are you emitting into the Universe right now? You would know! And all these things - our thoughts, feelings, behaviors – are attitudes that result in our mindset. What is your mind set to? I have found that the attitude of gratitude results in the happiest people. They are warm, inclusive and fun to be around, right? You say, “It’s raining.” They say, “Isn’t it wonderful? Look at all the flowers and everything is green!” You’ve probably heard that the best prayer is gratitude. The pieces really started falling into place for me when I started reaching for my journal when I was upset, but instead of writing out my frustrations and complain for 2-3 pages, I thought about and wrote down what I was grateful for in that moment. This is a wonderful way for us to change our attitude in just a few minutes. We can probably achieve the same results just reciting all the things we are grateful for in our heads – in a tight spot. However, there is power in using pen and paper. A regimen of writing in our gratitude journal is a healthy habit. The attitude of gratitude is also where I place my affirmations. I’ll say,
When I place in my mind on these thoughts, my body relaxes. I leave worry behind. I’m not angry, resentful or sad. As a matter of fact, I’m high on life! I feel wonderful and I want to share it. Ultimately, moving out of the victim mindset has been a function of staying in an attitude of gratitude. When I am in this new positive, empowered, excited mindset, I am expectant of many amazing things to come my way. I can easily take responsibility for myself because I have more control over myself. I am no longer a victim to my feelings, thoughts or attitudes. I know who I am. Quite honestly, it’s a daily job. We don’t just do it once, and it sticks. We do it over and over until it becomes a habit and living any other way would feel awkward. You may say, Jennie, you don’t have the same circumstances that I have, it just isn’t that easy for me. And you would be correct. We don’t have the same circumstances, and it is as hard as you choose to make it. Everyone on earth today has one or two challenges in their life. We are equipped to master ourselves and rise above them. The work is to look away from what is hurting or infuriating. Just look away. We need to separate ourselves from that person or situation as quickly as we can and focus all our energy on what we want to be experiencing right now. We may need to give ourselves space to get back to a calm state, and this is a healthy course. Sometimes, we do need to act on our circumstances, and looking away is inappropriate. Most situations that create an emotional reaction out of us are the ones that we can choose to not react and move away from. We are co-creators, manifesting our dreams and desires with all the energy we have. Our energy is too valuable to spend on useless arguments. No one wins. If you feel you are still not experiencing all that you want in your life, remember this, when one is on a healthy diet, and chooses to eat the most healthy breakfast they can They will not go and choose junk food the rest of the day, right? We are bringing this new mindset, this new attitude into our whole day. Because… The Attitude of Gratitude is Everything!
0 Comments
|
RSS Feed