Attitude is a choice. Perceptions and reactions are colored by beliefs and interpretations. Our belief system was created by what we were taught to be proper, normal, acceptable, agreeable, productive and comfortable.
Some believe they have little or no control over how they react to situations as they arise. It is important to remember, you have control over the parameters you set; therefore, you have control over your final reaction and the attitude in which you decide to take in relating to any situation. If you currently react in a negative, stressful or unproductive manner to certain situations and you truly want to react in a positive, peaceful and productive manner, all you need to do is change your parameters. You have the power within to react peacefully to every situation.
In the book,
Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor E. Frankl illustrates you can shift your perceptions, thus choose your attitude even during the most horrific of circumstances. He writes, "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."
Your destiny is a result of what you do now. You are responsible for what you are doing and experiencing now, thus you are responsible for the destiny you will experience in the future! You are in a constant state of creating your destiny and every moment contributes to the destiny you will experience. You have a more control over your current reality than your ego has allowed you to remember. You are in a constant state of creating and manifesting your reality. Each moment in your life is created, manifested and experienced by you for your growth and development.
Creation is the act of bringing a thought to your mind, forming a plan for its implementation and execution then putting that plan to action. Manifestation is the result of your mental creation. Experience is the way you choose to see and react to your manifestation.
What you experience in your physical world is simply a reflection of what is in your mind. Changing the thoughts that you allow to enter your mind can change your reality. If your mind lacks clarity, the circumstances that you will manifest in your physical world will also lack clarity. If thoughts of peace and love fill your mind, then the circumstances that you will manifest in your physical world will be equally as peaceful and loving.
Open your mind and entertain the possibility that it is your mind and not the outside world that needs changing. For a moment, put the ego’s demands aside and simply recognize that this change will not come about by becoming something more or better, but by simply bringing yourself into a closer realignment with who you have always been.
By looking back at your life, you can better understand which lessons you have chosen to learn and which lessons you are still in the process of learning. Patterns or lessons repeat themselves because you choose not to learn from them. You make certain ‘mistakes’ in your life that you don’t learn from and you repeat them until you learn to choose with love, forgiveness and the release of your grudges. Once you have learned what the pattern is about, it is no longer necessary to experience that pattern. Most patterns hold a value. Once the value is recognized, you are able to release yourself from it.
Only you can make the choice of how you see life, how you react to life and how you live life. You may attract others to your life to assist you in your learning process, but it is you who gets to make the final choice of what you will focus on and experience.
Every person in your life is there for a reason. If your current perception is anything but that of gratitude, you will create confusion. It is in the state of confusion that patterns and lessons are repeated.
It is your beliefs and perceptions that will drive your focus; it is what you focus on that you will experience. To prove this, spend a day with an optimist and a day with a pessimist. Once you do this, you will never again question that person’s reality. How he or she sees and reacts to the world is in that person’s mind and has little to do with the outer world.
Dump your grudges before life dumps you…