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Attitude
is your window to the world. . . . and it's your job to keep
your window clean. Sure, I can give you a little
encouragement. And other people can encourage you,
too. But in the end, nobody else can do it for you.
You see,
you always have a choice. You can leave the filth on your
window and look at life through a smeared glass. But there
are consequences to that approach--and they're not very
pretty. You'll go through life negative and
frustrated. You'll be unhappy. You'll achieve only a
fraction of what you're capable of achieving.
There's a
better way. When you choose to take out your squeegee and
clean your window, life will be brighter and sunnier.
You'll be healthier and happier. You'll get some ambitious
goals, and begin to achieve them. Your dreams will come
alive again!
Still
doubting whether you really have the power to change your
attitude? Perhaps you're thinking, "Jeff, that's easy
for you to say. Your attitude wouldn't be so good if you
had my problems."
Granted,
some really devastating things may have happened to you.
You may have endured much suffering. Perhaps you're going
through some tough times right now. But, even under the
worst circumstances, I still contend that you have the power to
choose your attitude. I'm not saying it's easy. But
the fact remains, the choice is yours.
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Let me
tell you about a man who is well qualified to speak on the
subject of attitude. His name is Dr. Viktor Frankl, and he
went through hell on earth--and managed not only to survive, but
to inspire millions of people. You see, Viktor Frankl
endured years of horror as a prisoner in the Nazi death camps.
To make
matters worse, his father, mother, brother and his wife died in
camps or were killed in gas chambers. Every day, Frankl
and the other prisoners suffered from hunger, cold and
brutality. Can a person control his or her attitude in a
situation like that? Here's what Dr. Frankl had to say
about the importance of attitude in his best-selling book, Man's
Search for Meaning:
"Everything
can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the
human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one's own way. . . . Even though
conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various
mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react
in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the
sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner
decision, and not the result of camp influences alone."
Now, if
Dr. Frankl and the other prisoners had the ability to choose
their attitudes in the face of such unspeakable suffering, who
are we to claim that we cannot take control of our attitudes?
As Hugh
Downs has said: "A happy person is not a person in a
certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain
set of attitudes." That's a powerful statement--and
it's the truth.
When it's
all said and done, you, and you alone, control your attitude.
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