Attitude
This is something I wrote in 2009 and recently found again on Blogspot! Still rings true… x
Attitude, the one we have, the one we’re ‘given’ and the one we protect and hide behind. These are all different facets of the same thing we use each and every second of every day. It’s free, it defines who we are, it’s all in the mind and it’s easily changeable. It has boundaries that can only be set and changed by the owner but these boundaries restrict, define, control and often cripple the owner.
I can’t think of anything else that has the same properties coupled with the same power as attiude. I’m facinated by it. It’s ourmost valued asset, the thing that has the power to change our entire lives for better or worse but the thing we seem to spend the least amount of time refining and caring for.
It’s the one thing that comes completly free and remains entirely flexible in its essence. It can change with a single experience or a moment of enlightenment but so often it just as easily becomes caloused, ridgid and lifeless…… at the choosing of the owner.
It’s true that there are contributing factors to attitude that influence it while it seems we are not looking! Somewhat subconscious alterations of our attitude sneak up and have their way with us whithout so much as a please and thank you (a dinner before hand or a cuddle afterwards!). Funny thing though is that these outside ‘donations’ have to come through an already existing filter which is the way we look at ourselves or our attitude towards ourselves. In this way a positive attitude leads to more positivity as any outside negative contributing attempts pass through our positive attidude and are filtered out as they are belived to be untrue, they can’t latch on.
Unfortunately the same applies in reverse. With a negative self image and a negative attitude only negative contributions stick because any positive ones are deemed to be untrue and are filtered out.
How many times do we hear about someone changing their entire outlook on life after surviving a near death experience or after seeing a close friend slip away etc. These radical events are often necessary in order for us to consider alterations to our perspective and attitude towards life. Why? We have a government type set up inside ourselves! “How many innocent people have to die at this intersection before ‘they’ will build an overpass?” Does something drastic need to happen before we’ll consider alterations to our attitude?
Why does it seem to us that a change to our attitude has to shake our entire foundation? Does letting something change our attitude mean we have been wrong our whole lives leading up to the time of the adjustment? Is our attitude not an eternal work in progress?
One thing that springs to mind at this point is that those of us that have been emotionally injured and have had the need to create ‘safe points’ and added a little armour to the attitude we adorn in order to create some sort of self presevatory cloak find it very hard to loose this when it’s no longer needed. This creates a situation that can give a single event or a period of life the power to keep us captive for the remainder of life even though the threat may be gone. In fact it strangely enough tends to attract the damaging situation back to reinforce the need for it’s existence.
It’s very hard to become open again, to surrender our heart and put it up to possibly be hurt again after traumatic events or periods of life. It’s very hard to be open to change and shake the armour to allow love and light into the dark depths but as hard as it is, it is also essential. Failure to open up again renders us as dead already.
There is a balance though. You can still protect your heart and give it up to be discovered and loved again. Add wisdom to your search not staunch defence. Let the bad experiences add more to your attitude not detract from it and in the same breath let the good things fill up your attitude bottle with good, clean, fresh water so that the journey forwards has some goodness in reserve for when the going gets a little tough.
If there was some thing poingniant to say here it would be to be big enough to accept the good and own it while learning from the bad but owning it as well. All the experiences we go through are ours good and bad and the more we learn to take responsibiltiy for the good and the bad alike the more likely we are going to veer toward the good. Shedding responsibility for the bad situations we find ourselves in only leaves us less able to accept the good ones as everything we do and everywhere we find ourselves is as a result of decisions we have made at various points in our lives all thanks to our attitudes and the influence of our attitude on decisions.
If we don’t take ownership of our situations and decisions it means that someone or something else has had complete control of where we find ourselves. Are we really happy to say that someone or a group of someones have had that much control of us that they have put us in a situation we did not choose in one way or another? One tiny decision can lead to a life changing situation for good or bad and every point along the line toward that life changing situation is an opportunity to say No and if the ‘No’ option is not taken, that is a decision as well.
Change, it’s so easy to talk about but so hard to actually achieve which takes me back to the start and my questions of why it takes so much out of us to accept a little change.
I believe that the trigger to seeking change is when everything goes quiet and seems a bit dull. If there is even a hint of stagnancy, the colours all loose that shine they acquire after a good down pour of rain. Start looking………
