Saturday, July 21, 2012

Attitude Is Everything

A few friends of mine posted the following sign on Facebook this morning, but I can't get it to copy into this blog, so I'll just give you the gist:
karma cleanse
*  be grateful
*  act with love
*  check your motives
*  watch your attitude
*  forgive
(it had cute little emoticons on it and everything--this is irritating!)


It really fits with my mindset lately.  The hardest bit of advice for me to follow has been the gratitude.   I think somewhere in the last year, I have been on a roller coaster ride that keeps dipping into the negative.  I am not sure that I have been grateful on a regular basis.  Or at least, I have let myself dwell in the things I don't have rather than the blessings I've been given. 

I am one of those people who see-saws between Pollyanna and Negative Nelly.  When I'm up, there is nothing that I can't do.  I can be Queen of the Universe. 
See?  The Queen.  Doncha fuhgit it!


When I'm down, I'm really down.  The whole world caves in. 
Kinda like this but without the call to my homeowner's insurance.


But I am seeing more and more that there are so many things in my life for which to to be grateful.  I am currently reading this book that suggests that I write down 10 blessings in my life every day for 28 days.  But the book says don't just write down the blessings, write WHY I am grateful for them.  The blessings I can rattle off easily.  On the 2nd day, I actually was an overachiever and wrote TWENTY blessings. 

I'm gonna put this on my refrigerator

But it's the WHY part that's hard, or maybe just the verbalizing the why.  Why is it a blessing that I have been married to the same man for 20 years?  (ok, that's an easy one)  Why is my job a blessing?  My house?   The air I breathe?    It's forced me to think about why I am thankful for the very good things in my life.  But that in turn has made me even more grateful for those things. 

And it's also hard to come up with 10 new things each day.  I sometimes repeat.  I sometimes have trite, odd blessings and reasons (yesterday, I wrote that I was grateful for the rain because I could sit around and be lazy all day).  But I've noticed that I FEEL happier. 

Of course, I'm only on Day 3 of doing this.  I know that there will be days where I don't feel it or where things beyond my control put me in a negative mood.  But I need to find the blessing in what I can learn from the bad things and remember to glance at the Serenity Prayer that sits above my refrigerator. 
This is actually a tattoo.   I'm not sure I'd have the patience or pain tolerance to sit through a tattoo any more.


Most of all, I need to remember that attitude is everything. It defines who you are, so if you have a good one, life will be much happier. 

"Don't worry.  Be happy."

2 comments:

  1. Good for you for writing down your blessings! I know how you feel about the roller coaster ride. The last 8 months have been brutal for me. I find myself dwelling on things that don't matter anymore. I think I'm going to try writing down the good too!

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  2. It's very helpful to write stuff down. I used to do it and got out of it. Sometimes when there is a lot of downer stuff going on in my life, it's too easy to forget what good things there are. Definitely would encourage you to do it! :-)

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