How's Your Attitude?

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." -- Victor Frankl

As my senior pastor, Rev Dr Kong Hee, would often say, "Your attitude determines your altitude." Yes, even an airplane has an attitude when flying. The attitude of an airplane is its relative position to the horizon and there is actually an attitude indicator located prominently in the cockpit. A nose-high attitude is indicated when the aircraft is climbing while a nose-down attitude is shown when the aircraft is diving. Now, that would wake us up on the kind of impact an attitude can have on the course of our life.

"Attitude is everything. All manifestations in the physical world began as ideas in the non-physical world. Everyone has a choice about how to think. If you choose a negative, wrong attitude, then you will create negative and wrong results. If you choose a positive, biblical yes attitude, you choose the attitude of faith, and you will see positive results." -- Frank Damazio

"Stand up to your obstacles and do something about them. You will find that they haven't half the strength you think they have." -- Norman Vincent Peale

"Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future." -- Charles F. Kettering

"You must see your goals clearly and specifically before you can set out for them. Hold them in your mind until they become second nature." -- Les Brown

As explianed by Atul Mathur (www.atulmathur.com), an attitude is "what we think and feel about situations, people, ideas, objects -- basically anything that concerns us. And an attitude is usually binary: positive or negative, favourable or unfavourable, good or bad. Holding a particular attitude is like having a hidden labelling machine inside us that keeps generating labels (positive or negative) to be pasted on whatever we come across.

We have an attitude towards colleagues, work, bosses, learning, books, the environment, traffic, hygiene, maids, construction workers, teachers, vegetarian food, excellence, charity, quality standards -- just about eveything.

Most important, whether we like it or not, our attitude shows up in our behaviour or actions, which in turn affect the circumstances of our life. Don't believe it? Watch Lt Coffee's talk on YouTube at: http://youtube/jgZxK-7xfoE ."

When we change out attitude, we change our life. Our attitude matters as Dr John C. Maxwell points out  in the following axioms from his book "The Winning Attitude" (ISBN-13: 978-0-8407-4377-0):

1. Our attitude determines our approach to life.
2. Our attitude determines our relationships with people.
3. Often our attitude is the only difference between success and failure.
4. Our attitude at the beginning of a task will affect its outcome more than anything else.
5. Our attitude can turn our problems into blessings.
6. Our attitude can give us an uncommonly positive perspective.
7. Our attitude is not automatically good just because we are Christians.

To round up our little musing on attitude, this is what Lou Holtz, Notre Dame Football Coach, proferred: "Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it." Live life to the fullest, my dear readers!