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!

Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)

Two of my favourite paintings by Vincent Van Gogh are Starry Night Over The Rhone and Cafe Terrace At Night.

Having located them on the internet, I am glad to furnish them for your refreshing as follows:-

Starry Night over the Rhone

Cafe Terrace At Night

 

Having also found the following clip wiith many of his paintings set to Don McLean's Vincent (Starry, Starry Night), I think it's a marvellous combination of sound, imagery and reflection:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk 

In case you are hungry for more of Vincent's genius, then you may wanna proceed to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh

Yao Si Ting

On 5 January 2013 while having breakfast at a Burger King outlet, I was enthused by the songs streaming forth in the background.

After the meal, I ventured to ask for the CD cover of the songs. The restaurant manager was gracious and promptly showed me the cover from one of Ms Yao Si Ting's albums which she said was purchased from Popular bookstore. And, that was my chance and refrshing discovery of this relatively unknown but remarkable artiste.

Here then are some renown songs as re-sung by Yao Si Ting in her crisp and soothing voice for your refreshing:-

Sound of Silence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHCNEsP5Qg

Just When I Needed You Most
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzWnVyZOUXM

It's Not Goodbye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzWnVyZOUXM

Gaze and Reach for the Stars

Losing a dream is like losing someone whom we love dearly.

Consider the following Grace Potter & The Nocturnals Stars lyrics and watch it's rendition by Amanda Brown :-

I lit a fire with the love you left behind,

And it burned wild and crept up the mountainside.                                                                   

I followed your ashes into outer space I can't look at this place,                                        

They make me wonder where you are

Stars,

Up on heaven's boulevard And if I know you at all,
I know you've gone too far

So I, I can't look at the stars
All those times we looked up at the sky,
Looking out so far,
We felt like we could fly.

And now I'm all alone in the dark of night,
The moon is shining,
But I can't see the light,
And I can't look at the
Stars,
They make me wonder where you are

Stars,
Up on heaven's boulevard
And if I know you at all,
I know you've gone too far
So I, I can't look at the stars

Stars,
Stars,
They make me wonder where you are
Stars,
Up on heaven's boulevard
And if I know you at all,
I know you've gone too far
So I can't look at the stars.

Yes, we may wonder how far our dreams have drifted away and we find it so disheartening to even think that they can be regained.

This calls for faith; aggressive faith to muster creativity and energy to gaze and reach for the stars again. We need to fight the good fight of faith to keep believing against all odds.

Consider, Dr Ting Choon Meng who is a medical doctor and inventor of BPro -- a wristwatch with a sensor for monitoring waveforms from a person's central aortic pressure (blood pressure near the hear) non-invasively, which won a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Award in 2007. As recounted in his interview by Susan Long and published in the Straits Times on 30 November 2012, there was a time when cardiologists boycotted his talks and he was snubbed as being only a general practitioner. But, he soldiered on and kept his dream alive.

A dream makes life worth living. Even those who patronise the lottery or big sweep outlets get a boost to live for dreaming of striking it rich. As Dr. Benjamin Isaiah Mays would say, "It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching your goals, the tragedy lies in not having any goals to reach. It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. It is not a disaster to be unable to capture your ideals, but it is a disaster to have no ideals to capture. It is not a disgrace not to reach the stars, but it is a disgrace to have no stars to reach."

Your dream and my dream, they are worth fighting for. They are the stars upon the limitless horizon of our imagination that energize us to step up and move purposely to the direction of our dreams.

The Train of Our Thoughts

What we focus our mind on will have a hold on us. For example, the ubiquitous television will continue to wield its hypnotic power over us unless we have enough willpower to send it to sleep or get far, far away from it. If not, it will control us and we end up as a couch potato.

Often, we speak of a 'train of thoughts'. Come to think of it, that is what thoughts are really like. Thoughts are like a train that takes us to a destination. That destination could be 'anywhere' if we do not decide at the onset where we wanna to go. But, if we decide on 'somewhere' then we can come to the desired place.

An idea is a concoction of thoughts and possibilities. As described by Carl Schurz, "Ideas are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and, following them, you reach your destiny."

Consider this takeaway from Earl Nightingale, "People with goals succeed because they know where they're going."And, chew on this healthy tablet of 4 steps to achievement by William A. Ward -- "Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently."

Thus, the sooner we align our thoughts, interests and priorities with our destination, dream or goal, the sooner we will reach our train station, so to speak. It takes discipline to train our thoughts, but it is well worth it. Afterall, discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.

The Pain Is All Gone!

In Pursuit of Our Dreams