How To Change Your Attitudes

Author: Catherine Pulsifer

Your outlook on life, basically your attitude can determine your happiness and success in life. Attitude is a mindset, how you view your world. Do you see the positive or do you focus on the negative? Our perception of the events in our life, and how we regard these events can be attributed to our attitude. How can you change your attitude?-when dealing with a situation try and find the good in it. Focus on the good; do not dwell on the negative. Depending on the situation, you sometimes have to look hard to find the good but it is there. By doing this you start changing attitudes to a positive attitude rather than a negative attitude.

Change Yourself First
Remember the saying, “you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself.” So if someone tells you that you have a poor attitude, don’t try and convenience them otherwise as you won’t change their mind. When someone tells us this we have a tendency to take a defensive attitude, instead focus on how you can change.

Can you change attitudes of other people? Again, I would refer to the saying, “you can’t change other people, you can only change yourself”. You will end up becoming very frustrated if you try and change other people. Remember, you can only change yourself and how you deal with that individual.

True Reflection
The story below is a story of attitude. The individual in this story could have easily developed a “poor me” attitude, but instead he chose to focus on what he can do, his attitude reflects what a positive outlook on life can be like.

“Now I look beyond what I can’t do and focus on what I CAN.” Robert M. Hensel

Too often in life, we focus on the things we cannot do. Sometimes we cannot do things because of financial limitations, health limitations, family limitations, educational limitations, and so on. Sometimes, we end up limiting ourselves from achieving success in reaching our goals. We end up having a negative attitude which limits our ability to achieve success and happiness in our life.

Through the Internet, I have recently met an individual whom I found to be very inspiring. He has a positive attitude, he focuses on what he can do. To name a few of his accomplishments:
– he has set a world record, and is in the Guinness Book of World Records
– he is an international poet with over 900 publications
– he is an advocate for the disabled
– he is the founder of Beyond Limitations Week
– he is an Ambassador for the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation.
– he has created his own website, http://wheelierecord.tripod.com/index.html
and the list could go on!

Unstoppable Despite Adversity
The individual is Robert M. Hensel. You see, Robert was born spina bifida; a disability that affects your sense of balance and also has an impact on your kidneys. Robert could have easily used his disability to limit his achievements, yet he has accomplished more than many. His attitude and outlook on life is one that, for me, is inspiring! To quote Robert, “I have learned that limitations open doors that have been closed, showing other ways to meet our needs.”

Let Robert be a reminder for changing attitudes. Use his motto of not focusing on what you can’t do, but,focus on what you can do!

Inspirational Quotes To Consider:
“A negative focus can result in our entirely missing the possibilities placed in our path.”
Anne Wilson Schaef

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure.”
Norman Vincent Peale

“You cannot force change in others, you can only inspire change in others by being your awesomely self.”
Michael Hetherington, 108 Paths to Peace: Ramblings of a Contemplative Life

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