Living Better Holistically offers positive approaches to life.
Your Daily Choice of Attitudes Controls Your Days
by Richard O. Aichele
Want to enjoy any day more? Look at your attitudes about what is happening around you and the effect that your attitudes have on other people around you at that time. Then look how it reflects back onto yourself.
A person who tends to focus on the negatives and unhappy aspects of life will adversely affect their overall mental and physical health. Realistically, people with negative, pessimistic life attitudes are also less likely to resolve the issues that are making them unhappy. Constant negativity can lead to the condition of depression which would require more attention by a qualified professional.
On the other hand, those individuals that can consistently meet the challenges of life with a positive, optimistic attitude create the best opportunities to lead satisfying and successful lives.
The reality that behavior and attitude produce good results is certainly not new. In 1916, James Dangerfield wrote an article titled "An Unrecognized Wage Factor" for a business publication:
"It is not sufficiently recognized that there may be wage factors other than simply the ability to excel in quantity or quality of work. The late Ambrose Webster, founder of the American Watch Tool Company, was known for his originality of ideas in factory management. When I was employed by that company some years ago, the following conversation took place one day in the office:
'Mr. Webster, pardon the question, but why do you pay Morgan $3.50 a day? It seems to me you have other fully as good workmen who get only $3 a day and I doubt that Morgan could go anywhere else and get more than that.' Mr. Morgan replied: 'You are right. As a workman Morgan could not command over $3 a day, but his is of such a good disposition, always placing the best construction on whatever we do and saying a good word for the company when others are inclined to grumble, that his influence among the men is well worth the extra half-dollar a day."
Those positive types of people with good attitudes possess what Dr. Robert Brooks, PH.D, more recently called having "resilient mindsets." Those resilient mindset types of people always stand out because, "they are available [to others] for support and encouragement, they have excellent problem-solving skills, they demonstrate discipline, they are optimistic, recognize their strengths and they view mistakes as experiences from which to learn," Brooks explained.
The concept of positive thinking was also strongly promoted by Norman Vincent Peale, a longtime minister at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City and author of a number of books including The Amazing Resuts Of Positive Thinking where Peale wrote: "Often people don't really understand that nature of positive thinking. A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative but he refuses to dwell on it. Positive Thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worse conditions. It is possible to expect the best for yourself even when things look bad. And the remarkable fact is that when you seek good, you are very likely to find it."
So when a day or a period of your life is going well, relax, enjoy it and take some of the credit that you helped make it that way by having a healthy and positive attitude.
