You Are In Charge Of Your Attitude
When my kiddo was about 8 years old, she had some typical issues regarding taking responsibility for her attitude. The thing about kids is that they don’t really have any power. Adults tell them what to do, how to act, etc. While they need boundaries to feel secure, they tend to test the limits. Doing so gives them a sense of how far they can go and still feel safe. They’re like baby birds taking steps out of the nest but not too far away. They think they want to fly off, but they know they’re not ready yet. Still, they flap their wings pretty darn loudly. The trick is finding the right balance between letting your baby birds fly while keeping them inside the perimeter so they feel empowered and protected at the same time. Well, I figured that empowering my daughter was the ticket to getting her into a more positive mode. I made a sign on poster paper with fancy lettering and decorated it with flowers. Yes, flowers – she was still a girly girl back then! The sign said, “You Are In Charge Of Your Attitude”. We hung it on her bedroom wall. Whenever she got into negative mode and wanted to blame everyone else but herself, I would remind her about the sign. Since she agreed to hang the poster, she had, in fact, made a contract with me about choosing her attitude and pointing it out to her worked. Today, she seems pretty well-adjusted. But, hey, now that she’s a teenager, I realize that I could be living under a grand illusion which could collapse at anytime!
Here’s a piece by Charles Swindoll that my friend, Jan, recently rediscovered and shared:
Attitude
By Charles Swindoll
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you…we are in charge of Attitudes.
