Point to Ponder:
Is your attitude worth catching?
I often times think about the song I learned as a child in Sunday School, “O Be Careful, Little Eyes”, with hand gestures to complement each verse. This song encourages us to guard our eyes and ears and control our mouths, hands, and feet. As a child, I didn’t understand the depth of the song, but as an adult, I get it. What we say, what we look at and listen to, along with the places we choose to go, all have consequences and therefore impact. These choices shape our hearts and minds, which influence our attitudes, and are all contagious. As children, we didn’t have much control over the places we were taken or the things we saw and heard, but as adults, these are decisions that we get to take full responsibility of. Our choices determine our attitude and our attitude has a Butterfly Effect in our home, schools, works, communities, life and even the world. If you believe in the Butterfly Effect as I do, then you agree that both negative or positive attitudes, along with the energy they create, are contagious. They affect everyone and everything around us and are attracting either negative or positive energies and people into our lives.
In addition to the lessons from “O Be Careful, Little Eyes”, other rules that I, like I know most of you reading were taught at home, in church, or at school are: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all” and “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. When I think about these fundamentals being ingrained in me as a child, I realize they are necessary foundational principles to raise up our children, families, communities and businesses. In addition, it’s essential that as adults we live by them too. Fortunately (yet also unfortunately), we don’t have our parents and teachers hovering around us to correct us when we violate a fundamental, so we have to hold ourselves and one another accountable to disciplining our words and attitudes. If it was just our own life we were affecting, then you could do whatever you wanted, but our choices have far greater consequences then just our individual lives.
Bad attitudes are like the flu, and if we have a flu-like attitude, we need to cover our mouths because our choices and attitudes affect everyone and everything around us. On the other hand, if we have a great attitude and choose to spread optimism and positive energy everywhere we go, we need to spew like a sprinkler. Like written on so many things now, you’ll be spreading Good Vibes Only and you will be amazed as they boomerang back to you!
I believe the following quote by Charles Swindol says everything. It is the perfect reminder for us to discipline ourselves to choose an attitude worth catching and spread optimism and positive energy throughout our week and life.
“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, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, 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 everyday regarding the attitude we will 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% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
Action Item:
Choose an attitude worth catching and spread optimism and positive energy everywhere you go.
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