Attitude is EVERYTHING!!

Today was a weird day. 'Nuff said.



I have had the opportunities throughout the years to counsel my friends through thick and thin. At some times, I wonder if my secret calling is the psychologist of my different groups of friends. It's interesting...Don't get me wrong though, it's not like I'm upset by it. I find myself being grateful that they consider me a good enough friend to confide in, or come to with their problems. Now I don't by any means consider myself and expert at all when it comes to advice, or on any of the topics that they bring me. All I can do is give them my honest opinion, and share any advice I have. After that I try to stick by them and try to keep them happy. I just quickly wanted to expound on one of the biggest pieces of advice that I follow, and encourage them to do the same. It's two principles I learned before my mission, yet were reinforced a lot while I was out serving for two years.

It's the principles of attitude and desire. These two things fuel most of what we do. If we have a strong enough desire for something, or for something to happen, it causes us to act, to move, and to do what needs to be done in order to obtain our desires. If something happens to us, whether good or bad or whatever, our attitude determines how we respond, or go about it. When we can get these two principles in order, life will go well.

Everytime a friend tells me they are angry at what someone did, I ask them who made them angry. The reply is always that the other party caused it. In reality, it is only us who chooses our attitudes and emotions. You've heard it before, but the only person who can make you happy, mad, sad, etc, is YOU. You choose how to react in a situation, not anybody else.

When a friend tells me that life isn't going well, I ask them why, and what they are doing about it. Usually the answer can be "I don't know", (which means, "I don't care" or "I haven't thought about it". -P. Moffat) or a long list of things comes out of how everything has gone wrong for them lately, or one thing or another. Most of the time, they aren't doing much to fix it. This is where desire comes in. If their desire was strong enough for their life to get better, they would do something about it. No matter how many times they tell me that they do want it to get better, I always remind them of that.

True desire fuels action, and most of what we get in life is the result of our desires. Of course, things do happen that we didn't plan for, and they weren't our desires. That's when attitude comes in, and we choose how we deal and react to it.

These are just my thoughts, I could keep expouding on them, but I'd start to repeat myself, so I'll end here.