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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?






I get daily quotes sent to my phone and this was the quote sent to me this morning.

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what others think, say, and do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home." - Charles R. Swindoll, an American writer.

For some reason my world has lately recieved several motivational influences. Last week, Joe and his brother John played football with a bunch of friends and I tagged along bringing with me one of those self help books to help with the inevitable boredom. The week before I came upon some motivational videos. There are two that stand out the most to me. One is a clip from the movie Facing the Giants . In this clip Brock, if asked to do the death crawl. The death crawl is a sport exercise in which one person carries another person on his back using only his arms(the knees are not allowed to touch the ground). Even 50 yards of this is very very hard. Brock promises to give the coach his very best. As hes making his way across the field, Brock is yelling out in pain, telling the coach "it hurts! it burns! its too hard!" And the coach is yelling at Brock, "don't quit, give me your best, you can do it, you promised your best, dont give up on me!" Finally, Brock cant give anymore and collapses, as he trys to apologize for collapsing and the coach says, "Look up Brock, youre in the end zone."

The other is a video of Nick Vujicic, known as the man with no limbs.

In the video Nick says, "So what do you do when you fall down? You get back up...But there are times in life when you fall down and you feel like you don't have the strength to get back up. Do you think you have hope? I will try 100 times to get up and if I fail 100 times, if I fail and I give up, do you think I'm ever going to get up? No. If I fail, I try again and again and again. Its not the length of the journey that matters, its the finish. Are you going to finish strong? You will find that strength to get back up."


Now my two cents.....

Our attitudes effect every aspect of our lives. Everyday we have a choice to make. We can have a positive attitude, or we can have rotten attitudes. It is said that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% of how we react to it. Some things we have no control over. So do we blame people, hold grudges, throw fits like little children or do we move on and embrace life. We have the opportunity to make each day better. So why not do it?

I have fallen many many times and there have been times when I didn't feel like I had the strength to get up. I don't think I would have gotten up if I didn't have family, friends, and my savior standing above me telling me I can do it. Life is tough and I'm not even 20 yet. Ive fallen off the beaten path, I've had my heart crushed, and I've been hurt but I'm still pushing through. I rejoice in the knowledge that it doesn't matter how many times I fall. All that matters to the Lord is how many times I try to get back up, and if I try, he will help me succeed. Some times life does hurt, some times it burns and we want to give up, but we promised God our best. He is always at our side begging us not to quit, to push through the pain, and if we do it, we will end up in the end zone.

We all made that promise and I plan on keeping mine. Do you?

2 comments:

Ashleigh Page said...

You're doing great! I love you! You're attitude is contagious to me! and I'm glad we are best friends....ps I love exclamation marks so expect alot!

Kate said...

A great book for this kind of thing is The How of Happiness. It was the text for my positive psychology course and the start point for most of Positive Psychology- which is all about how we can improve our lives when things are basically good so that when things get bad we have this strong, good attitude you speak of. Attitude truly is everything, and the book explains the science behind why that is (even though as members of the church we know there are other things to it as well). Great post!