Attitudes
(4 minute read; 808 words)
Thoughts and attitudes are related, but different.
Thoughts are conscious, happen one at a time and are acted on by choice. You can only act on a thought or dismiss it.
Attitudes are ingrained habits of thought that trigger actions and reactions on auto-pilot— without a conscious thought.
When you repeat a pattern of thinking often enough, it gets wired into your brain like a default setting—automatic, effortless, and often unconscious. These ingrained responses shape how we perceive and react to the world, sometimes without even noticing. Breaking a bad habit is hard enough, but breaking a bad attitude can feel like completely rewiring your brain—it sorta is.
Thoughts originate in the head and attitudes are habits of thoughts ingrained in the heart. Both thoughts and attitudes can be changed on the spot, but because attitudes are firmly established and difficult to change, you will have to permanently replace the bad attitudes with good ones to keep them from recurring automatically in the future.
With a thought, you choose to act on it. With an attitude, you don’t even think about acting or reacting in a certain way, it’s just the way you always act and react.
Attitudes, like thoughts and actions, are either good or bad, but they can’t be both at the same time and can’t be anything other than good or bad and whatever else represents good or bad.
Your attitude affects every single aspect of your life either in a good way or bad way, this way or that way, one way or the other.
It affects:
- What you say and how you say it.
- What you do and how you do it.
- What you can do and what you can’t do.
- What you will do and what you won’t do.
- How you treat yourself and how you treat others.
- How you approach the things in life that you want to do, need to do and have to do but might not want to do.
- How you deal with both the good and bad circumstances of life.
- Your job and how well you do it.
- The quality of all your relationships.
- And many more.
In fact, your attitude affects every single aspect of how you live, work and play.
A good attitude makes you look better, feel better, act better and do better.
It sharpens how you sound, improves how you communicate, elevates how you live and love, and enhances how you work, lead, play, perform and get along with others.
Everything is “better” with a good attitude.
When your attitudes are “bad,” everyone knows it. They know what triggers your attitudes and the behaviors they produce and can see them coming from a mile away. Examples: When you are angry, short tempered, impatient, negative & pessimistic, defensive, moody, argumentative, easily offended, making excuses, dismissive or uncoachable, or a combination of many of these and more, etc.
The most dangerous part of a bad attitude isn’t that others hear it and see it—it’s that you don’t.
The most important thing about attitudes is that they shape and define the “content” of your character. Attitudes are the “characteristics” of your character, revealing your identity… defining who (or whose) you are and how you will act and react— and these habits and behavior are learned through frequent repetition.
“Always guard your heart because everything you (say and) do ‘automatically’ flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23 EXB); emphasis added. Be intentional about what attitudes are allowed in your heart; only good. Reject the rest.
Although God’s standard for our thoughts, attitudes and actions is perfection, in this world, we are not perfect in any shape, form or fashion. As a believer, one day you will be; all believers will through glorification. But until the day of the Lord arrives, let your goal be to “have a good attitude about most things most of the time.”
Most means ‘almost all,’ so you could say, have a good attitude about ‘almost all things almost all of the time.’ That is achievable with ongoing awareness of your attitudes and actions and quick attitude adjustments, before and after they rear their ugly heads.
You can either be the master or the victim of your attitudes.
It’s your choice. Know the difference.
Are you the master or are you the victim?
Be the master!
Notable Thoughts About Attitudes
“When you hear or see a person’s attitude you are literally hearing and seeing the content of his or her character on display.” – James Allen, As a Man Thinketh; emphasis added.
“Have a good attitude about most things, most of the time or even almost all things almost all of the time.” RAC
Memorize this rule:
Rule #5 – Habits of thought repeated frequently enough become ingrained as attitudes that trigger actions and reactions, your behavior, on autopilot—without a conscious thought.
theattituderules.com 