What Control Your Attitude?
Mental attitudes might simply be how we control our minds over matter. Life itself is comprised of thousands of decisions an individual is forced to make on a daily basis. We are a people of choice. We choose what we want to do and what we don’t want to do. In so many of the decisions we face, we give them very little thought because we have made similar decisions in the past. Our minds quickly reprocess and determine the same results. We commonly refer to this as “acting without thinking.” I happen to be guilty of this a lot. That is making a snap decision without thinking it through completely. It may be similar in nature to a previous situation but when carefully thought through, there are circumstances that mandate a different result.
I think I can speak for most people when I say I seldom think about what my brain is doing. Rather than acting upon a situation, I react to the situation. There’s a huge difference between the two. To act upon a situation we would carefully consider every aspect, possible solutions, and the most probable results that would come from our actions. We call this being rational. To react to a situation, we generally move into a defensive mode, ready to argue or defend the decisions we made.
If we are awake our mind is processing something. Our brain is constantly running. It’s like the every ready bunny; it keeps going and going and going. In its quietest moment, the brain is directing bodily functions that keep us alive. We can do without a lot of body parts but the brain is absolutely necessary for our survival as a normal functioning person. Medical journals state that the largest part to your overall health is from your mental health. How often do we think about the health of our mind? Shoot, I seldom think about the health conditions of the rest of my body; let alone my mind.
I’m sure you have already determined that I do not have a medical background, neither have I studied medicine. Well, I did start to college to become a veterinarian but dropped out to get into real estate. I’m just what some people refer to as an Alabama redneck, but I’m so thankful to my parents for illustrating to me the importance of common sense. I was always taught that common sense is one of the most powerful elements of the human body. You can have all the education in the world and without common sense, your real success limited. You can have no education yet have a lot of common sense, and enjoy much success. The use of common sense is responsible for the person I am today.
Having said that, I believe there is a big difference between the brain and the mind. Before someone corrects me, let me say that the mind is a part, of the brain. I’ll break it down this way. The brain is like one of the motors in your car. It just keep running and running and running. You can make it run faster or slower by using other parts of the automobile. As long as the motor runs you can make the automobile do amazing things but if it stalls; if it stops running, you can’t make the automobile do anything. The brain is a motor to the human body; so is the heart. The difference is the heart is a muscle that continual pumps blood to all the other body parts so they can function. My common sense tells me that the brain is made up of many parts that stand alone; they continue doing the job they are intended to do while the other parts of the brain performs their job. The mind is a part of the brain that has the ability to process data that is input to it. Processing the data is rationally looking at the possible results and the most probable results. In other words it is sorting through the pros and cons to determine the best course of action.
The mind determines its decision based on previous situations that are like nature. Therefore the mind is trainable. This is very true. We can’t change the way the brain works but we can change the outcomes of the mind. Have you ever known a person who seemed to have a negative outlook on everything? They seemed sour on life. They never get excited about anything. Then overnight as it seems, they have a totally different personality. They don’t seem like the same person anymore. They are the same person but something caused them to change their attitude.
Our mental attitudes help form our personality. Our mental attitude will become what we want it to be. It’s really very simple. We either have a positive attitude or negative one. I personally don’t believe that it’s possible to have an indifferent attitude because I see them the same as a negative attitude. Changing our attitudes from thinking negatively to thinking positively is relatively easy. Simply begin paying attention to everything you say and do. When you recognize that you just made a negative statement; ask yourself why you made such a statement. If you have a negative thought, tell yourself you didn’t mean it that way and redirect that thought to be positive. Always remember that the best way to change a negative is to replace it with a positive.
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