Attitude

Over the years, working alongside many different creative personalities has convinced me of one thing - our productivity, relationships, and successfulness really are: 100% - all about attitude. We can choose to have a positive, Christ-like attitude, or we can take the super-easy way and dwell on the things that generate negativity.

A good example of this from a secular perspective is Seth Godin's paraphrase of Anne Lamott's book "Bird By Bird." He sums her book up this way:

Everyone is given an acre of attitudes at birth. It's yours to tend and garden and weed and live with. You can plant bitterness or good humor. Feel free to fertilize and tend the feelings and approaches that you want to spend time with. Unless you hurt someone, this acre is all yours.

Probably worth putting up a decent fence, so that only the attitudes that you choose will have a chance to put down seeds, but it's certainly a bad idea to put up a wall, because a walled garden is no good to anyone passing by. You get to decide what comes through your fence gate, right?

Watching out for invasive species—spending sufficient time on weeding and pruning and staking seem to be incredibly powerful tools for accomplishing the life you want. I refuse to accept that an attitude is an accident of birth or an unchangeable constant. That would be truly horrible to contemplate.

What a poignant way to remind ourselves that we choose to generate our own attitudes.



We are not victims of the attitudes we bear. Are there things in your life that you cling to that invoke negativity in your life? Nostalgia for things long past that can't be brought back? Bitterness toward something you received but didn't ask for? Anger with the failings of someone else or maybe yourself? Perhaps it is something else?

I can think of no better help than the Word of God:

Colossians 3:1-2 (NLT)

1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.

Philippians 4:8 (NLT)

8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.

May God grant you the attitudes you pursue as you seek His Spirit in your lives,
Grace and peace,
Jeff