I have been thinking lately about responsibility and attitude, and I just have to say these are powerful subjects. You can take people in IDENTICAL situations and one can be one of the saddest people on earth and the other can be the one of the happiest all due to there attitude. How happy are you?
So, if the goal is to be happy, what affects our happiness? This seems like a tricky question, but really I don't think it is. You have to choose to be happy. It's that simple. You can't just say you want to be happy, you have to choose it. How do you do that? The fastest way is to study the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and then apply them into your life.
So where does Attitude and Responsibility come into play? Christ taught us to be responsible for ourselves. You are the only one that can determine what kind of attitude you have. I can't stress that enough. If you have a hard job only you can decide to either start to whistle and get to work, or drag your feet, procrastinate, and make the job a real tragedy. It is ultimately your choice.
What's that??? What did you say??? Did you say it isn't your fault because your dog ate your homework? Maybe you have an unpleasant aunt coming in from out of state to stay for a week and she always "makes" you grumpy. That's a load of crap. There are always outside forces that are against you BUT there are always POSITIVE forces that are in your favor. YOU decide which ones you focus on. If you focus on the negative you will have a bad attitude, if you focus on the positive you will have a good attitude. It is up to you what you DECIDE. Be responsible for where your focus is.
So now you ask yourself "How can I choose what I think about???" I don't know if there is one right answer. One thing is for sure, if you try to just fight negative thoughts you will lose. It's like if your trying to not criticize someone you think "I can't think about how bad that person is at..." and that's one step away from "Think about how bad that person is at..." So what do you do?
First - Take control of what is in your power. If your car breaks down you could start cursing and blame the person who sold you the car, or the person who last helped you fix it, or the fan belt for breaking, or an endless number of things. BUT that doesn't do anything so call a toe truck or try and fix it yourself. Once you've done all that you can LET IT GO maybe even laugh about it. You won't do any good thinking or worrying about it so let it go, move on with your day. Mind you, if you haven't done everything YOU can (like if you haven't studied enough for a test) you need to still worry about it, that worrying is meant to get you to finish doing everything you can.
The principle is true in just about every situation. Do what you can then move on. It works for things like cars breaking down, stuff breaking in general, loosing stuff, people saying mean things about you, people being stupid in general, and so on. Once you have done all that YOU can the rest is in the Lord's hands and if it ends how you wanted or not, he knows what will be best for you. You can either accept it and move on or persist, and think of more you can do to accomplish what you need to before moving on. Follow the spirit in deciding when it is time to move on for the big stuff but for most of the stuff that bothers you, get over it.
On the road to the Celestial Kingdom (heaven) you have a lot of steps to make. You won't make them all at once. This principle of moving on I have applied to the negative stuff, but what about you. I wrote a while back about the 4 C's (Criticize, Condemn, Compare, and Complain) and how we need to get rid of them. You won't be able to do it all at once (unless your name was Saul and people all the sudden decide to call you Paul, or your dad's name is Alma Sr.) It just doesn't happen very often where someone can change there attitude and actions all at once. So what do you do? Here is what I did when I was on my LDS Mission. I took the Christ Like Attributes (faith, charity, hope, diligence, and so on) and I tried for a week to do one of them perfectly. I failed miserably! I got discouraged with myself and so I let the practice sort of fizzle. Later on I developed a method that worked much better. I took one attribute a week and every time I said a prayer that week I prayed for God to bless me with that attribute. It was a smaller step one easier for me to take. That week it helped me focus on that specific attribute, and it became more of a part of me. Then I would move on to the next attribute. I did what I could then moved on.
Maybe you can take bigger steps then me, maybe you want to take smaller, you decide.
Last note, Remember, you are the only one responsible for your ATTITUDE and your ACTIONS. If you don't know anything else to do to improve your attitude, serve someone else, and do it in a way that is secret. Do it not to expect a reword or praise but to surprise someone and laugh to yourself that they can't figure out who did that for them. You would be amazed at how happy acts of service like that can make you feel.
God bless you! (you know the devil wont lol)
Fred
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