Attitude Is Everything

The process of human change begins within us. We all have tremendous
potential. We all desire good results from our efforts. Most of us are willing to
work hard and to pay the price that success and happiness demand.
Each of us has the ability to put our unique human potential into action and to
acquire a desired result. But the one thing that determines the level of our
potential, that produces the intensity of our activity, and that predicts the quality
of the result we receive is our attitude.
Attitude determines how much of the future we are allowed to see. It decides the
size of our dreams and influences our determination when we are faced with new
challenges. No other person on earth has dominion over our attitude. People can
affect our attitude by teaching us poor thinking habits or unintentionally
misinforming us or providing us with negative sources of influence, but no one
can control our attitude unless we voluntarily surrender that control.
No one else "makes us angry." We make ourselves angry when we surrender
control of our attitude. What someone else may have done is irrelevant. We
choose, not they. They merely put our attitude to a test. If we select a volatile
attitude by becoming hostile, angry, jealous or suspicious, then we have failed
the test. If we condemn ourselves by believing that we are unworthy, then again,
we have failed the test.
If we care at all about ourselves, then we must accept full responsibility for our
own feelings. We must learn to guard against those feelings that have the
capacity to lead our attitude down the wrong path and to strengthen those
feelings that can lead us confidently into a better future.
If we want to receive the rewards the future holds in trust for us, then we must
exercise the most important choice given to us as members of the human race by
maintaining total dominion over our attitude. Our attitude is an asset, a treasure
of great value, which must be protected accordingly. Beware of the vandals and
thieves among us who would injure our positive attitude or seek to steal it away.
Having the right attitude is one of the basics that success requires. The
combination of a sound personal philosophy and a positive attitude about
ourselves and the world around us gives us an inner strength and a firm resolve
that influences all the other areas of our existence.

Change Begins With Choice

Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change it all. Any day we wish;
we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we
wish; we can start a new activity. Any day we wish; we can start the process of
life change. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.
We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of
having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are.
We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over
truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we
curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare uniquely
observed, "The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves." We created our
circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility
to make better choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life
do not need more answers or more time to think things over to reach better
conclusions. They need the truth. They need the whole truth. And they need
nothing but the truth.
We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us down the
wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the biggest
difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very choices
that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.
And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and
needing to make changes in their life - If you don't like how things are, change it!
You're not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life -
and it all begins with your very own power of choice.

A Dollar and Some Ambition

Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives.
The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To
earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline
ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the
choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life
of wondrous anticipation.
And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To
read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To
give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish
as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice. To do or not to do. To be
or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all.
Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and
outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every
moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?
Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability
and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this
worthiest of undertakings.
Results are the best measurement of human progress. Not conversation. Not
explanation. Not justification. Results! And if our results are less than our
potential suggests that they should be, then we must strive to become more
today than we were the day before. The greatest rewards are always reserved for
those who bring great value to themselves and the world around them as a result
of who and what they have become.