Our attitude is driven by our thoughts.

If you haven't already seen this site please check it out http://www.attitudeislatitude.com/ and you will find a different perspective on your troubles.  The young gent who shares his story is Australian and was born without any limbs except a deformed foot which he called his "drum stick."  He could have given up on life and drowned in his own self pity.  My spiritual teacher warned that when it's the good old ego it wants you to feel sorry for yourself or under threat will react like a star trek movie with alarms and steel gates crashing down around us.  Don't give up and reach out to others who have a positive mindset when you do feel down or troubled.  Like the saying goes "A trouble shared is a trouble halved."

Young people today have a countenance that smacks of "attitude" that is a pseudo confidence in most cases but out there to elude the world into thinking that they are cool.  As adults we can have attitudes that hurt others such as being cold to another because of some judgement and lower thought process.  Anger is an expression of an attitude of entitlement.  Anger is a self righteous declaration of disapproval for anthers actions.  When someone lacks self control they will try to control others around them.  When you pick up someones attitude toward you don't ignore it because that person has their own agenda and that is separate from you.  An agenda of self righteous anger that is rooted in some aspect of their own psyche that is too distressing for them to uncover and face.  So instead of constructively dealing with a part of their own personality they will attach their feeling of anger to some aspect of your personality or behavior that they recognize in themselves.  Be alert and be on guard for fireworks because anger gives a person a feeling of being alive who is numb to their own true being.

How to build a positive attitude and thoughts:
Having a positive attitude comes from our own relationship with our true self which recognizes God within our own being - within our own heart.  With that recognition comes an altered awareness that filters situations through a fine sieve of consciousness thus catching all the debris in the air before it infests our own minds and psyche.  That is why great beings have said that we should choose our company carefully.  Others put it differently emphasizing having a positive mindset and avoiding negativity.  Either way you look at it negative energy has a vibration that will pull you down and wants to rob you of your own attainment.  Someone with an ego that is out of control is like an injured street mongrel that will react to any attempt to connect with vicious attacks.  That is it's nature because it has not been given the awareness that it is worthy of love and is fighting for its survival.  The ego is like a bastion that keeps our soul from integrating with divine consciousness.

Thoughts drive our attitude by a tendency to downward spiraling that is only corrected by mindful attention to what your mind is thinking and immediately correcting the mind to positive thoughts.  Meditation is the tool that takes us to the realm of the heart that has complete control over the mind and let's us connect with our true nature that is divinely fed by love from God.  Meditation is our lifeline.  There are other spiritual practices such as chanting, mantra repetition and prayer all of which empower our soul.  Meditation when done under the guidance of an enlightened spiritual master will enable us to rid our inner psyche of all of the things that we have learned to identify ourselves as being and give us a clear understanding and experience of who we truly are.  When we come to live our lives from the space of freedom from all the entrapments that we encountered before the spiritual journey we are able to meet life from a well spring of love and creativity.  It is a place where joy and bliss abound and with that energy we are able to permeate the vibrations around us and uplift the lives of many others.

Our attitude toward ourselves is extremely important because we have to have the attitude that we care for ourselves and trust ourselves to do what is best for our own good.  Trust is like the cement that binds the various aspects of our lives together and form a framework from which to build the life that we wish to live.  If there are nativities we have to trust that we can respond appropriately and make the necessary changes to end a situation as it will bring us down otherwise.  That is the nature of a negative person to spread that around like a virus.  During midlife years I spent time with my spiritual teacher who advised us not to talk about our problems when we visited her retreat.  She described the process like vomiting on others.  Be aware that when you spread negativity it is like throwing up on someone.  Trust that you can take care of your problems through counseling and through meditation.

Self talk may seem like an odd topic for people who are not used to openly disclosing that they do indeed talk to themselves like everyone else.  We are used to doing this self talk silently in our heads rather than out loud.  Monitor the kinds of self talk that you engage in and keep a journal that labels and describes the content of criticism as well as positive self talk.  The goal is to rid your mind from the habit of negative self talk through challenging assumptions that are made based on unsubstantiated data.  Until you get a feel for how your mind takes in information and perhaps interprets events negatively use sound judgement and get in control of your mind.  After some practice using this process you will be able to recognize when your thoughts change.  It is like observing yourself in the mirror and seeing what you are doing as you do it.  In the East they call this witness consciousness.  When you recognize negative tendencies don't beat yourself up over it as that would be defeating the purpose.  Be gentle and kind with yourself.  This is an ongoing process.  It's not as if you can take a six week course and do a 360 degree turn completely eradicating past thinking patterns.  Patience is the key to change.

You life will bring new successes and people will want to be around you because you offer an uplifting attitude that will infect them with your smiles and desire to go the extra mile to make their life easier for them.  This is a natural fruit of one who transcends the lower types of thinking, to want to uplift the lives of others.  I hope that you will start your practices of uplifting others lives through volunteering in homeless shelters.  Statistics show that one in eight people know someone who is currently out of work.  We have experienced a catastrophic housing crisis as a result of home foreclosures.  Reach out to those who have been affected and show an attitude of respect.  Really anything can happen to anyone of us in this economy.  As an aside I would like to remind you to vote in people who can turn our economy in the right direction.  Personally I favored President Bush's "Faith Based" initiatives that encouraged communities to reach out to those in need rather than building a bigger government and saddling the economy with more social programs.

I am a Professional Life Coach and have studied under two Indian masters since 1986.  I met my current master in 2009 and love the simplicity of the path of Sound and Light Meditation.  I recommend a vegetarian diet and drinking lots of pure water to flush out toxins from the body.  Regular sleep patterns and exercise are good for the function of the body and mood.  Learn to love yourself and then you will pass that love on to those who you care about. 

Please feel free to contact me at: lawrencerita511@gmail.com