Each day you awake to a plethora of choices. What to wear, what to eat for breakfast, whether or not to wash your hair, so many choices. Perhaps the most important choice each morning is your choice of attitude. You may not consider it each morning the same as you do your wardrobe, but you willingly make a choice of attitude every day. That choice you make each day before you leave your bed room sets the pace for how you act and react to each situation throughout the day.
You give particular attention to what you will wear each day before you leave the house selecting items that will coordinate with one another. Why would you not give the same particular attention to the attitude you will wear for the day? While considering this recently I was reminded that I am made in the image of God (our creator). If I am made in His image and in His likeness and His greatest attribute is Love, should my attitude not reflect that same Love?
Have you considered what affects your choice of attitude on any given day? Certainly, your past will have a bearing on how you choose to embrace the day; the way people treated you yesterday. Your life circumstances will certainly modify how you redirect your outlook. For each of these consider asking yourself why. Why? For what reason should I let yesterday challenge the way I choose to embrace today? How much thought do you give today to the clothing you wore yesterday? Odds are, you do not give one thought to what you wore yesterday. Why? Because that was yesterday. At the end of the day you tossed those soiled clothing items into the hamper.
Today is a new day with fresh clean clothes. The same is true with my attitude. What happened to me yesterday is history. I cannot change the past. I learn from it. Use what will profit me to be a better, stronger person today. But all in all the past goes into the hamper. Today is a fresh start with a fresh clean attitude.
I begin today washing the impurities of yesterday away and down the shower drain. I should also do the same with the impurities of the mind. In fact, I do just that. Many mornings I pray those last two statements while in the shower. “Lord, God Almighty, just as the water and soap is washing the impurities off my body and down the drain, so wash the impurities of my mind, the things that I let bog me down. Wash them away O Lord. Wash them down the drain and forever away from me.”
I choose to have a positive attitude each day. Not only a positive attitude, but also an attitude of gratitude. I am blessed and I know God has a plan for me. His word says His plan is for me to prosper (Jeremiah 29:11). Therefore I know God’s plan and desire for me is good and for good things. Anything that happens otherwise is not from God, but of the world, from my adversary – God’s adversary.
Simply because I choose to have a positive attitude does not mean I do not face negative people and situations. I face them just like everyone. However, with a positive attitude, I know God is with me and will see me through those situations and tough conversations. After all, His plan is to see me prosper – to grow in His likeness. I like that. It gives me reason to smile and have a Great attitude.
Your attitude is much more than how you view the world around you. The truth is the people around you are defining you according to your attitude. Your attitude is how the world sees you.
The choice is yours. The attitude you choose to wear each morning will guide your actions and interactions throughout the day and you will be defined by the attitude you have chosen for yourself.