Attitude Adjustment

Interfaith Celebration Gathering

Attitude Adjustment

Many times in life negativity and negative events seem to come at us so fast that we cannot overcome one trial before the next one arrives. We get tired or we get sick or we get ‘sick and tired’ of being where we are in life. When this happens, we may get a bit depressed, or feel unloved, or get angry with ourselves, others and even God for what is happening in our lives.

There are a few important lessons we can learn to help us through times like these. First, God often throws many projects in our direction that overwhelm us to get us to the point where we turn to God for help rather than using up all our own resources to cope with what is happening or turning to others for help. The lesson here is that we need to learn to turn to God for help and believe in our hearts that God will help us. We also need to learn to turn to God first rather than after we have exhausted all our own resources. God will (if we ask and if we allow it) provide for us, help us cope with all our problems, and guide us through the trials and figurative minefields of our lives. Without God’s help, life can be pretty overwhelming sometimes, can’t it?

Next, we do not have to allow other people’s negativity to stick to us just because they throw it in our direction. Nor do we have to allow someone else’s negativity or bad behavior to trigger us into action by engaging our emotions. We need to learn to put up emotional barriers that do not allow other people’s negativity to change how we feel. Putting up emotional barriers against other people’s negativity can be difficult, especially if we are close to someone who is overwhelmingly negative, but doing so is essential for our own emotional health.

We need to remember that each of us is on this earthly journey to learn, and some of our best and most important lessons are often brought to us by the people around us daily. Just as we may need to learn to detach ourselves from negativity, negative people may need to learn that their negativity turns people away from them. When negative people perceive your barriers and realize that they cannot control your emotions, they generally either go elsewhere to find someone else they can control or they stop and learn the lesson that is there for them to learn.

All of the events in our lives are there for our edification. We can either choose to learn and grow from the lessons presented to us by each event or we can choose to ignore those lessons. God gave us free will to make this choice. However, if we choose not to learn a lesson when it is presented, God is okay with our decision. The lesson will be presented to us again, and again, and again, until we choose to learn it. So, why not wring every ounce of learning out of each event so that we get to move on to more pleasant lessons!

The good news is that once we get in the habit of learning our lessons as they are presented to us, it shows God that we have actually figured out why we are here. At this point God is open to our asking that we be given our lessons in a gentler fashion to learn.

And finally, an event is only negative if we perceive it to be negative. Sometimes all we need is an attitude adjustment in order to be able to see that our lives are not as awful as we might believe them to be. We determine the character of our reality by how we view it. If we are on the ‘pity pot’ and feeling victimized, we will feel that everyone is out to get us, and no one values what we do or who we are. We will see negativity wherever we go, and allow ourselves to be pulled into the other people’s negative vacuum.

But if we focus on what is good about our lives and the many things and people for whom we are thankful, we will find that this adjustment in our attitude not only makes us feel better, but it makes us more pleasant to be around. When we take this one step further and allow the light of God’s love to shine through us to others, we truly begin to feel that all is well in our world, and we can cope with whatever life sends us.

May God add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN