“As a man thinks in his heart, so is he…”
Proverbs 23:7
Circumstances do not make the man; they reveal him to himself.
James Allen was right! A good friend/mentor of mine named Adrian Despres, an itinerant evangelist for KBM, once told me, "What you are behind the wheel is who you really are!" How true is that!
Dr. Victor Frankl (interview), survivor of three grim years at Auschwitz and other Nazi prisons, recorded his observations on life in Hitler’s camps:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread. They have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way (Man's Search for Meaning, Wikipedia).
If your attitude is not what it should be, you can change it, and by doing so, you will change your life-for you will make it possible for you to be what you want to be! I have always loved the quote by Chuck Swindoll on Attitude:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.
Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness, or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
Attitude is everything.
- More people fail through faulty mental attitudes than in any other way.
- Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond to it.
With attitude being so important, the remarkable thing is, we get to choose the attitude we will embrace every day! Do you believe that you get to choose your attitude? If so, what are you doing about it?