Funny, I just saw this quote on the doctor’s office wall on Friday and it’s stuck with me since then… (thank goodness for the internet and goodsearch.com, it was easy to find again!)
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, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, 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 everyday 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% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.
-Charles Swindoll
And today this came up on my homepage as my horoscope:
You have much more power than you think you do — just with positive thinking, you can create a good day today, no matter how the morning starts. It’s important that you not let how you feel when you wake up dictate how you feel throughout your day. The day’s events are not set in stone. As each minute ticks by, you can take it and make it what you want it to be. Your brilliance is apparent when you turn a cloudy day into a sunshiny one.
So, although I’m not a big believer in horoscopes, I thought it was interesting that these two things popped into my line of vision very closely to each other.
Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something!
Tony Caselli 
You *know* I’ve been trying hard to beat this into my own head, but some days I just don’t believe it. Like some days I feel as if saying “attitude is more important than facts” is like saying that how you dress is more important than how hard you work.
I know that it’s a tool for my own crazy head– that no one really thinks that attitude will cover for faulty facts in the long run, but that I can be happy if I act happy even if I don’t have an empirical reason to be happy, but still… I guess I’m just being pissy. Probably hormones 🙂 🙂 🙂
But I’m a facts girl. I don’t want the world to be all about attitude and appearance. I do think I can make myself feel better by acting happy though… so after advocating for it… I’ve become conflicted.
I thought this one might get you!
My two cents on your two cents:
I agree – you can’t take the “Attitude is everything” plan as an entire, %100 of life thing. Those people aren’t “positive”, they’re out of touch with reality. However, I truly do believe in the power of positive thinking. I think that when things happen we have two responses:
1) Oh, Jesus, that sucked! Now we’re screwed. Nothing will ever be good again. That’s it. There’s no hope. I will now wallow for as long as I draw breath. I give up. I wanted something to happen, something else happened, and I’m pissed, disappointed and embarassed, so I quit.
2) Oh, Jesus, that sucked! Okay, so plan A didn’t work. What do we do now? How do we continue moving forward? What’s the new world around us after the new development, and how can we shape the new world into what we want it to be?
For me, that’s the gist (Jist?) of the whole “What we can control is our attitude” thing. I TRY to take attitude #2 when I can. I don’t always succeed, but…
You’re right, though: It’s not covering for faulty facts, or letting poor workers continue to work poorly because they dress nicely: people still have to deliver! It’s not putting on blinders and shouting “everything is fine” when the place is burning down. It IS, for me, looking at those situations and solving them and moving forward in a positive manner, instead of letting the negativity that can come from them consume me. (I’m just as capable as spewing negativity as anyone else. In fact, with an Italian and Scottish heritage, I’m good at it: grudges are a part of my genetic makeup! 🙂 However, I’d rather be a force for positive change.)
Wow. Long answer. I’m feeling kinda rambly today! 🙂