Attitude

Choose your attitude. Your choice of attitude can decide the outcome of your life. Negative thoughts have no power unless you empower them.

Write a list of blessings and keep them handy to read when you are attacked with “negative thoughts.
—Sheri Rose Shepherd

The Outcome

Jerome K. Jerome was a British writer whose father died when he was 12, and at 14 he had to go to work to support his mother and sister. His life got even harder when his mother died, but after many different jobs, the end result was that he became a writer—not of sad stories, but a famous humorist, writing funny stories to encourage others. After such a hard beginning in life, he said, “It is from the struggle, not the victory, that we gain strength.”

--Maria Fontaine

There is enough good and bad in everyone’s life—ample sorrow and happiness, sufficient joy and pain—to find a rational basis for either optimism or pessimism. You can choose to laugh or cry, bless or curse. It’s your decision: From which perspective do you want to view life? Will you look up in hope or down in despair?

An optimistic attitude is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. The way you look at life will determine how you feel, how you perform, and how well you get along with other people. Conversely, negative thoughts, attitudes, and expectations feed on themselves; they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pessimism creates a dismal place where no one wants to live. The only thing more powerful than negativism is a positive affirmation.
—Rich DeVos, co-founder of the U.S.-based firm Amway and owner of NBA Orlando Magic

If you want to have a change in attitude, ask the Lord to show you the good side, the beneficial side, the favorable side, the positive side to situations. For everything that happens in the life of a Christian, there is a reason, and there is help from Above.

So if you feel you are getting swamped with negative thoughts, that you can’t help but think in a despairing, hopeless way, ask the Lord to show you the “upside” of the things that are happening to you.
The Bible says in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Do you love God? Then that promise is for you! For you He can turn bad to good and help you find the silver lining in any cloud He allows to overshadow you. So don’t let those clouds stay there for long! Look for the good, and God will help you find it.

—David Brandt Berg

Always be full of joy in the Lord; I say it again, rejoice.

—The Bible, Philippians 4:4