Speaking of Attitude

Harmony in Life, my next door gift shop.

Below was my horoscope, and Elissa's, on 14 September. It's not only aging and attitude, as I wrote in my last blog, it's "attitude" across the board! This is from "The Daily Om," an online meditation site Elissa sent me.

September 14, 2011
A Positive Shift
Pisces Daily Horoscope
You may be focused on a misperception of lack and feeling gloomy today. Perhaps you are feeling down about your finances or struggling with negative thoughts. If you have been seeing the glass half-empty rather than half-full lately, you might benefit from choosing to see your situation from a different perspective. While struggles will happen occasionally, you can get through them easily if you adopt a positive mind-set. By understanding that you can choose how you want to feel in each moment, you can learn to change your mood by using the power of your thoughts and intentions. Even if nothing has changed about your situation, you can feel happier and more in control today.

When we choose our mind-set, rather than allow ourselves to be influenced by our circumstances, we empower ourselves. In the midst of difficulties, it is easy to allow our frustration to turn into pessimism. If we can remember that pessimism only makes a situation worse, we can choose to focus our thoughts on what's positive about our circumstances. While this may not solve all of our problems, it can help us feel better while we deal with our situation. If we consistently focus our thoughts on what’s positive about our situation, we eventually begin to experience only the positive—and a negative situation becomes a positive one. Concentrate on what is positive about your life today, and you will create a more positive reality.

In Ukraine, where pessimism reigns, and I understand why, having a positive attitude made all the difference in modeling and mentoring positive behavior for social change from the bottom up. It was as if I had the opportunity, being a PCV, to put ideas into practice, theory into reality. And it worked, and still does, most of the time. It 's attitude, and it cuts across cultures, age, and even to a big extent, the circumstances of our lives. It sounds facile sometimes, when so many people are struggling to make it through another day, make it through life itself. But the alternative--negativity, pessimism, woe is me--doesn't work either. I remind myself of this every day, when things seem tough, politics gets me down (and it has lately), and the hope for change seems dim. It begins with "empowering" ourselves; then we can empower others.