There is nothing either good or bad

but thinking makes it so.

-William Shakespeare

As the dawn breaks on another season of the Stratford Festival, it's this quote from Hamlet, scene II, act ii, that has my brain careening off in different directions looking for more.   What we think about, we do. Why is such a simple display of attitude driving me mad? Each day we see displays of people thinking the wrong things and choosing the wrong attitudes. Earl Nightengale says, "W e become what we think about."

The man is visibly upset about some perceived wrong and he wants the waiter in the restaurant to suffer for it. So the man starts haranguing the waiter. "We're out of water,..... get more rolls,....the food is cold,......" Each demand more insistent, more rude. The waiter becomes more defensive, more brusque, getting   more flustered as the agonizing dinner stretches to the point of breaking.

I sit, as one of the dinner guests of this man, and am progressively more embarrassed and angered by this man's garroting of the waiter. Does he think treating anyone this way will improve the service he will receive?

Charles Swindoll, American broadcaster says, "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 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 everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. 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!"

The choice of a more positive, more forgiving attitude would have seen my dinner host enjoy not only his meal more, but probably his whole evening, maybe his whole life. What a waste of energy a bad attitude is. How do you react to situations in your life? Which attitude do you choose? The strange thing about my dinner host and probably the thing that bugs me most is that he thought he had won! What attitude will he choose next? To quote Buddha, "The mind is everything. What we think we become." See it, believe it then do it and you'll become great!

Cheers

Steve Rae

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