"You are today what you thought about yesterday You will be tomorrow what you think about today, Every attitude is positive or negative, It doesn't matter what happens to you, It is how you take it that matters."

"In the game of life you can be up one moment and down the next. The reason is not luck as in snakes and ladders, but the attitudes you choose consciously or unconsciously."

Your attitude will determine your entire outlook on life and how you see the world- happy or sad, positive or negative. You can choose to see it through rose-coloured spectacles (the eternal optimist who is out of touch with reality). You can also see everything as dark clouds (the absolute pes- simist), or choose to see that every dark cloud has a silver lining, which is a good attitude to have. Well it's true anyway!

I am the eternal optimist, out of touch, some say. Some people pick up the doom and gloom portrayed by news- papers and the media and transfer it to their own daily living. Attitude clouds verything that happens to you and how you react to situations, crises, etc.

Your attitude is your perception of an event- it is your reality. You may perceive a certain situation to be a disaster, while another person may see it differently, as a positive oppor- tunity for trying something new: e.g.. on redundancy or job loss or loss of a relationship.

As we have seen, one's attitude is closely related to your self-image and it is probably the most critical factor in deter- mining how successful or how happy you will be in life. The inner attitude you have about yourself will determine your level of success far more than the skills and training you have ever received.

1. YOUR ATTITUDE DETERMINES YOUR DESTINY

Personally, due to a traumatic event some years ago, my self-image was severely knocked, which impacted on my attitude for quite a length of time. This was passed onto my wife, who suffered a severe emotional crisis. Our neg- ative attitudes, together with extraneous circumstances, made life very difficult and stressful, leading to misjudge- ments, personal trauma and an inability to make decisions.

However, entirely on our own, we have lifted ourselves and bit by bit, regained our normal positive attitudes, which has enabled us to achieve wonders and a happy life- style.

2. THE FACTORY OF THE MIND

Your thoughts become your beliefs, and your thoughts determine whether "good" (positive), or "bad" (negative) messages are sent from the brain to the rest of your body. There is a complex relationship between the mind and the body. Physical disorders are caused by your state of mind. What you think can literally make you sick or healthy. The attitude you hold about yourself can give rise to feel- ings of joy, despair, anger, rage, etc. and can even cause heart disease, asthma, and ulcers known as psychosomatic illnesses).

The attitude you hold about yourself also affects your relation- ships with other people. After a divorce, when a person's confidence is at a low level and they may feel a failure, they are more likely to die of certain medical disorders (because their mental powers of resistance and self-esteem are low).

"The greatest

Positive thoughts produce positive results, and negative thoughts produce negative results. We should try to under- stand how our thoughts arise and are influenced; they come into the brain from what we hear, what we see, what we read and what we say to ourselves.

We get our thoughts/attitudes from the media, those with whom we mix and through self-talk. Negative people are the product of a negative environment. Self-talk is what we say to ourselves all day long. A number of sportsmen use this technique to stay positive. Sports psychologists also use it.
(See my book on sports psychology called 'The Winning Mind'). Plug,plug !

Some people, on learning that they have cancer, have been known to go into shock and die. There have also been cases of people whom, expected to die far sooner by their doctors, have willed themselves to stay alive for an event like the birth of a grandchild. Australian aborigines can subconsciously will themselves to die when the bones point to them (known as voodoo). Or is it a hoodoo perhaps!

Optimism and pessimism are learned attitudinal behaviours and they can be relearned. We need to constantly monitor our inner navigational system, our attitudes to make our own course corrections. Negative thinking cripples the mind, like polio cripples the body. The cure is positive thinking- a positive outlook for opportunities does wonders for one's attitude. Many discoveries or luck come by chance. SEREN- DIPITY is the faculty of making happy and unexpected dis- coveries by accident. Do try anything!

WHAT IS your outlook on life - happy or sad? Remember what you believe in normally happens. In other words, "YOU GET WHAT YOU EXPECT". This is known as self-fulfil- ling prophecies, so top golfers expect to hole their putts and are surprised when they don't.

Be ENTHUSIASTIC - walk, talk and act enthusiastically and you will find that it is contagious and that people will be at- tracted to you.

SUMMARY

1. Attitudes are more important than facts.

2. How you take it is more important than what happens.

3. Attitude acts as a selective filter affecting perception : we choose to see the best or worst in any situation.

AS WE THINK, SO SHALL WE BECOME

We are not as we think we are, but as we think- the quality of our thinking is more important than what we think about. How we think is our strangest secret.

If your goal is wealth, but your thinking is poverty-stricken, your attitude will cancel out the achievement of your goal. If your goal is health and you choose healthy thoughts, you will realise your goal. NB: Attitudes beat facts every time.

"We need to be beneficiaries of our attitudes, not victims." "Our attitude determines our altitude".

Craig Lock has written extensively on the subject of personal success, as well as doing much studying in the field of self help. The various books* that I "felt inspired to write" are available at:
http://www.novelty-gift.com/ebooks.html