Our attitudes caused by..?
Our attitude can be based on politics, the weather, the way people treat us, or a whole lot of other things.
Or...it could be whatever we choose it to be.
When we allow our attitude to be determined by
- other folks,
- what’s on the nightly news, or
- random circumstances…
it can be volatile, undependable, and not very productive!
With all the media “news” these days I often find myself challenged.
A good question for us to ponder might be “Which came first, the news OR the news cycle?”
What if those ubiquitous videos, accompanied by those talking heads, aren’t merely reporting the news, but causing it? The journalistic phrase “if it bleeds, it leads” is familiar to most of us.
Yet the world is actually safer (per capita) than ever before in recorded history. And even so, people are more frightened. The rise of our fear matches the rise of the media. And the media seems to want urgency more than importance. And sometimes more than truth!
We can choose to turn off the media, to choose our own attitude, independent of what’s happening around us. We don’t have to hook ourselves up to those devices that are sending us into a fear-based mindset.
Or we can follow the idea in this prayer…
Our attitude is the lens through which we see life. There’s nothing that should force us to adopt one particular attitude over another. Perhaps if we’re not quite ready for a positive take, we might choose a neutral one? One that allows us some critical thinking time or some additional information?
What do you do to counter the negativity that you encounter?
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I breathe, I pray, and I look around my community to see what is mine to do.