Attitudes
(4 minute read; 808 words)
Thoughts and attitudes are related, but different.
Thoughts are conscious, happen one at a time and are acted on by choice. You can either act on a thought or dismiss it.
Attitudes are ingrained habits of thought that trigger actions and reactions on auto-pilot— without a conscious thought.
When you repeat a pattern of thinking often enough, it gets wired into your brain like a default setting—automatic, effortless, and often unconscious. These ingrained responses shape how we perceive and react to the world, sometimes without even noticing. Breaking a bad habit is hard enough, but breaking a bad attitude can feel like completely rewiring your brain—it sorta is.
Thoughts originate in the head and attitudes are habits of thoughts ingrained in the heart. Both thoughts and attitudes can be changed on the spot, but because attitudes are firmly established and difficult to change, you will have to permanently replace the bad attitudes with good ones to keep them from recurring automatically in the future.
With a thought, you choose to act on it. With an attitude, you don’t even think about acting or reacting in a certain way, it’s just the way you always act and react.
When you repeat a pattern of thinking often enough, it becomes wired into your brain like a default setting—automatic, effortless, and often unconscious. These ingrained mental habits shape how you perceive, interpret, and respond to the world, frequently without even realizing it.
Breaking a bad habit is difficult enough, but changing a bad attitude can feel like rewiring your brain—because, in many ways, it is.
Thoughts originate in the mind, but attitudes are habits of thought that become deeply ingrained in the heart. Both can be changed in an instant, but attitudes are far more established and therefore more resistant to change. Because they operate automatically, simply trying to eliminate a bad attitude is rarely enough. It must be intentionally and consistently replaced with a good one.
Over time, repeated good thoughts produce good attitudes, and good attitudes produce better actions, reactions, relationships, and results. The key is not merely removing the old pattern, but replacing it with a new and better one until it becomes your new default setting.
Attitudes, like thoughts and actions, are either good or bad, but they can’t be both at the same time and can’t be anything other than good or bad and whatever else represents good or bad.
Your attitude affects every aspect of your life—for better or worse. It influences what you think, what you say, what you do, and ultimately the quality of life you experience.
Your attitude affects:
- What you say and how you say it.
- What you do and how you do it.
- What you can do and what you can’t do.
- What you will do and what you won’t do.
- How you treat yourself and how you treat others.
- How you approach the things in life that you want to do, need to do and have to do but might not want to do.
- How you deal with both the good and bad circumstances of life.
- Your job and how well you do it.
- The quality of all your relationships.
- And many more.
In fact, your attitude affects every single aspect of how you live, work and play.
Your attitude affects:
- What you say and how you say it.
- What you do and how you do it.
- What you believe you can do—and what you believe you cannot do.
- What you choose to do—and what you choose not to do.
- How you treat yourself and how you treat others.
- How you approach the things you want to do, need to do, and have to do.
- How you respond to both the successes and setbacks of life.
- Your work and how well you perform it.
- The quality of your relationships.
- Your level of happiness, fulfillment, and peace of mind.
- Your ability to persevere through adversity and challenges.
- The habits you develop and the character you build.
In short, your attitude influences nearly every thought, action, reaction, decision, relationship, and result in your life. Change your attitude, and you begin to change your life.
A good attitude makes you look better, feel better, act better and do better.
It sharpens how you sound, improves how you communicate, elevates how you live and love, and enhances how you work, lead, play, perform and get along with others.
Everything is “better” with a good attitude.
When your attitudes are “bad,” everyone knows it. They know what triggers your attitudes and the behaviors they produce and can see them coming from a mile away. Examples: When you are angry, short tempered, impatient, negative & pessimistic, defensive, moody, argumentative, easily offended, making excuses, dismissive or uncoachable, or a combination of many of these and more, etc.
The most dangerous part of a bad attitude isn’t that others hear it and see it—it’s that you don’t.
When your attitudes are bad, everyone around you usually knows it. They can often identify the triggers, predict the behaviors, and see the reactions coming long before you do.
Whether it shows up as anger, impatience, negativity, pessimism, defensiveness, moodiness, argumentativeness, being easily offended, making excuses, being dismissive, uncoachable, or some combination of these traits, a bad attitude rarely stays hidden for long.
Others hear it in your words, see it in your actions, and feel it in your interactions.
The most dangerous part of a bad attitude is not that others can see it—it is that you often cannot. Like a blind spot in a mirror, it affects everything around you while remaining largely invisible to you.
That is why self-awareness is so important. You cannot change what you refuse to recognize, and you cannot correct what you are unwilling to acknowledge.
A bad attitude hurts you long before it hurts anyone else. It influences your thinking, damages your relationships, limits your opportunities, and lowers your quality of life.
The first step to changing a bad attitude is seeing it for what it is. The second is choosing a better default setting for your attitudes.
The most important thing about attitudes is that they shape and define the “content” of your character. Attitudes are the “characteristics” of your character, revealing your identity… defining who (or whose) you are and how you will act and react— and these habits and behavior are learned through frequent repetition.
“Always guard your heart because everything you (say and) do ‘automatically’ flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23 EXB); emphasis added. Be intentional about what attitudes are allowed in your heart; only good. Reject the rest.
Although God’s standard for our thoughts, attitudes and actions is perfection, in this world, we are not perfect in any shape, form or fashion. As a believer, one day you will be; all believers will through glorification. But until the day of the Lord arrives, let your goal be to “have a good attitude about most things most of the time.”
Although God’s standard for our thoughts, attitudes, and actions is perfection, none of us is perfect in this life. One day, every believer will be made perfect through sanctification and glorification. But until that day arrives, let your goal be simple:
Have a good attitude about most things, most of the time.
When you fail—and you will—recognize it, repent of it, learn from it, and get back on track.
Most means ‘almost all,’ so you could say, have a good attitude about ‘almost all things almost all of the time.’ That is achievable with ongoing awareness of your attitudes and actions and quick attitude adjustments, before and after they rear their ugly heads.
You can either be the master or the victim of your attitudes.
Be the master!
Notable Thoughts About Attitudes
“When you hear or see a person’s attitude you are literally hearing and seeing the content of his or her character on display.” – James Allen, As a Man Thinketh; emphasis added.
“Have a good attitude about most things, most of the time or even almost all things almost all of the time.” RAC
Memorize this rule:
Rule #5 – Habits of thought repeated frequently enough become ingrained as attitudes that trigger actions and reactions, your behavior, on autopilot—without a conscious thought.
The Gospel Truth App 