Life: Thoughts – Actions and Reactions – Habits – Attitudes – Character – Identity – Roles You Play – Quality of Life You Live
Everything you say and do begins with the way you choose to think.
Your “thoughts” produce actions and reactions; your behavior— and in any given moment you are either behaving or misbehaving. It is classic “cause and effect.” Thoughts are the causes and your behaviors are the effects.
Actions are what you say, how you say it, and what you do.
Reactions are what you say and do in response to what someone else says or does and how you respond to the things that happen in your daily life— the situations, the circumstances, the trials and tribulations.
Your thoughts and actions become habits which repeated frequently enough become ingrained as attitudes that trigger actions and reactions on autopilot. Thoughts originate in the mind and can either be acted on or dismissed. Attitudes are ingrained in the heart and trigger behaviors automatically, without a conscious thought.
Your attitudes shape and define the content of your character.
Character is the sum of your thoughts, attitudes and actions that are either good or bad, but 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. For example: positive (good) or negative (bad), optimistic or pessimistic, friendly or unfriendly, happy or unhappy, enthusiastic or apathetic, respectful or disrespectful, Christlike or not — and many, many more.
Good behavior should be in-character, your default factory setting, and bad behavior should be out-of-character; they don’t happen very often and don’t last very long.
Your character reveals your identity — “identifying” the person you really are. It is made up of the distinguishing “characteristics” (attitudes) and personality of you as a one-of-a-kind individual and dictate how you live your life. In essence, it’s the attitude modifiers, which shape and define the content of your character. The key factor in your identity is not who you are and what you have done, but whose you are in Christ and what He has done for you.
Your character also influences the many important roles you play in life and the quality of life you live each day.
The roles you play refer to the different positions, responsibilities, and relationships you have — such as parent, spouse, friend, employee, coach, leader, student, teacher, neighbor, Christian, and many more — each involving certain behaviors, duties, and expectations. Your thoughts and attitudes play an important part in the roles you live out each day.
Your quality of life is the goodness (righteous actions) produced by the way you live, indicating how satisfied you are with your physical, mental, social, spiritual and economic conditions, as well as your ability to live a fulfilling and meaningful life, all which are reflections of your thoughts, attitudes, character and identity.
And this is how life works.
Now, let’s break them down in 8 attitude rules.
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