Insights & Wisdoms

Happy New Year! So how are you? – Own your right to choose your thoughts this year 2012

2012-01-07T21:55:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! How are you? Hope you are maintaining that right mind to make the most of your prerogative to enjoy the blessings you already have and you are about to have this year.

It’s been a week since year 2012 started. Everybody is back to their normal everyday life but most of us are probably still can’t get enough of the holiday rest we just had.

Last year, I wrote a blog about Two Powerful Tools to Achieve More Blessings for 2011. In my own opinion, that was so far, the best blog I ever wrote – not that I have so many anyway. :) I just poured out my passion in inspiring people through that writing. So just in case you would like to check it out again, please go to this link – http://jembestroinsightandwisdom.blogspot.com/2010/12/two-powerful-tools-to-achieve-more.html

This New Year blog that I’m sharing with you now is more of a reminder of that writing. We, humans, tend to be forgetful most of the time. We are creature of emotions that we are only focused of what we are feeling right at this moment. This is more like human nature that causes us to throw things we have learned out of the window most of the time. I say most of the time and not all the time because I believe that there are also a lot of people who have already mastered how to stay focused on what is positive regardless if they are feeling bad as of the moment – And I hope all of us are like these people.

As much as we don’t have to deny our negative feelings such as sadness, frustrations, hopelessness, etc. We still have to learn how to go pass through those emotions because at the end of the day, the choice is still ours whether we would dwell on those destructing feelings or not. This reminds me of the status of one of my workmates before that says “Kung may pinagdadaanan ka, daanan mo lang wag mong tambayan” (If you are going through something – in this case, problems – just go through it and don’t dare to take a coffee break there hehe). I’m not sure if those are the exact words but the context is the same.

And as I have written in my last year’s New Year blog, we must stay grateful amidst trials. Gratitude is still, and will always be one of the best tools to welcome more blessings and good events to our lives.

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” – Proverbs 17:22

God himself is telling us how maintaining a cheerful attitude can help us live life longer and happier. And a person with grateful heart is definitely a happy person as well. Dwelling on unhealthy thoughts will give us no good at all.

When you are already grateful, this can easily lead you to the second tool I shared last year to acquire more blessings, and that is Positive Expectation. With a grateful heart, we can easily expect more favorable things to happen in our lives. We already know the importance of holding tighter to our faith but little did we know that being grateful is also an actual expression of faith, and thus, positive expectation. According to Sean Rasmussen, author of “The Secret Law of Attraction”, “The man who can be sincerely thankful for the things which he owns in imagination only has real faith”. It’s clear then that a man who is already thankful for the things he is still not yet having is already expressing real faith. How easier can it be then to expect more if we are already thankful for what we ALREADY HAVE. It’s definitely easier, isn’t it? :) So does expecting more.

Grateful mind --> expects good things --> Faith (Belief)

Let’s stay focused then on being grateful of what we already have. If you think you don’t have any, my question would be “Did you wake up this morning?” The answer is definitely yes since you are reading this right now, so that alone is something to be grateful for. Each morning gives us an opportunity to make the most of our life. So might as well take advantage of it. And let us all never hesitate to expect more because we all deserve them.

In my last year’s blog as well, I mentioned that I will share how to write goals in each area of your life. This is not something tedious that you have to maintain everyday but you definitely have to read regularly, or rather every day. This is apart from writing things that you are thankful for. But I will share that in another blog hopefully soon (hope I can impart something uplifting with you regularly so I think I need something to work out on myself as well – and that is to forget the thought wala ako sa mood (I’m not in the mood) haha! I hope that it will help you in any way it can.

Let us all remember to start our year right. So “How are you?” will be a question that we can always answer with the word “Great!” or “Very good” instead of the usual “Ok lang”

God bless us all! Until next time..

Julie Embestro

Happy Birthday to her!

2011-07-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

“Happy Birthday!” I smiled as I greeted her yesterday. Another year of her life has passed and now she will be starting another year and hopefully more to fulfill her life with beautiful things life can offer. Usual days might turn out as ordinary as they were like doing routine of duties and responsibilities in her regular days but she is definitely excited to expect more blessings to come. And so this is my thought as I was looking at my reflection while combing my hair.. (Alright, enough of the drama! Hehe)

I turned officially 27 years old yesterday as I celebrated an ordinary rainy and yet peaceful birthday. I guess yesterday was one of the most fulfilling birthday I had. No special and yet usual party celebration happened. No cake, no ice cream, and even my favorite food was absent (this is very unique – spaghetti ;P) and more? No gifts. :( Totally no celebration at all. Nada!

Maybe you are wondering “But Julie.. Are you kidding me? How can it be one of the fulfilling birthdays for you?” But it is! Why? No expenses haha! Yes, it really is. And I want to share why.

Yesterday gave me a time to reflect about all the things that happened in my life for these past months. We are now living in a new place. Moving to a new home has a lot of worries and responsibilities with it beyond excitement to have a new and refreshing house. Aside from the tiredness I felt in arranging and taking care of all the things we need to take care of, my family and I just realized the things we need for our new house, which we never thought were necessary before. Apart from the things we have to buy for the house, I had to make a new budgeting plan for all our expenses every month, which includes rent payment (we were not paying house rent in our old place and a different arrangement were agreed).

However, all of these concerns gave me and my family a sense of peace and refreshing start. I personally had a lot of worries before we ended up with this new house. Not to mention the worries I had after we were already settled here. And as I have faithfully expected, everything is in order now.

Yesterday, we were all complete here at home just relaxing. My mother was here (she is still working and staying in her employers’ place) and we had another precious moment of just sipping the chocolate drink she prepared for us while it was raining outside. I’m not intending to make this writing so long so I guess I don’t need to explain more. I guess you are already getting the idea why I had a fulfilling birthday yesterday despite that the word “party” was not linked to the word “Birthday”. As simple as it is, yesterday was truly just a Birth Day – just a usual reminder of the date of my birth. But no matter how simple it was, it didn’t stopped me to feel so good and be thankful for the blessings I received for the past months of my life since my birthday last year. For some of the people who might read this who have no idea of what I'm talking about, we never thought that we will be able to afford moving to a renting apartment knowing our struggles before. My close friends definitely know what I am talking about as we had lived a difficult life.

As we are all moving on with our lives being open to changes, we are also accepting challenges and some discomforts that usually come with changes. Yet, these changes are the exact element that gives us opportunity to get even stronger and express our faith more. It is really by allowing changes in our life is what makes us move on to what we truly believe and what we want to fulfill. And as long as we are thankful for all the blessings we are receiving, we will get more of what we want more than we expect possible. And like what Madam Ana from the drama series “100 Days to Heaven” said, “Huwag ka ng mangwestyon, magpasalamat ka na lang sa mga blessings na natatanggap mo” (Don’t ask for reasons, just be thankful with the blessings you are receiving).

You wouldn’t imagine the fear that enfolded me because of this simple change in my life but after conquering it, it made me realized about the great things that come with it that are definitely bigger than my fear itself. Some of those things are the opportunity to enjoy the space in our house, the comfort of this home, and the good smile of our new neighbors.

Just enjoying life and following your bliss are really powerful tools to have more from life more than we know possible. So again, life taught me to stay focus on blessings and now I’m amazed again by realizing how blessed I am.

I am even happy now that I have the ability and means to share parts of me through my writings.

God bless everyone and keep on enjoying your lives. Just be thankful and enjoy YOU!

Who knows? Maybe one day I will share a story about moving to a new place again – in a house property that we can call our own.

So it is truly a HAPPY BIRTHDAY for me. :)

P.S.

And hey! Just before I forget, greetings and wonderful wishes from friends and family are just some of the best gifts we can receive, because we know we are loved. :)

Two Powerful Tools to Achieve More Blessings in 2011!

2010-12-31T20:24:00.000-08:00

Goodbye 2010...

Welcome 2011!!

Another year has passed. Now we're all done with the last traditional holidays of the year as we are shifting our gear to halt from left and right parties, exchange gifts, luscious foods and wines, not to mention lots of sweets, and we can go on and on (Bye bye diet! Visit me again next year). Some of us feel like we took a great vacation in a wonderful land of imagination and then we suddenly woke up facing reality of the beginning of a new year, and for employees, let's admit that this would mean going back to stress of work and regular days of facing one duty after another. But hey! This is okay but a not good way to start a year. After coming to realization of facing regular days of traffic among other things, let's start the year right. And this can be done with the right set of mind.

I believe that there are already millions of people who are taking advantage of their innate power to program themselves to have the right attitude and motivation to focus on positive things. This made them aim for goals, make a list of them, and even pray for them excitedly despite of all the fears seeking holes to their hearts. As the famous saying goes -- Feel the fear and do it anyway.

But for those people who were carried away by imitating 'My Amnesia Girl' (A movie by John Lloyd Cruz and Toni Gonzaga), please allow me to remind you of the Two Powerful Tools to get more blessings this coming year.

First Tool: Gratitude

After Christmas, one of our friends took a 4-day vacation in our house just to take advantage of our free time to bond and enjoy the holiday vacation. Along with some of our other friends from our neighborhood, we went to the mall, watched a movie, ate out, and even had a good time enjoying the games we played with my little 3-year-old niece and a friend's 5-year old son. But other than these activities, I believe that one of the things we can treasure most is the fun bonding we had at home just watching movies in the internet and having a good chat after a meal talking about so many things that gave us a very good laugh. Spending time with my family and friends at home is one of the moments that I can treasure a lot for the rest of my life. We actually don't have to spend much but we can still have the same enormous amount of time together.

After our friend went home before New Year's evening, it made me realized things that I'm thankful about for this year as I went through my goals evaluation (I'm writing simple goals each year in each area of my life before the start of the year and I'm making a review and evaluation for each goal before the end of that year. I wish to share how this is being done with you some other time) . Below are just 10 of the things that I'm so grateful about this year:

1. The new profound wisdom and knowledge I have learned
2. The great and stronger relationship I had with God, with my family, dear friends, and relatives for the whole year
3. The good health of my family
4. My job and the good relationship I had with the people I've worked with and still working with
5. Extra income
6. Very good resources I got that helped me achieved some of my goals and the resources of good people I just had the last quarter of the year
7. My savings account
8. The new business that I still have to learn and work out (I'm happy that I can at least, able to start with something)
9. My new piano (the fact that I can still focus to continue on improving my music skill makes me excited)
10. My new company laptop (though it's not mine and didn't ask for it, I still have a good appreciation for it)

I can go on and on and on and I bet that I can still make more list of things that I'm thankful about for year 2010 and I know that if all of us will take time to think of good things that happened to us this year 2010, we can all come up with more than 10, more than 20, 30 and even more than a hundred! Just the fact that I was still able to wake up in this morning is already a blessing to start with on my new list.

Gratitude seems a cliché to mention here but people tend to forget, maybe not literally, but subconsciously. So staying in touch with memory of this one important character - right focus - is all we need. We can always use the principle of using a compass. We all know that compass always points to north. Our emotion or feeling is the compass while the directions are our point of focus. But compare to compass, our feelings don't tend to stay in one direction (in case of compass, pointing in north direction), whenever we are going back to a certain situation that we just encountered. So we need to have a good grip of right focus to stay on track. We just have to always go back to ourselves and hold on to our faith in God and in what we can do.

You can try this one simple exercise of spending 10 to 15 minutes of self-conditioning, which means not letting yourself be bothered by problems or negative concerns. You can do this by listening to a soft music or just by walking by yourself (you can always try something that fits your personality and preferences). Then after this, try to list down good things that happened to you, regardless if it's something spectacular or not. Just write everything down no matter how silly it may be. Keep on writing and don't stop until you reach 10 and then 15 and then 20 until you already felt good and your emotion is already pointing toward something positive. This is just one way of turning your focus to the right direction. If you are not able to write down at least 10 things to be thankful, it only means that you are being hard to yourself. Most of our pains are self-infliction because those pains will no longer be pains for us if we are no longer focusing on them. And sometimes, people tend to focus on what they don't have yet that they are missing the great possibility presented to them already.

It's better to count coins than stones so keep on counting your blessings!

Second Tool: Positive Expectation

Let me tell you a story with a concept that is not originally mine. I heard this kind of story when I was a kid and this is one of the stories that stuck in my mind. In case it may be familiar with you - although not exactly the way you remember it - please bear with me as I am telling this from a memory with a lot of modification that I invented myself to suit our topic (Haha! Speaking about imagination).

The Love Potion

Once there was a man who is in love with the new girl in their town. We can call him by the name Tope, (please pretend that you are not getting the idea that it came from the word "Torpe" - a Filipino word for a guy who's coward in confessing his love for a girl) . Being a very shy person he is, Tope doesn't have a courage to let the girl know about his feeling. If only he can speak to her freely just to be able to talk to her and be near her but he can't. He knows that a lot of guys are already pursuing her and he admires their guts to do so. He's afraid that the girl will not like him or will not even look at him since there are a lot of guys getting her attention already.

One night, as Tope is walking home through the woods, he heard a plea from a voice of an old man asking for help. He stopped and looked around but saw nothing since it's very dark. He continued on walking but there came the voice again asking for help, "Please help me!". Tope looked around him again and saw something moving just behind the bush. He held up his lamp and took a hard look at the spot where he noticed something. Again came the voice, "Please young man help me, I'm stuck!". Tope slowly walks closer to the voice despite of the fear his feeling. He heard about some burglars roaming around the woods at night.
"Who are you?"

"Please come help me, my foot got stuck in this log."

Tope quickly approached the old man and helped him removed his one foot from a fallen log.
"My lamp is already empty with oil and I couldn't see my way. Then I just tripped and couldn't remove my feet from this log.. Thanks for helping me." said the old man.
"It's alright. Why are you still walking around the woods at this hour? it's dangerous." asked Tope. "You can have my lamp sir so you can go home safe."

"You are so kind to offer your own lamp despite of knowing the danger of this wood." the old man smiled. "You might trip yourself as well on your way home or worse."

"It's alright sir." Tope smiled back but it gives him a little worry thinking he has to walk home like a blind and has to brave himself of the danger.
"I can't have it without anything to give you in return so please let me know what you want most at this point of your life"

"Ah, please never mind that sir. I'm a simple man and satisfied with life as it is. I don't have anything to ask for." answered Tope.
"Nothing can satisfy no one. Regardless if they are aware of it or not, people keep on asking for something. There must be something that you would really love to have right now." the old man smiles as he is saying this.

Tope thought hard and the girl he's longing for just popped into his head. But he instantly brushed the idea away. "Nah, you can't help me with it." he said thoughtfully not aware that he said it out loud.
"What is it? Why don't you try me?" the old man amusingly insisted.
"Oh no, it's nothing. I will definitely be the only one who can help myself with that." and he laughed. "You see, there is this woman I fell in love with but I think I've got no chance with a woman like her. She's beautiful and attractive that a lot of guys swooned by her." he added scratching his head.
"Why? Are they better for her than you?" asked the old man.
"To be honest I don't know. It's just that I can't make myself approach her and try to pursue her (smiles). But yes, just forget it. I appreciate your offer of giving me something in exchange of my lamp but I'm afraid you can't help me with it. You can just take my lamp and let's just both head home". Tope dismissed the conversation feeling awkward talking about his desire. He gave his lamp to the old man and started to walk home but the old man stopped him.
"Wait! You might not believe me but I have something that can help you solve your problem." Tope curiously faced the old man. "Seriously sir, I still think that no one can help me but myself".

"I completely agree with you. But you may take this bottle of potion that I have here. It's called Love Potion. " and he handed it to Tope. "Just put a drop of it in your right point finger and you will instantly make the woman you love be interested with you and eventually fall in love with you."

"Haha! Oh my.. This is ridiculous! I really appreciate this sir but I don't believe in this stuff." embarrassed, he laughed and tried to hand back the bottle with a colorless liquid in it that seems just like a water.
"Nobody knows that I gave it to you and there's no harm if you'll try it. You can give it back to me here if it will not work. But I guarantee you that it's effective." and the old man left.

The next day, Tope blankly feeling the bottle in his hand as he is staring seriously to the woman he loves from afar. And as instructed by the old man, he dropped a small amount of liquid from the bottle given to him to his point finger and he approached the woman.

To make the story short, Tope got the gut to talk to the girl he's longing for after he followed what the old man told him. The woman returned his love after just a short time of pouring his great love for her. And like how the fairy tales end, they lived happily ever after!

But hey! Let me still tell you what happened before Tope went to cloud 9 completely. He went back to the woods and found the old man. He told him his deep gratitude of giving him the love potion and now he'd like to return it back thinking that he already got what he's dreaming for and that he will be not needing the love potion anymore. But the old man told him the unexpected thing.
"You can keep it. I can still have more of it anytime I want to. And just in case you also want more of it for yourself, you can also have more than you want." he smiled. "You see, it's just an ordinary water that I put in that little bottle. It has no magic or anything for that matter. Sometimes, we people, are still looking for something supernatural when the miracle is already within us. No matter how aware we are of this thing already, we still tend to rely on things outside us".

And the old man walked away.

We can see in this story that the old man just prodded Tope to use something that he already has. Tope bravely tried the love potion because he somehow believed the unbelievable without realizing that he already has the power of potion within him.

This is same with expectation as it is fueled by belief. When we believe something, it will certainly manifest in our lives. Usually, the more emotion we put in that belief we have, the more we will act on it. We might not realize it most of the time but expectation has a great power in itself that it has no care whether it's positive or negative. It's like expecting to be sick and suddenly you'll get sick. It comes from different level more than a psychological matter as we always put it. But yes, mind has something to do with it - and of course our emotion. This is why I specifically putting it as Positive Expectation. Like a coin, expectation has two face that we can choose from. So like Tope, we must expect and believe positively. And to do that, we don't need to use a tool to use the power of it since it's already a tool itself. We just have to go back to ourselves (our heart), and with the right mind, we can always welcome positive things to happen to us.

"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step" - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

If you can't take the first step toward something you want to achieve this year because of fear or doubt, then you are expecting negatively and thus, attracting negatively. Not to mention that you are also having a negative belief about yourself.

One of the best things in life is enjoying the moment of it more than running hurriedly toward it's destination. A lot of successful people are aware of this. With this thought, we are lessening fear that causes negative expectation.

So let us all expect positively and always start our day with good expectation starting this year. We are all a product of our own thinking so we'd rather focus on something that will make us feel beautiful than focus on something that eats up our soul.

We are all already blessed more than we think we are. Just being able to wake up in the morning and open your computer is already a lot of blessing. Isn't it even nice, that you are able to write in your Facebook status that you had a good night sleep?

So let's start the year right.

Be grateful and expect something more to be grateful!

God bless us all! Until next time..

Walks of Life: What Makes Life Worth Living For?

2010-07-31T08:50:00.000-07:00

It's been over seven months since my last entry to this blog. And it was actually the first day of the first month of this year. And now, I'm very excited to write again to bring new way of sharing things through this blog.

I believe that all us value our privacy in one point or another. That's why most of us don't like the idea of writing down our everyday experiences because of fear of being exposed to other people. We just hate the idea of revealing all our experiences especially our secrets. This reminds me of one song by Britney Spears entitled "Dear Diary". The first two lines of the song say "Dear Diary, today I saw a boy. And I wonder if he noticed me, he took my breath away". This song shows a way of telling a secret to yourself using an idea, which is the diary itself that serves as a tool to let out our emotions. I guess there's nothing really wrong about exposing experiences to people as long as it's something that you're happy to share with. And today, I've decided to share different stories through this blog. It may be stories of my own experiences or others', but it's definitely something that's going to be worth sharing for, simply because of the wisdom that I will bring with each story -- It's a way of bringing to others the lessons or realizations from different journeys I, or people around me in general, will take.

This entry is supposed to be short, so I am literally controlling myself now to be in my usual writing mood. I will not have to let out all the ideas I have in mind now as this entry is only meant to make introduction. More like a foreword of the whole book - a kind of book that has no definite ending. This thought makes me excited to visit this blog again and start to bring about things that make our lives worth living for. And I hope that this blog will prosper a lot of people who will be part of this as readers.

However, please don't expect something perfect but rather something deeper than that. And for me, that will also include flaws or failures that will definitely result to one thing. And that is.. wisdom.

God bless us all!

Always,
Julie

What's New?

2010-01-01T02:33:00.000-08:00

New goals...

New things...

New haircut?

New.. What else is new? Yes, definitely NEW YEAR.

But what are the things that go with a New Year?

New year for some people comes with expectations, regardless if bad or good - but I believe mostly good. There are people who are dreading to go back to work after an almost two-week long holiday vacation but most of these people are also looking forward to a new journey. A new beginning that drives them to expect something to count on that will bring excitement in their lives. Their new goals are planned out and ready to be executed. We can say that some of their goals are even written down in a journal with a signature in the right bottom page of it. And perhaps, when they're putting their signature above their written name, they have this big chest with high spirit saying 'Hah! I'm ready for this coming year!'

On the other hand, there are some people who don't need to write anything down. For them, new year is just like the same thing that happens every year. For them, there's nothing to be planned out. They would just like to start anew without anything noted down. Maybe, if they do have goals, they must have written them already in their minds.

But what is important is the HOPE that everybody plants in their heart because of the thought of a new beginning - a new opportunity.

If we will separate this two-word phrase, we will come up with 'New' and 'Year'. It is easy to say that the word NEW is something that we just got or something that just existed for the first time. If we will relate it to things or products, it may mean something that created or manufactured, again, for the first time. So it seems that the word 'new' comes with the word 'first'. YEAR on the other had, composes of 12 months or usually 365 days. For me, I think it would be better to stick up with the 365 days in a year so it would be a 'new-day-everyday' kind of thing because the problem with us sometimes, is that as the days of a year goes by, the word 'new' slowly fades away as well. We sometimes stick up with our goals only for the first quarter of the year and then they just grow fainter unnoticed as the year finishes itself. Because of this, maybe it would be better to use our resolutions at the start of the year as only the foundation. Regardless, if we'd like to specifically write them down in a diary or even in a piece of paper posted in the wall of our bedroom, as long as we are not forgetting how it feels to have a heightened spirit as we expect a new beginning that awaits us.

New year or just the word 'new' may mean a lot of things to everyone of us. One's understanding might be different from another but it is just one evidence of our own choice to define our future and make the most of the new opportunities given to us. And the common thing that is new to all of us is the chance to live another year of our lives, which is the real blessing.

So what's new to you?

As I open my eyes and feel the heat of a streak of the sun;
I blink them twice as the new day has begun;
Truly there's always a start that brings fresh air in my heart;
And a thought that invigorates my sight.

-- Julie Ann Embestro

Happy New Year to all!

2009-04-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

Do You Want to Achieve Favorable Outcomes? It's All About Right Attitude!

Opposite Effect Syndrome

Have you heard this statement before? “Oh my! I might cry later because I’m laughing right now.” Or this one? “I should not be happy too much coz I might get sad later”

The statements above are very common for those who have this fear of irrational balance or cause-and-effect thinking that whatever emotional disposition you have right now will alter to its exact opposite later. This way of thinking about being happy or being sad consequences is inhibiting people to enjoy life as it is. It prevents us to make the most of ourselves and grow because it leads us to being too cautious and to deprivation. We deprive ourselves from being fully happy and just laugh hard when we are glad. And the bad thing about this way of thinking is the fact that we usually remember this ‘balance effect thing’ when we are so happy than when we are sad that we suddenly stop ourselves for being just happy because we are worried that it will result to its exact opposite and that is - we will be very sad later on. Some people might say “Well, I think it’s natural since we can’t be happy all the time. We will have problems for sure because no person is actually problem-free” Yes this is true! Of course life has its ups and downs. But, do we have to be on guard for our feelings always in a way that we are putting blinking red traffic light that tells STOP on each emotion that we have? No, of course. We dont have to do that unless we want to check or weigh our good feelings against our bad feelings to see if we have the so-called balance (Oh my!)

Life is what we make it as we all know. God is so generous to limit us from expressing our emotions. Whether you are a believer of God's infinite resources or not, just imagine how wonderful it would be to just let yourself live your life at a time without putting limits on your feelings or your potential to feel great. If you want to laugh, laugh all you want. If you want to cry, cry all you want. God is not giving us limit to express ourselves especially if the expression itself is what makes you appreciate your life well. Never think that whatever feeling you have right now will have corresponding effect later that is totally opposite because you’re only asking for just that. Because thinking that way has expectation. And when you expect, there's a belief that it will happen, and so, you're attracting it to happen.

Balance is always there that keeps us human but let the balance take care of itself and you on the other hand, just do take care of your life.

Attitude identifies choices, and choices build one’s character

Just last year to be exact, I was able to come up with the saying above based on my own experiences including experiences of the people around me. I actually felt good coming up with this, shall I say – adage. That I always put it in my IM Network Status mainly to spread it’s meaning to remind others as it reminds me to be of control of my actions. I had it connected to the things that were going on around me – at work, at home, and even in some places I went to and people that I talked to. Almost everywhere and every person I know inspired me to come up with such a motto in life. This very sentence about Attitude motivates me in a lot of ways that it made me look at it always as a basis of my reaction in any situation I am in.

Imagine this scenario:

One day, you suddenly woke up realizing that you’ll be getting late for work. You remembered that you asked your mother last night to wake you up but thought she didn’t. You cursed to yourself and jumped down from your bed and accidentally knocked your lampshade from your table beside your bed to the floor that the small light bulb in it broke. Then you cursed again. Having no time to clean it up or fix it, you cursed again. You’re feeling bad now that when you got out of your room, you questioned your mother why she didn’t wake you up. Having no time to hear her explanation, you just proceeded to the bathroom only to find out that somebody’s currently using it. Tsk! Tsk!

And let’s just move forward, when you reached the train to work, there are so many passengers already lining up there that you can’t get on to the train easily. With the thought that you’re really late now, you tried to squeeze in and accidentally hitting people on your way so they got mad at you. And so on and so on. You continue on experiencing one bad thing after another until you made it to your office. You can continue on imagining things that can happen in this scenario but you must not miss the bottom line of this situation, which is wrong attitude that led to d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r! You have allowed the disaster to come in and invited more of it unconsciously because of wrong way of dealing with the situation.

To continue on.. The next day, you woke up again late. Then how do you feel now? Probably, this might frustrate you again and you might even think “It can’t be! Oh gosh! I shouldn’t be late again!” And what will happen next? If you haven’t learned your lesson, you probably repeat the same scenario you just had the day before and worse.

Now, imagine that you still have the same situation wherein you are about to get late at work AGAIN but instead of letting yourself act according to your feeling of the current situation, you tried to relax. You just realized that you’re getting late so what will you do now? You can invite disaster again or you can decide to move fast but with presence of mind and would not let the word ‘late’ bother you too much. Then you will be surprised to learn that everything else just went on smoothly when you got in to the office.

It’s not the situation itself that will define its own outcome, but your ACTION to the situation is the one that determines what will be the outcome of the situation instead. By making good choice based on good attitude towards unfavorable events in our lives like problems, we are building our characters. It depends on your attitude how you will accept or deal with things. Definitely, we can’t control things that will happen to us readily but we have the power to face them and surpass them successfully. People usually make choice based on attitude. If a person is pessimistic and always sees trials as negative events in his life, then he will more likely to choose something that reflects her bad character. That she’s easy to dwell on problems than the solutions. On the other hand, a person who is open to challenges makes choices that reflect his good character as strong and optimistic. A type of person who focuses on solutions rather than problems themselves.

We make good choices that nourish our beings by good attitude, and good choices in return will manifest our good character and vise versa. We should be then in control of our choice of action by focusing on what is good. This also applies to the fact that we always have the capacity to choose. If you’re frustrated because you failed on something, you can choose to be angry or to be sad or you can choose to let it go and start all over again. If you’re mad how your life goes, you can choose to blame others for your own miseries or you can choose to seek for others’ help instead. It’s your choice!

Remember that we’re not holding back anything by maintaining pleasant attitude. Is it ok to be mad or to be disappointed? Sure, It’s ok to let it out! What’s important is what you will do afterward. Being angry or disappointed is just a scenario but your action will be the means to the outcome of that scenario that will contribute to your growth as an amazing person.

It's all about right attitude.

Enjoy life!