Attitudes

Often our attitudes play a more important part in our lives than we realize...
It is our attitude that determines how we approach life in general, but also how we enter into any given situation.

Our attitudes may range from ‘a positive attitude’ to ‘having a chip on your shoulder’ or ‘a negative attitude’; and anything in between. Looking at attitudes, there are a few things that are truly interesting to me:
Where did the particular attitude come from, in other words, what previous experience has sparked the attitude?
Is the attitude productive in living my life?
Do I want to change the attitude, and if so, how do I go about doing that?

Attitudes can stem from any variety of sources or experiences. Some attitudes we may have ‘inherited’ from our upbringing, while we have adopted other attitudes because of experiences we have had in life. Knowing where a particular attitude has come from, can help us becoming aware of how the attitude works in our lives.

From this premise, all our attitudes are valid; there are no ‘bad’ attitudes. It is a good idea though to examine whether an attitude is productive in our lives or not.
When we approach life with an attitude that the whole world wants the very best for us, chances are pretty good that we run in to situations that help us on our path. When our attitude is that everybody ‘out there’ is trying to hurt us, we may find ourselves running into people that have a mindset to take advantage of us...

Either way, looking at these perspectives gives us the insight needed to determine if we want to change an attitude, or not.

There is hardly ever a nice sharp line that marks when you want to change an attitude, or when you want to keep it ‘as is’. Working with our attitudes almost always involves sliding scales.
For instance, I have an attitude that people are trustworthy. And most of the time they are. But that doesn’t mean that I leave the doors unlocked, or the windows open, when I go run errands. For me, the balance I have found with this attitude works well in day-to-day life.
On the other hand, I can have a tendency to down-play my abilities, and to not realize the proper value of my property, or even myself. That is an attitude which doesn’t work well for me; one that I am working on changing.

I use affirmations to change an attitude ~ repeating the affirmation whenever it comes to mind during the day (independent from the actual attitude) for a number of weeks. And, certainly where it concerns property, I may ask friends how they gauge its value, as this gives me a ‘reality check’.

Changing an attitude doesn’t usually happen overnight, it takes dedication and persistence.
But the reward is that we can start attracting more positive, productive situations into our lives!

Borders, boundaries and limitations

Any journey we undertake has the ability to make us more aware of our boundaries, and in a sense of our limitations. This awareness then can help us to re-evaluate where we stand, and how we create and protect our boundaries. Without the limitations.

When our travels take us away from our daily lives, yet within relatively familiar surroundings ~ for instance a trip to a different part of the country you live in ~ this is a process that takes place pretty much inside ourselves. Even though it is instigated by the different, new surroundings we may find ourselves in; the new people we meet.

As our travels take us to an altogether different country, all of a sudden we are confronted with borders. Borders between the country we call our home and that other country. And also borders between our values; the rules that we live by in our daily lives and the rules and regulations of that other country that we are traveling to...
And so the process of becoming aware of our own boundaries is not just an inner journey anymore ~ it now has an outer aspect to it as well. In other words, it is not just about our reactions to the new environment, the new people we meet ~ it is perhaps even more about the circumstances we encounter, and how our values and the values of that other person (or country) can work together. Or can clash.

Either way the process of gaining awareness about our boundaries and limitations can take place. We can broaden our horizons in a fun and exciting way as we get to know new perspectives, new ways of doing things that we might not have thought of living in our own familiar area.
Yet when something happens that perhaps even gets you in a position where the border you desire to cross becomes a line in the sand ~ we are likely to feel limited by that experience, rather than feeling the expansion we were expecting...

In a sense, a lot of the borders have become ‘lines in the sand’. Where they used to be the demarkation between ‘here and there’ ~ they are now also the boundaries that we need to protect against unwanted influences, undesired actions ~ and not in the least that which we fear may put us and our environment in danger... So we limit access to that which we call our own. We limit how we behave, as well as how the other person is permitted to behave. And as we put limitations on ourselves and the new people we meet ~ we protect what is our own.

And this too, is a process that takes place on an outer, as well as on an inner level...