“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” William James

I mentioned this quote on my radio show on Wednesday night, www.talknangels.com and many people responded to it. I decided to do some further research and found William James http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_james to be quite a brilliant man. It was then that I decided to turn this quote into one of my one minute practices.

Do I understand it correctly?  Is Professor James saying all I have to do to alter my life, my situation in life, is to simply alter my attitude.
I can practice that.

Do you understand what that means? You don’t have to do anything major or anything drastic. All you have to do, is alter your attitude. Smile. Laugh. Or maybe you need to cry and get it out. Either way, it’s a great time to start being a better you. To start doing more of what you want to do, to start enjoying the best life you can imagine.
And you can start it so easily.

Just by changing your attitude.

My wife points out however that when we’re really deep into a feeling, she doesn’t believe it is that easy to “just” change one’s attitude.
She even had the audacity to point out that when I was in a “mood” the other night I wasn’t so quick to just change it because I, like so many of us, get invested in our feelings.

So what are we mere mortals to do?
Practice baby, practice. But how do we do that?

As I walked this morning I was stressing about something so I thought it would be a good time to practice getting my “William James” on. I did it by repeating the quote over and over in my mind to begin the process of turning a theory into a belief.

I practiced saying and thinking about the quote.
Instantly, yes, really instantly, not only did my mind change and I started feeling better, but I also started seeing positives, and was soon laughing and coming up with some wonderfully creative ideas and strategies for the coming year.

Perhaps for some of you another idea would be to approach it like a science experiment. Pick a time of day or an event that occurs daily; your morning commute, standing in line at the coffee shop, your boss droning on and on at the morning meeting, your kid not emptying the dishwasher again.

Make the decision ahead of time that you will enter into that scenario with this practice in mind. So as this ongoing event happens once again, what is changing is not the event, but realizing it’s your choice to shift your thoughts and feelings towards it. This will take practice.

I find comfort and joy in the quote. Just knowing that anytime I choose, I can change my life by changing my attitude, brings an easy smile to my face.

So give it a try for yourself. Think about what this quote means.

It doesn’t mean to rush out and try to alter your life, it’s too big a job. Start easy by practicing altering your attitude, either when you’re struggling with a situation or when you’re in a great mood and want to stay there. If someone as brilliant as William James said it, you and I can certainly be open to the possibility it is true.

It may not seem it, but you are in a fantastic place right now if you are reading these words. For if you can now realize that you can alter your life, change your circumstances and create a life you desire, just by “altering your attitude” then your life is about to get a whole lot better.

Thanks for letting me be your wingman today.
Michael

A View from the wing…

I’m happy to share with you this guest blog, written by my wife and wingmate, about finding angels and wingmen in the unlikeliest of places.

Imagining how the US Postal Service even begins to organize, manage and distribute all of its millions of letters, packages and boxes and actually sees to their accurate delivery is for me akin to understanding how airplanes fly. I know there is a science to it, but I figure there must be some divine intervention at play as well. And so, as I made my way to my town’s Post Office with a package for my daughter addressed to some strange sounding place in Kathmandu, Nepal, my confidence level wasn’t high.

At the counter the harried clerk asked me the destination of the package as she gave me the customs form and instructed me on how to fill it out. “What’s in the box?” she queried. I made a mental list: Airborne and Pepto Bismol, shampoo and lotion, probiotics and vitamin D, anything from the drug store that might keep her safe and healthy, there was her favorite childhood storybook in case a sad and lonely night ever surfaced, a pair of earrings, and some games and toys for the children she is working with in an orphanage in Kathmandu. And cards, birthday cards from me and my husband, “I miss you cards” and little love notes. “What’s in the box?” she asked again. “My heart”, I blurted out. The clerk, the harried, busy, overworked, clerk, stopped and peered at me over her glasses. “Is she your only one” she asked, I replied” Well, I have two step- kids as well”. She looked at me squarely. “So she’s your heart.”

This woman behind the counter, this stranger proceeded to tell me how she was an only child, an only daughter and when her mother was sick and dying she stopped everything to care for her round the clock. “I didn’t care about anything else, “she said, “the job, my routine, my life, nothing mattered but being able to care for my mother”. In awe, I replied, “She was so blessed to have you.” She smiled, “I was blessed to have her.”

She took my box then and taped and re-taped the seams, she covered the address so it wouldn’t smear, she marveled at the faraway journey my daughter was on. I asked her, “What are the chances this package will make it to her?” having been made doubtful by my on- line investigation of the Nepalese mail system. “I’d say 85%”, she offered, “but we are going to have faith and believe it will make it”.

So, there is a package out there moving toward a faraway place, held aloft by the USPS, the hands of strangers, airplanes, delivery trucks, and magic and faith. Kind of how we walk through life, how we send our kids out there into the universe. Just like that package, we tape it carefully, insure it fully, track its journey online as far as we can, and then pray. Pray that the box doesn’t break, doesn’t get lost or into the wrong hands. That it makes it to where it is heading, helped along by unlikely angels, who are all around us, even disguised as postal workers at the local post office.