LITTLE ROCK — Each day, we begin again. Each morning you get to choose your attitude the same way you choose your clothes. That’s not an easy concept, especially when you wake facing tough circumstances, but it’s easier than the next step: making that attitude your habit, day after day.
It’s one thing to set the tone, quite another to hold the note. Yet acquiring the habit of holding that note, of knowing that each day it’s up to you to set your attitude, is key to positive change in hard times.
This doesn’t mean the past disappears. It means that every 24 hours we get a brand new day to do our best. The challenge is to see that day for what it is — a fresh start — and not for what it’s not — the day after we lost our temper, didn’t exercise, or let someone down.
Over time, what counts is that we persevere. Keeping at it, trying again, realizing we’ve detoured and then getting back to the main road as quickly as possible all make a cumulative difference in the long run. Perseverance builds the habit of positivity, and when the chips are down, that’s what influences us away from resignation toward hope, away from defeat toward optimism.
Several years ago, I made a mistake. A single financial decision undid years of financial stewardship and right thinking. That decision brought me close to ruin and cost my family our serenity. Since then, I’ve done my best to recover, and we’re almost there. But the cost of recovery has been high; my working long hours cost my children a more patient, easygoing, available mom. How do you recover from something like that?
The same way you recover from anything else. You find a way to put it in its place. You learn to start fresh each day, even if at first you’re just mouthing the words. You work on forgiving yourself. You take baby steps: “Just for today, I will only see hope and possibilities.” If you can do this in spite of what’s facing you, then eventually you’ll get through a whole week without beating yourself up.
It’s taken me years to reach the point where I’m not dogged by remorse. I’m not out of the woods, but I am significantly better. When regret wins, it still hurts. Despair still shows up, but it’s my habit to change my thinking and it passes. Each week there’s more acceptance and forgiveness for the hardest person to forgive — myself.
How do you move on? You work at it. You set your frame of mind every day and then reframe as much as possible. Some profoundly positive things resulted from the circumstances around my mistake, the primary one being forced to grow in skills that might not have been in my repertoire otherwise.
Push yourself to recognize the positives, and when things get rough, go over that list and acknowledge the growth that came out of the whole experience to help you get back on track.
The process starts by setting your frame of mind every day. Knowing that each day we get to start again makes it easier to hold the note, because on bad days, and we all have them, we only have to do our best this one day. Once you understand that, then 24 hours to start fresh can become 24 minutes, or 24 seconds. Because we don’t have to wait until the next morning. We can change our attitude right now, if we really want to.
That’s a huge concept, and a deeply challenging one, but it’s an achievement that can change your life. Start by waking up with the thought that each day we begin again, that each day we get a new start. Know that this day is your day, and then choose your attitude carefully.
Write to Jennifer Hansen at Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 7, Springdale, Ark. 72765. Email her at:
Family, Pages 38 on 10/24/2012