If Your Attitude Sucks…Then so do YOU
What makes a community successful in today's world, by today's standard? Is it their leadership? How much their budget is worth? Maybe its how well their students are doing in school? Or perhaps how many potholes they have filled up? Maybe its how many folks that are not homeless, jobless, hungry, or addicted? Nope. Sorry. Thanks for playing…its none of the above.
Attitude. We’ve all heard the mantra’s and the corporate drivel about how life is 90% attitude and 10% circumstance, but, that’s not what I’m getting at here. Sure, you need a decent attitude to get anywhere in life, that’s true. And walking around with a poor one is not going to assist you on the road to success. But when we are talking about our Community? Where we live, laugh, love, cry, scream, and sacrifice? Attitude is EVERYTHING.
So go ahead and talk major smack about the city you live in. Tell everyone who will listen to how it's going downhill, only losers live there, and it's worthless and used up. Whatever you say, know this. You are describing yourself, your inner state of awareness, and what you are working from and projecting in the world. If you look around and you think, THIS SUCKS. It is not the PLACE you are in, no no….not even close. It's you.
I look around Muncie, and Delaware County Indiana and I see great possibility. I see strangers helping each other every day. I see neighbors connecting over their kids, and folks who would never normally meet in their day to day life — -connecting over a volunteer program. I see pets reunited with loving families because a stranger took them in and tried to locate their owners. I see children with food in their bellies and toys in their hands at Christmas because strangers joined my facebook group and gave of their hearts. I saw citizens come together en masse to support their air quality at the infamous city council meeting this last year. I see potential. Growth. And it is inspiring.
You choose to see what you want to see, and you choose how you feel about what you see. But you can’t be grateful and hopeful in your heart and hold hate in it at the same time. If you hate Muncie or anything for that matter, you are limiting what you see and for sure limiting yourself on what you feel. If you think it sucks? It's not Muncie my friend. Its YOU.
Choose beauty. Choose hope. If you don’t? You will be seeing SUCK whether its in Muncie or its in Tokyo. Where my feet meet the earth, I will see the potential. I will choose love. You can have the SUCK and take that with you when you pack your bags and leave our fine city. Best of luck to you! Don’t forget, since it is your inner state after all, where ever you go, there YOU are.
If you or we want a better future in this county, we have to each fix what is wrong in us. Breaking the pattern of years of learned behaviors is never easy. If it was easy everyone would do it. Accountability and responsibility are akin to another word I love, called DUTY. Self-awareness reflects outward and we have a duty to our higher power, ourselves, and each other to fix what sucks in all of us. If we don’t, our city will be stuck. Change your attitude and change the world.
I’ll leave you with these famous quotes from a few people who knew something about attitude. Thanks for listening.
“ Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.”(Mahatma Gandhi)
“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.” (Confucius)
And the best for last. This is unknown who wrote this, but it seemed appropriate here:
“If the world didn‘t suck, we‘d fall off.” (unknown)
-Elisabeth Edgell, owner of DCCA and The Manifest Destiny Reporter
