What is attitude? Your attitude is an outward feeling expressed by behavior. That's why your attitude shows without you saying a word. Your actions become a window to your soul. The person who gives a look that could kill is not inwardly singing "oh happy day." Has anyone ever told you you have a bad attitude? Parents, teachers, employers sling that phrase around like salt and pepper.

What does it mean, "bad attitude"? It means that you're too negative, it means that you're too critical it means that you are argumentative, that you're sarcastic, that you're too arrogant that you act like a junkyard dog half-starved.

It means that you choose to disagree when it's easy to agree, it means you whine and pout when you can't get your way. It means that you're a monster when people fail to agree with you. You live with your lower lip stuck out most of the time and a chip on your shoulder. You can't keep friends, you can't keep a job and you can't keep a spouse because of your attitude. You are a joyless toad. Some people make you glad when they come and other people make you glad when they leave. Folks with a bad attitude are in that last group.

Welcome to The Winning Attitude!

Succeeding in life has a lot to do with attitude. As a man thinketh, so is he. You and you alone are responsible for your attitude. The winning attitude is a choice. You are happy because you choose to be happy. You are angry because you choose to be angry. Some people get high on anger and say "It's just my personality, that's just the way I am"

Is someone always raining on your parade? Do you feel like if you inherited General Motors someone would outlaw cars? Don't feel like that because this is the greatest day of your life. If you woke up this morning and did not read your name in the obituary column, look up and rejoice by choice!

During the dark days of the second World War a Jewish doctor was captured by the Nazis and taken to a concentration camp. His family was killed, they took all of his clothes and gave him camp clothes, they cut his hair off, they took his ring, they took his name and gave him a number. Standing absolutely naked with nothing in this world, he said I recognize that the last great power a man has on this earth is the power to choose the attitude with which he will react to his environment and he said, I made up my mind that the nazis were not going to mentally defeat me and even though they captured my body, they could not capture my spirit."

It's not what's done to you, it's how you react to what's done to you that makes your like a thing of beauty or a thing of bitterness. You can either get better or you can get bitter and that's your choice. There are only two choices when it comes to attitude - a good one or a bad one, a winning attitude or a loser's attitude.

Two men looked out through prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars. The point? Two men in exactly the same situation, but had exactly opposite reaction.

There was a newspaper story of two young men who were jilted in romance. One of them jumped off a bridge and drowned himself. That was his choice, that's the loser's choice. The other wrote a song about his experience and received a $100,000 royalty for the song and friends, with $100,000, you can forget anybody!! That's the winner's attitude.

The most significant decision you can make on a day to day basis is your choice of your attitude. It's more important than your past, your education, your financial ability, your success or your failure, your fame or your pain, what other people think of you or say of you, your circumstances or your position. Attitude is that fire in your bones that keeps you going or cripples your progress. When your attitude is right, there is no barrier too high, no valley too deep, no dream to extreme, no talents too great.

Most of us spend most of our time whining over "spilt milk items" the things in life you can't change. Rather than giving your attention to the most important assignment of every morning, you start to think of the things you can't change and you start to become bitter and disappointed and instead, you think of the things that destroy your peace. There's a grand array of them, things that destroy your energy and produce a demoralized and ineffective person.

Some people are destroyed by the weather, the temperature, the wind, some people go into depression when it rains. Our attitudes are also affected by the cost of living, taxes, the IRS, April 15, say it and most people's blood pressures skyrockets. Our attitudes are affected by job irritations, people we work with, our creative energy is destroyed and we become non-productive. The greatest waste of energy is the energy people waste fighting the inevitables of life. Crying over spilt mike issues that cannot be changed. When you fight the inevitables of life, those spilt milk items, you grow ulcers, you get twisted, you become negative, you become hateful and resentful.

Some people actually die, because of their inability to choose the winning attitude. You cannot change past events, failures and shortcomings so forget those things which are behind and press forward to your prize. Your past is over, forget it, press on! There are better things in store for you!!

People criticize them and it just turns their wagons over. Why? Remember, crows only pick at the best fruit! You can avoid criticism by saying nothing, by doing nothing and by being nothing. But the moment you stand up and speak up, someone will resist you because when you stand for something, someone will stand against that something. So quit living the life of a wallflower and be all you can be.

An Army medical officer, cites an example of death because of "attitudinal failure" in an article in the New York magazine. This tragic true story is told. Among the prisoners in a POW camp was a tough young marine, 24 years old who had already survived 2 years of living hell as a POW in relatively good health. The reason for this was that the camp commander promised to release him if he would cooperate. Since others like him had been released before, the young man could safely anticipate his release. The marine turned into a model POW and as time passed he gradually realized that his captors had lied to him and they had no intentions of releasing him. When the full realization of this took hold, he became a zombie, he refused to do his work, he rejected all offers of food and encouragement, he simply laid down on his cot, rolled into a fetal position, started sucking his thumb and in a matter of days, he died. Caught in the vise grip of lost hope, life became too much for a once tough marine to handle. When he surrendered to despair and depression, there was nothing left to do but lay down and die. Your attitude and your thought life can kill you. As a man thinketh so is he.

Discouragement is contagious. There is a story about a fellow who was about to jump from a bridge and an alert police officer saw him and he walked slowly and methodically toward him talking to him all the time and he said "sir, there's absolutely no reason for you to want to jump off this bridge and kill yourself! The man turned around and said, but you don't understand. My wife has left me, my business has gone broke, the IRS has repossessed my house, after 30 minutes of that discouraging talk, both of them jumped.

It's contagious. Hope is strangled by discouragement, joy is poisoned by the cyanide of discouragement. Dreams die, because discouragement is a cancer that devours your dreams. Choose the winning attitude. If you don't think you can, you can't!!

When do you choose your attitude? As soon as you wake up. Your attitude is your choice. Choose it early before things have a chance to go wrong. Your attitude determines your destiny, you are responsible for your attitude. So for the benefit of your family and the people you work with, for your personal and spiritual development, choose a winning attitude, early.