Attitude is Everything: Lesson 1 Review

Lesson 1: Your Attitude is Your Window to the World

Reviewed By: Bon Lwiwa

Introduction

The author has selected an area that is very crucial in recent days. We are increasingly witnessing the wake of many getting awareness to go past old and societal beliefs which can be limiting the full expression of people and what they can really achieve in life. The book has offered many valuable lessons that have the power to shape how one experiences the world.

The title ‘Attitude is Everything’ sums up the core concept that people have the power within to totally dictate how they experience the world. Some authors and teachers have opted to use the word ‘perception’ in place of ‘attitude’. I am of the opinion that the word ‘perception’ comes as a more fundamental concept than ‘attitude’ as we first perceive what we see according to the beliefs we have and then end up with a negative or positive attitude based on that perception.

In the first chapter/lesson, ‘Your attitude is Your Window to the World’, the author looks to explain the title of the book and share how attitude really develops in a person.

The same restaurant, the same service, different customer experience

This simple example highlights a crucial hidden fact of life, events have no inherent meaning, what we witness around us has no inherent meaning, we are the ones that give those meanings according to what we believe to be true about life. Our experiences are always a mixture of both aspects, what we would call ‘good’ and ‘bad’, our beliefs hence perception determine what aspects we focus on.

The fact that we are the ones who give meanings to the experiences we get in life changes the belief that we are victims to what happens to us. It gives us our power back; instead of complaining all the time, it gives us the realisation that we are the ones that need to change when the experience we get in life is not desirable.

The author has used a metaphor ‘Your attitude is your window to the world’. He relates positive attitude to a clear window and negative attitude to a dirty window. That is to say one with a negative attitude does not get to see the world clearly. Other authors and teachers, in a similar way, have likened perception to a filter that one uses to look at what they experience in their environment. If one wears yellow glasses they will experience a yellow world, if one wears blue glasses they will experience a blue world etc. What kind of the world we get to experience depends on the filters that we have, the world itself has no colour in that regard.

If you are an orange and you are squeezed you will give out orange juice, don’t claim to be an orange but you give out lemon juice when you are squeezed :).

Everyone Starts With A Clean Mental Window

As children we were born with clear minds and nature has made it possible for children to learn and absorb what is going on around them in order to prepare them for a life in the environment that their caretakers are experiencing. They learn all the simple details from how to stand to how to relate to people, their beliefs about self-worth to beliefs around money and wealth. Some major life events later in life can also impact our set of beliefs and hence our attitude.

The author highlights a few ways through which our once clean windows got dirty. The most obvious is our parents or care givers from when we were children. It should be noted however that this is absolutely no reason to complain or hold your parent responsible because most of the things that threw dirt on your window were done out of love, not knowing their impact on a child’s mind. They too got these beliefs from their care givers and their environment in the past. A parent could be excessively critical of a child not knowing how this impacts this child’s beliefs that will later determine their confidence and self-esteem. Almost all of us in one way or the other have had such experiences which have shaped the way we are in our lives today. Because your beliefs/perception/attitude determine how you experience life it is quite easy to know that we all have something to work on, just look at your life, if there is an area that you struggle with then that is an area where your beliefs/perception/attitude need some work.

Wash Your Window

The fact has been that attitude is a product of what we’ve learnt and observed from other people and our experiences, but can it be consciously changed? Yes, we can wash our windows. The author has written about his life experience where he washed his window through all the lessons he got from the self-help programs and seminars. Most importantly, one has to become conscious of their beliefs that are limiting in order to know what to work on.

As the author put it, he had opened the doors to his awareness and growth after he went through a personal crisis. This is indeed a valuable lesson to everyone, we should start to treat crises as portals to growth, and they lead us to realisations that can liberate us forever.

You Control Your Attitude

In the end we have the power to shape our attitude by deliberately allowing empowering beliefs to be built within. The media content, conversations, books, news etc. all build up what we end up believing to be true, little by little. We should consciously choose more positivity in life.

As well, we have the power to control how we react to situations that we face. We choose the filter to use in our lives. We can deliberately choose to focus only on the positives as it is obvious that every bad event will come with some positives. We should learn to be grateful for the positives and expect the positives, that way it will become easier for us to see when the positives show up.