Recently, we were in South Bend, Indiana for our teenaged son’s hockey tournament. After dropping our Junior Vegas Golden Knight off at The Ice Box arena (fitting name for the place because it was FREEZING inside) for his pre-game warm-up, my husband and I embarked on the very important mission to fuel my morning coffee addiction. The hockey rink was located in a very industrial part of town but luckily we found a local coffee shop nearby, a sort of hidden gem among the warehouses. While waiting for the barista to finish making my medium non-fat latte, I went to the ladies room and as I was walking out, a wooden-framed picture on the wall caught my eye. It was titled “ATTITUDE” and read:
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do.
The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable.
The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our attitudes.
After reading that text written by Charles Swindoll and pondering it for a short time, I smiled, snapped a photo, and realized I had been looking at 2024 all wrong. What can I say? I often find inspiration and perspective in odd places when I least expect it. For over a month, I had been wrestling with choosing my word of the year for 2024 and finally settled on Change. After all, my family is going to experience a colossal amount of change in the coming months. My oldest son will graduate from high school and be off to college in the fall. Our youngest son will attend a new school 3,000 miles away. We will move out of the home we’ve loved for eight years to downsize our responsibilities and acquire more freedom.
Those changes will no doubt be challenging to navigate. So, I had determined Change should be my word for this year. That is, until I stumbled into the ladies room at that gem of a coffee shop and glanced at the word “ATTITUDE” on the wall. I realized I don’t need to focus on the inevitable changes coming up in 2024. Instead, I need to focus on my attitude while navigating those changes.
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