Attitude. It is the thing that separates us from our circumstances. Life throws challenges our direction all the time. Being on the road is a huge challenge these days with rising fuel and hotel prices, insurance, wages, taxes, etc., the cost of doing business gets more expensive every year. And life on the road also brings with it a great deal of personal challenges – building and maintaining relationships, establishing some sort of consistency in your life, separating business from personal (that’s a tough one when you ARE your business).
I could complain about all the circumstances in my life that I don’t like. And I might feel justified in those complaints. But I’d be wrong. My circumstances never cause me as much discontent as the attitude I chose in response to them.
One of my favorite speakers and authors, Chuck Swindoll, wrote, “Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It 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. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. We cannot change our past. Nor can we change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We also cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.”
Happy people don’t have a certain set of circumstances, they have a certain set of attitudes.