Success and happiness don't just fall upon the wealthy or the famous. They don't actually fall upon anyone! You have to work towards being successful and living a happy life. One of the key things you need to have before you will ever be truly happy is a positive attitude.Failure in SocietyThere are plenty of people out there who seem to be successful who have a bad attitude. But are they truly happy? How many spouses have they had? How many affairs? How many very public embarrassments? Those are things indicative of a very unhappy life. In order to be both successful and happy, you must have a positive attitude. As parents, as a nation, we need to instill within children -- not only our own, but those of others as well -- a positive attitude. We need to teach them the idea of goal setting. We need to help them discover that setting a goal and diligently working towards it will bring success. This is a major failure in our society today -- we have failed to instill within the children, our future, a can-do attitude and a positive frame of mind.Fault Finding Versus Problem SolvingIf you look about the media nowadays, including the social media that our kids are exposed to, we have too many whiners and complainers. We have too many fault finders and nit pickers. Some fault finding is necessary, to expose wrongdoing and waste, but we've extended it into areas where it doesn't belong. Instead of fault finders, we need problem solvers. How can things get better in our nation and the world if all are fault finders and none of us are problem solvers? Those whose attitudes are constantly negative end up living a failed life. In their disappointment and denial, they'll look around and blame everyone else for their failure. "The system is rigged against me". "Others kept me from achieving any success". "Society wouldn't let me catch a break". Contrast that with "It didn't work this time, but if I make this change, it should work". "I messed up my plan, but I can still be successful". "Circumstances worked against me, but they're bound to change soon". Both describe a failure but only one of them speaks of the inevitability of success. Only one sees a positive future. Only one talks about making things change. Instead of thinking "woe is me" think "Oh. It's me!" Recognize the problem, and its source, and do something (positive) about it. To make changes in the world, you have to make changes inside of you.Failure is a ChoiceA positive attitude will cause a person to analyze the situation, find the problem, develop a workable solution, and then do it. A complainer, however, will simply sit down, throw his hands up in the air, and tell everyone around them that life isn't fair. And since they tend to refuse to accept that the source of the problems is themselves, they'll go around blaming others, occasionally even inventing slights and attacks from people that never actually happened. A person with a negative attitude will never admit that he's the one who needs to change, or, he'll insist that it's the fault of others (genetics or friends or bosses) that they can never succeed. They give up after the first or second obstacle that they face. They refuse to understand that the road to success is littered with difficulties. People who end up being successful simply deal with each problem as they arise then move on. Solving the problems will often require adjustments in your thinking or your plans. Make the adjustment! Then move forward. Whiners refuse to make adjustments and to retry. They just give up. It is the giving up that is the failure. The difference between failing and not being successful is that the person who has failed has given up, while the person who has not yet been successful is working out the problem and making adjustments. Failure is not something that people do to us, failure is a choice. Our choice.If the problem you're facing seems too large, you're not thinking big enough. If it seems too daunting, then you aren't actively looking at possible solutions. You've faced problems in the past. Nearly every time, you've managed to come up with some sort of solution. If you did it then, you can do it now! Even those times when you couldn't find a solution, didn't a parent or a relative or a friend help you find one? Nearly every problem has a solution. People with positive attitudes can dust themselves off, look at the issue again from a different angle, and can come up with the way to overcome it. But people with negative attitudes will look at the problem, will refuse to believe they can overcome it, and will give up. You have a history of overcoming problems -- why are you doubting yourself now? How to Rebuild Our FutureI think that just about everybody can agree that there are problems in our society and in the world. This is why we need problem solvers not fault finders. A generation of us have failed to learn that, with a positive attitude and a wise application of effort, we can overcome problems. First our own problems, then the problems of others. We must teach these truths to the children of today before it is too late. Before the problems in our nation become too great. We need to make this new generation the Generation of Problem Solvers. In the recent past, we have let children develop the thinking that problems and failure are inevitable and that they should simply accept them and take the easy way out. The easy way out is the road to failure and ruin! Why have we crippled our kids? In failing to instill the truths about positive attitudes and never giving up, we have cheated our kids out of any hope of a happy life and a successful future. The failed life they will live will be because of our failure. If you care at all, you cannot let this happen. If you love your kids, or you love your country, you have to make an effort to teach them the truth. To show them the truth. The failure that we choose today will become their failure in the future. |