The Herald

From the Principal

A Positive Attitude

When I was a kid, and we went on family holidays my mum used to entertain us by reading books in the car. I remember crying at the end of a book called Storm Boy - all about a child and their friendship with a pelican, laughing as we read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. I remember mum reading Charlotte's Web, a book all about Wilbur the pig and his friendship with a spider. It is to this day a children's classic.

The book Charlotte’s Web written by American novelist E.B. White. He was a gifted writer, but something not so well-known about him, as revealed in his autobiography, was that he was a hypochondriac and spent most of his life, from the age of 10 on, worrying he would die. Well, he did not die young. He actually lived to be 86 years old.

At the age of 81, when it finally occurred to him that he might not die anytime soon, he bought a canoe and tied it to the top of his car, went on a trip and finally began enjoying life. But it took him 81 years to realise his situation wasn’t as precarious as he’d imagined.

Negative Attitudes

I think a lot of us are like that. We believe the worst is going to happen; that something bad will happen today or think I’m not going to handle what today dishes up for me. We can be easily caught up in the fears of life, or the attitudes we choose to adopt. So often it’s not what we face, as much as the way we choose to face it. You may have heard that said before, and I’m quite sure it’s true.

A story I enjoy sharing is the story about a shoe salesman who was sent to a remote part of the country. When he arrived, he was dismayed because everyone went around barefooted. He wired the company back home: “No prospect for sales here. People don’t wear shoes.” Later another salesman went to the same territory. He too immediately sent word to the home office, but his telegram read, “Great potential! People don’t wear shoes here!” Heard the saying? One man’s disaster, another man’s opportunity.

Our attitude has a great deal to do with the outcome of our lives. 

Adopting a Positive Attitude

Stephen Covey wrote a powerful book, The 7 Habits of highly effective people, and he basically explained that life gets into focus if you adopt the following principles:

  1. Be proactive: You are responsible for your life. Decide what you should do and get on with it.
  2. Begin with the end in mind: Think of how you want to be remembered at your funeral. Use this as a basis for your everyday behaviour.
  3. Put first things first: Devote more time to what’s important but not necessarily urgent.
  4. Think win-win: Have an abundance mentality. Seek solutions that benefit all parties.
  5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood: Don’t dive into a conversation. Listen until you truly understand the other person.
  6. Synergise: Find ways to cooperate with everyone. Value the differences between people.
  7. Sharpen the saw: Continually exercise and renew four elements of yourself: physical, mental, emotional/social, and spiritual.

If you follow these principles, you will become a more effective person, and all this depends on attitude!

 

So here is my encouragement:

Philippians 4:8 from the Bible: “Keep your minds on whatever is true, pure, right, holy, friendly, and proper. Don’t ever stop thinking about what is truly worthwhile and worthy of praise”. And verse 9 adds, “…And God, who gives peace, will be with you”. What a wonderful verse from the Bible—a verse that can actually make all the difference for you today.

Stuart Kent