The Perfect Life is Easy with Attitude Training
The perfect life is yours once you uncover the beliefs and attitudes blocking it.
Anyone growing up in the ’50’s might have formed a view of the perfect life—an easy life—from watching The Donna Reed Show or Leave it to Beaver.
Based on these and other shows like them, one might have formed an impression of the perfect life: superficial problems, interpersonal conflicts—if any—resolvable with one or two insightful statements, close friends and family one can always count on, issues resolved with fairness and equity to all, and everyone is happy in thirty minutes or less.
Life Can Be Messy
Life, of course, is not like this; relationships are complex, personal issues can be deep and troublesome, tragedy can and does hit, and life doesn’t always seem fair and just. Real life is anything but the perfect life of TV drama.
Still, life is good, and can be perfect when one’s attitude and expectations are aligned with what life has to offer.
The Perfect Life
The perfect life is actually relatively easy to accomplish. It’s all in attitude training. Your attitude toward life makes all the difference in how life feels to you. Attitudes are formed by core beliefs, those ideas about life and life’s circumstances that are held deeply in your subconscious.
If your life is not as you want it to be, a valuable self help tip that will provide the personal improvement you’re seeking is this: examine your core beliefs and the attitudes about life that result from them. Change the beliefs and attitudes that aren’t serving your best interests.
Research shows that our senses and perceptions are imperfect. Seeing is not—it turns out—believing. It’s the other way around, believing is seeing. That is, you’ll see what you believe you’ll see. Our minds are so powerful, that they’ll filter the information of the five senses so the mind will interpret what it sees to conform to what is believed.
“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.” ~Henry Ford
What are Beliefs
Beliefs are simply thoughts about things. Most beliefs are formed early in life by the influence and teachings of authority figures:
parents, teachers, relatives, religious leaders, and even popular heroes. Once a belief is assimilated it resides in the subconscious where it can provide guidance and influence without conscious thought.
A belief is not the true, it’s your truth.
Being in the subconscious is both good news and bad news. The good news is that one needn’t think consciously about how to feel about something that is covered by a belief. Reactions can therefore be quick and decisive. The bad news is the belief will cause your mind to ignore factual data, recognizing only the information that seems to support the underlying belief.
“The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright
Attitude Training to Change Beliefs
To change a belief you must first fully understand and acknowledge it; then you have the power to question and change any beliefs not serving your best interests.
One way to accomplish this is with a stream-of-consciousness writing exercise. For example, to uncover your fundamental beliefs about life start with a blank sheet of paper or fresh word processor page and write this at the top: Life Is…
Finish the sentence with whatever comes to mind quickly. Repeat this over and over again, allowing your subconscious to take over and feed you the words without your conscious thought. Eventually—this may take ten to twenty minutes—you’ll write something that carries a strong emotional message. You may feel very strong emotions, ranging from surprise to tears.
Re-casting the Perfect Life
This moment of emotional clarity is your signal you’ve uncovered a fundamental belief about life. Now examine that belief from all angles and perspectives. It is true? Is it always true? Is your belief serving you in your personal growth and development?
If it’s not, make the decision to accept another belief, one better aligned with who you are and who you want to be. Since beliefs are simply thoughts about how things are, you can change them and the resulting attitudes you hold by choosing to think differently about the topic, whether the topic is life or chocolate ice cream.
The perfect life for you begins with the life you have right now and moves forward into the life you want for you.
Readers may also enjoy What is Attitude and How to Change Attitudes and Overcoming Perfectionism, The Pursuit of Perfect.
This post has 2 comments
July 1st, 2009
excellent post and nice thoughts. I quite agree with the point of view. Thanks for sharing.
August 25th, 2009
it should be more clear,