You know that phrase, “attitude is everything”? Or, when people say, “it’s all mental”? This topic seems to keep popping up in my life, but having things be mental isn't new to me - I mean, the very thought of coffee and caffeine gets me hyped.
More seriously, I see this phrase played out a lot on campus. As a leader in a freshman dorm, I have seen a lot of people who have struggled with the feeling of fitting in and finding friends at school. Many of them have expressed a strong interest in leaving and going home at the end of the semester. This is extremely sad because there are so many great opportunities and experiences here at school that they haven’t even given the chance. Why are students struggling to feel included, to feel a part of something? It seems to me that society has built up an ideal of what college is supposed to be: the greatest time in your life - carefree, parties, and adventure. Once they get to school and realize that college, for many people, can also be one of the hardest changes in your life, they make up their mind it’s too hard. Once they decide this, it hard to change. I have seen people shut down, literally. They quit trying to put themselves out there and don’t go new places or meet new people. Instead, their life now becomes a regular routine: eat, sleep, class, maybe the gym, and study. Or, in other terms, just make it through till the end of the semester. Once they make up their mind that they want to go home because they feel miserable, they, in turn, make their lives miserable. It’s like the idea of self-fulfilling prophesy – you take steps to avoid feeling a certain way, but then that ends up being the means through which this feeling occurs.
Seeing all of this play out in front of me, I’ve been thinking a lot about my personal attitude; my outlook on life. Since coming to college, I’ve found that my attitudes tend to look like a rollercoaster. Woot. Honestly though, I have had the best as well as some of the hardest days of my life at college. In hindsight, a lot of these days were strongly affected by the attitude I had pre-set in my head when I woke up. Some days, I wake up all ready for my day with a smile already glued to my be-freckled face. On these days, I find that I will literally walk around campus waving at everyone with a big third-grader wave – you know, the one that covers the same span as the windshield wipers of a Tahoe. I love these days. Then, there are the other days; the days you simply feel like Eeyore; you’re gloomy and come equipped with your own personal raincloud. On these days, it seems like no matter what your friends say or do, you can’t quite shake these glum feelings.
Attitude - it’s everything.
BUT, what I’ve learned is that I am not in control of this attitude. Um, what? What was the last five minutes of reading for then? Okay, what I mean to say is that I’ve found that when I try to just make up my mind to be happy or joyful, I fail; this joy is only temporary. Instead, the only joy that actually lasts - for more than a day - is a joy that comes from love himself, God. When I spend less time thinking how crummy I feel about situations and more time focusing on the blessings in my life, my attitude changes. So if you’re having a bad day, check out your attitude. Maybe you woke up “knowing” it was going to be one of those days and have resigned yourself to it. Instead, be a little cliché and "look at the brighter side of things"; Life’s better that way.
