Staying Positive

Even the most successful people have experienced periods when they have been confused, disillusioned, and discouraged. Yet these very people have overcome trials and tribulations to triumph and victory because they have chosen the right attitude.

When we feel discouraged and stressed; when life seems intolerable, even meaningless; when our lives are not going the direction we want them to go; and when events are taking place so fast that we don’t know the questions, never mind the answers, doesn’t it make sense that we should take control of our thoughts, so that we, too, can triumph?

Life comes to us in series of challenges. The attitude with which we choose to perceive these challenges and the mindset with which we prepare for them determines whether our lives are rewarding or not. Victor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who spent World War II in the same concentration camp where his wife and child were killed and the manuscript that was his life’s work was destroyed, later wrote a book titled “Man’s Search for Meaning.” In it, Frankl asked himself why some people gave up and died under the difficult circumstances of a concentration camp while others not only survived, but grew stronger. From his observations, he concluded that the answer to this difficult question was attitude: “What made the difference,” he wrote, “was how people chose to perceive the experience.” In any given set of circumstances, he decided, “everything can be taken from a person except the ability to choose one’s attitude.”