A is for ATTITUDE

Dear diary,

"Your attitude sucks!"

I'm sure I'm not the first person telling you this so please don't contort your face. Okay, maybe I started this the wrong way, let me start over.

Growing up, I was quite reserved. I was that little girl that'll walk into a room and just sit by herself, observing everything and everyone. I was okay with it until I found out that people mistook my quietness and shyness for pride. You can imagine my facial expression during one of our confession nights in high school when one of my friends said to me "I never really liked you at the beginning, I thought you were one very proud and spoilt girl that felt too big to talk to people." Little me that couldn't talk to people because of my shyness, was being portrayed as a peacock. It didn't bother me then but I got to understand that even if that wasn't my true character, people had already concluded on my attitude. 

According to the Mariam Webster English Dictionary, Attitude has 3 major definitions

-the way you think and feel about someone or something

-a feeling or way of thinking that affects a person's behavior

-a way of thinking and behaving that people regard as unfriendly, rude, etc.

So basically, attitude has to deal with thinking, feeling and behaving. 

People describe an attitude based on observation (or assumption) of a particular character. They must have seen a particular behavior, thought about it and concluded on how to describe it. It's sort of like a gabbage in, gabbage out system. They can only conclude on your attitude after observing you in action. The sad thing is that even if you acted out of anger or frustration, people do not care. They just place that bad attitude tag on your forehead and walk away, after-all, first impression maters.

Your attitude helps people to know who you are. Take for instance, you are meeting someone for the first time. In this day and age that gist flies around like a mosquito, he/she would have done a background check on you so as to know you better. If the word about town is that you have a bad attitude, the person comes for that meeting being on the offensive, waiting to attack.

Attitude is fueled by thoughts. In his book, As a man thinketh, James Allen rightfully related thought and character. 

"Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person's life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state."

Your attitude also helps you to discover who you are. You may not know certain things about yourself that are not right until someone says something to you about it. The only way someone can notice something about you is through your attitude. Don't always contort your face when someone says something about your attitude. Sit back and think about what has been said. If you think it's true, you change for the better. If you think they are wrong about you, then send it to the wind. People will always talk, but everybody cannot be wrong at the same time. Your attitude says a lot about who you are.

Take a moment to sit back and think again because there may be a modicum of truth when someone walks up to you and says, 

"Your attitude sucks!"