There's great emphasis on the value of mind technology today. And rightly so.
How we use our minds determines how we use ourselves.
Up to a couple of decades ago, many of us were educated into the belief that how we thought was decided by some mystical element beyond our understanding, or that we were allotted our attitudes by fortune, and that was the end of it.
Neither example was the case. Now people are changing their minds, their lives, and their states of happiness and fortune, by the day.
It's no longer a heresy to question what you're told, or to doubt some dogma when it's delivered by a perceived authority.
We now see that often in life we've been unwitting victims of tricks we allowed our minds to play on us.
We had adapted to roles, ideals, rules of the road for life, that were mistaken, often misleading.
In the last century, Karl Menninger, a psychologist, proclaimed that 'Attitude is more important than fact', which has become the cornerstone of liberated belief. That simple, profound statement opened minds to the fact that just because disaster happens, it may not be the end of the world.
Attitude to the fact is what counts. How we think about any fact can overwhelm us into a state of immobilised terror. Or we can, with a positive, reasonably optimistic attitude, change or alter the effects of that fact altogether.
There was an article in the Observer recently, sent to me by my good friend John, about the former striker Gianluca Vialli. He dealt with the misfortunes in his life by constantly reminding himself that life is 10% what happens to us, and 90% how we respond to it. As a result, he was able to survive two belts of cancer, and deal with fears for his loved ones in the cauldron of Italy's experience of the Corona Virus.
That's what attitude is about.
That's what Karl Menninger was saying. It's a liberating thought, isn't it?
Rudyard Kipling wrote of it in his wonderful poem, 'If '.
'If you can dream, and not make dreams your master,
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can deal with triumph and disaster,
And treat those two impostors just the same.'
Triumph, disaster; impostors.
The former, Triumph, does not the answer all of life's difficulties, the latter, Disaster, is not the end of the world either. They pass. They go by, and life goes on.
And what will have made the difference in our encounter with either, is our attitude.
That's what being mindfully aware is, too; how we're dealing with life, coping, playing the game, using our resources, or not.
Depending on our attitude...
The picture above shows one of my boyhood heroes, Stirling Moss. He was famous for being the greatest racing driver never to have won the World Championship. In everything he did, and said, he always personified an attitude that was inspiring and challenging. While being gracious in defeat, was also big enough to be an exemplary and gracious winner.R.I.P.
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