Читать книгу Living Big - Пэм Гроут - Страница 11

THE GREATEST DISCOVERY OF MY GENERATION IS THAT HUMAN BEINGS CAN ALTER THEIR LIVES BY ALTERING THEIR ATTITUDES OF MIND.

—William James

The size of our life, essentially, is the result of our attitudes. Our attitudes affect everything from our relationships to our health to our mindset while doing a crossword puzzle. If we're going to embrace our passion and live big, we must grow our attitudes.

Unfortunately, most of us live with attitudes that confine us. Attitudes that keep us small. As the great humanist Buckminster Fuller said, “We are powerfully imprisoned by the terms in which we have been conducted to think.”

We adopted most of our attitudes without consent. We picked them up from our families or our culture or that ubiquitous, “They say.” It never even occurred to us that we could choose a different set of attitudes.

We can.

The first attitude we must adopt is that our life is up to us. We must take responsibility for designing our own lives.

Most of us believe our main job in life is to set boundaries, to figure out what isn't working and then to get rid of it.

People who do us wrong?

Gone.

Parents who didn't act like Ward and June Cleaver?

Out the window.

This attitude totally negates who we are. It's like signing the papers to a new house, walking in the front door, and then storming out because there isn't any furniture. There's only one person who can furnish the house. It's up to you to create the kind of life you want.

So often we get indignant while we're looking at our lives and say, “I deserve much better than this.” And you're right. You do. But it is your responsibility and only your responsibility to create “much better than this.”

Yes, you may be in a relationship that isn't loving. You may have a job that doesn't trip your trigger. But who is the one and only person with the power to change those things?

Calling out a search party for the next guy, the next job, the next self-help book is like calling in the fire department to blow out the candles on your birthday cake. You don't need the fire department. You don't even need a candle extinguisher. You have the power to blow out your own candles. You have the power to fix every single thing that's not working in your life. First you have to grow your attitude.

John F. Kennedy posed an oft-quoted challenge to the citizens of America: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” This is the essence of Living Big. Ask not what your life can do for you, but what you can do for your life. Living Big means looking for the potential in what's already there. It means saying to yourself, “I accept what I have. And here's what I can do with it.”

Quit looking. Take what you have now. Take the relationships you have now. Take the job you have now. Take the home you have now. And turn them into something beautiful.

We must take back our power. We must say, “I am a loving person, a strong, mighty person, and there is nothing in my life that cannot be restored to wholeness. And it's up to me—and only me—to see that this happens.”