Sunday Story…Your ‘Tude, dude

In “Man’s Search for Meaning” Viktor Frankl states the only true freedom we have is the freedom to choose our attitude about what happens to us. We can be locked up, beaten, everything taken from us but we can still choose our attitude.

I had the good fortune last week to have dinner with a friend who is the living embodiment of this freedom. Wendy Tustin and I go way back…probably close to 30 years. We have seen our kids grow and start their own families. We have had ups and down and times when we didn’t always speak or see eye to eye. Our friendship was forged on martial arts mats and cemented through the bonds of shared suffering, sweat, and strife.

Wendy is battling cancer. She has beaten it back a couple times but her opponent is unrelenting. Given enough time I don’t doubt she will beat it in the end. In the meantime she fights the fight with a smile and an attitude of hope and good fortune. Her spirit is strong. She is never going to be defeated even when it looks as if the battle may be lost. She is having the most fun she can have, laughing and crying, giving her friends the strength to face the small things in their lives with aplomb.

We all have stuff in our lives; stuff that gets us down, things that make us blue. Sometimes it feels like that stuff is too much, sometimes we think we just can’t take any more, that we have reached our limit of calamities in our lives. We feel sad and angry and hopeless over all the crap heaped upon us.

When you get to that point it is time to change your attitude. It is time to look over and see Wendy laughing and smiling and enjoying everything life is giving her. Yes, you read that correctly…everything. She says “it could be worse. I’m still here and I’m still fighting and living.” Whatever I am facing in my life is nothing compared to the road she is traveling.

Life is as hard as you make it. It is going to have ups and downs. It is up to you to decide the attitude you approach it with. You can take a look and decide you can’t handle it and life sucks and you don’t want to deal with the pain. Or you can take a look and decide to smile and go full steam ahead. Your attitude will decide your mental state from moment to moment. As Henry Ford once said…”if you think you can or think you can’t, you are probably right.” If you think life sucks it probably does. If you think life is grand it probably is.

So Change your attitude and Change your life. Now go out make your life be what you want it to be.

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
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