When things aren't working the way you want them to, or you feel you're surrounded by problems, it can be tempting to look outward and try to change the things that you feel are causing issues. Chances are the issues you're facing aren't so cut and dry. The solution to the problem might just be your attitude.

When things aren't working the way you want them to, or you feel you're surrounded by problems, it can be tempting to look outward and try to change the things that you feel are causing issues. Chances are the issues you're facing aren't so cut and dry. The solution to the problem might just be your attitude. That's what pastor and educator Charles R. Swindoll believes:

    The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past...we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.

We can’t control our lives, and it is very well-known that the more we plan, the more unexpected things happen. Life is just unpredictable.
But we can control the way we deal with it, the way we deal with anything that occurs, and the way we deal with the events that take place in our path.

It’s all about who we want to be, how we want to face life, whether we want to face it passively or actively, and how to react to what happens. We can take an event as an opportunity to do better, to do something differently, and as an opportunity to learn and grow. Or we can let failures and negative events discourage us and give up on everything as we face the first obstacles. It’s always our choice. And different choices take us to very different lives.

We can decide to do nothing, to think about richer and luckier people and how badly we want to be in their place. But, on the other hand, we have the choice and especially the power, to use this feeling of dissatisfaction as our strongest source of motivation. This way we automatically take action, and it’s easier to take our life in our hands, and to become exactly who we want to be.

Besides, the important thing is to have a flexible mindset (or develop it) and to learn to always make the best of every situation. Then, it’s very important to remember that every problem has a solution, and that we are smart enough to handle hard circumstances, in order to train ourselves to be positive and patient.