Attitudes are the culmination of the thousands of mental processes that take place in our mind everyday. Having a positive mental attitude is meaningful for improving our quality of life and overall well-being. Cultivating a positive attitude is an important skill in lifestyle change. Perfectionistic attitudes often get in the way of doing something well or even doing something at all. Imperative thoughts such as must, should, always, and never can leave us feeling like complete failures, when in reality, we should be praising our efforts for the important changes we have made.

Many people believe that the events in our lives cause us to have poor or unhealthy attitudes. This is not true! Rather, our thoughts and beliefs about the events determine our feelings. And our feelings are the hallmark of our attitudes. Most of our thoughts are automatic. They pop into our heads with little or no rational thought. Automatic thinking leads to automatic reacting. Automatic reacting leads to automatic feelings, further leading to automatic attitudes.

The key to developing more positive and healthy attitudes is to learn NOT to react, but rather to respond to the events in our lives. Between each event and an automatic reaction is a space-a space in which we have the power to choose an appropriate response. You must first choose to stop the automatic thinking. Then, learn the necessary skills and techniques to help you change your thoughts so that you can respond more realistically. This, in turn, will improve your attitudes and your overall quality of life.

Even under the harshest circumstances, we can choose our thoughts and beliefs. Our self-awareness, vision, independent resolve, and conscience guide our choices. Learning these skills and techniques can lead to important lifestyle and attitude changes.

Changing attitudes is not positive thinking because positive thinking ignores the real world. Unfortunately, the real world is not always wonderful-bad things do happen. This is realistic and rational thinking. Realistic thinking can help us to choose more appropriate thoughts about events. These thoughts, in turn, will guide us to more positive feelings and attitudes, thereby improving our quality of life and overall well-being.