"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." -Viktor Frankl
Sometimes I get accused of being unrealistic, harping on about the need for living life with the glass half full. People say that having a constant positive mental attitude is a nice idea, but sometimes life isn’t like that, that positivity is sometimes ignoring reality.
But what is real? What is reality?
Here’s what I see: You shape reality by *how* you see *what* you experience. It is all about your perception. Nothing is real, beyond your thinking about it.
Do you realise this?
Here is your life, and here are your mental processes about your life. They are the same thing. Your life isn’t different from the filters that you maintain – the judgements, the beliefs, the attitudes.
You, and you alone, define your own life. That’s what you get to choose, and no one can take that away from you. It is your internal attitude that shapes and makes everything. This choice is total – the experience of hell or heaven depends on you.
Your life isn’t about the circumstances, your life is always about your response to these circumstances.
You decide how you will respond to everything. Engage this choice, it is one of the most precious things you possess. Choose to see the good, to appreciate. Choose to be thankful. Choose to love.
Choose and choose again until it becomes a habit. And then choose once more. You will come to a place where nothing can make you suffer, unless you consciously allow it.
Heaven or hell? It all starts with your attitude.