A thru Z: A is for Attitude

Have you ever noticed that you can’t cry and smile at the same time? How about being angry while laughing? It is just completely and utterly impossible.

At lunch, my two year old son was trying to launch is food over the tray. His smashed sandwich clutched in both fists, hands hovering just beyond the tray ready for rejection. I gave him my stern, “don’t even think about it” look and told him “No” in no uncertain terms. Oh, was he steamed as the tears welled in his eyes and his lower lip rolled out in a pout big enough to land a bald eagle, never mind a little birdie.

A thousand times we’ve gone through this scenario, but this day was different. I decided to tickle his feet. Ewww…he was even more livid with me, but bless his little heart, he couldn’t keep the pout. The more I tickled, the more his little tiny toes curled up, the more his lower lip returned to normal and before long he was cackling away. A pout turned into laughter. A minute later, the sandwich was released from his hands—and not onto the floor—but right into his mouth, and the whole scene was over.

How often are we as stubborn as my little boy in a determined pout over a whole lot of nothing? We get all worked up over a situation or uncontrollable circumstances, allowing our attitudes to go south and stay there. But what would happen if we determined that our attitude should be the first place we seek to turn around? How would we experience life differently if we pulled in our pouty landing strip and replaced it with an attitude of gratitude? Maybe, just maybe, we would be like my little son and find ourselves cackling away instead of crying, with a new perspective that lunch wasn’t all that bad after-all.

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