There’s a saying, "we can’t control the wind, but we can adjust our sails.” True enough, but sometimes we forget we’re even holding the ropes. Our attitudes, the quiet assumptions and expectations we carry, are like the compass that guides us. Tilt them in one direction, and life feels heavy and hopeless. Shift them slightly, and suddenly the world looks less like a battlefield and more like a puzzle you can solve.

Winston Churchill once said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

Why Attitude Matters

Think of attitude as the lens through which you view the world. The same rainstorm can be a disaster for one person (“my hair is ruined!”) and a blessing for another (“my plants will finally stop plotting against me”).

* A negative attitude narrows the mind. We start to see problems as permanent, pervasive, and personal.
* A positive, flexible attitude makes challenges seem manageable and temporary.

Or as Maya Angelou put it: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

A Case Study: Sarah’s Shift

Take Sarah, a client in her thirties who is juggling work stress and a difficult family dynamic. She came to therapy convinced she was “failing at life.” Everything felt like an uphill struggle.

Instead of leaping straight into problem-solving, we looked at her attitudes:

* She believed mistakes defined her (“If I get this wrong, I am wrong”).
* She expected rejection at every turn (“People won’t like me if they know the real me”).

Through gentle work, Sarah began to reframe. She experimented with new internal scripts: “Mistakes mean I’m learning” and “I’m allowed to take up space.” Over time, her mood lifted, relationships improved, and she started taking risks.

She later laughed: “It turns out the problem wasn’t my boss, my mum, or Mercury retrograde, it was how I spoke to myself.”

Tips for Shaping Your Attitude

1. Catch your inner narrator. Notice the running commentary in your head. Would you say those words to a friend? If not, upgrade the script.
2. Practise gratitude, but keep it real. Yes, life can be tough, but there are small wins even on bad days. (Coffee counts. So does making it to bed without tripping over the dog.)
3. Ask, “What else could this mean?”Instead of assuming someone is late because they don’t care, consider that they might just be stuck in traffic or lost in the chaos of Tesco.
4. Stay curious. Curiosity softens judgement. Replace “This is a disaster” with “What can I learn here?”
5. Use humour as medicine. Laughter doesn’t deny pain; it makes it easier to carry. As Charlie Chaplin wisely said, “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”

Final Thought

Our attitudes are not set in stone; they’re like clay, moulded by attention and practice. Shift your attitude, and the scenery of your life shifts with it.

And if all else fails, remember the words of author Erma Bombeck: “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”