An Attitude Checkup

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How would you honestly describe your attitude?  I wonder if you’ve done an attitude check-up lately?  If not, I’d like to help you do that, because your attitude is very important when it comes to how well you perform and how much you enjoy what you’re doing.  And it’s also very important to the kind of testimony you have as a Christian.

There’s a study on attitudes that says people tend to fall into three categories:  two small extremes and one large middle group.  On the plus side of the attitude scale, we have a group called the “Plus Five Percenters.”  These are the people who are always totally positive.  They smile all the time, never have anything bad to say about anyone, everything’s always just fine with them.

Plus Five Percenters seem to live in some kind of protected bubble, but they’re a lot nicer to be with than the other extreme, the Minus Five Percenters.  You’ve undoubtedly run into a few of them.  These are the people who are always negative.  They don’t like anybody, nothing ever suits them, and they’ve never had a good night’s sleep or a nice weekend.  Every time they open their mouths, it’s bad news.

But most of us fit into a broad middle category of people who are neither totally negative nor totally positive.  We are some mixture; we have good days and bad days, up times and down times, and frankly, that’s normal.  But the question is, do you lean toward the negative side or the positive side?

Could you honestly say that most of the time you’re in positive mode; you don’t criticize and complain a lot; you find most people likable?  Or would you have to admit you tend to be more negative?  You do gripe a lot and imagine the worst too often.  You see the glass as half empty rather than half full.

Where you fit on that attitude scale says a lot about you, and it says a lot about your walk with God.  A Christian with a growing and alive relationship with Jesus is bound to have a more positive than negative attitude.  I know some people are more upbeat than others, but I can’t see how Christians who are really pouring God’s Word into their minds regularly and applying it to their lives could be complaining, critical, negative people all the time.  It’s like oil and water; they don’t mix.

Of course, it would be easy to be positive if we lived in perfect worlds.  But none of us do.  We have lots of negative things happening to us regularly, and they can wipe us out if we’re not careful.  If you’re like me, you need an attitude check-up occasionally, to make sure you’re staying on the positive side.

I’m going to give you some suggestions for staying positive, even in a negative world.