Attitude - “What if …” and “If only …”
Attitude is judgment. It is part of our emotional tool-chest.
Our attitude toward something, or about something, orients our emotional approach and response to the object of our attention.
Attitudes are “positive” or “negative” feelings toward the object. Attitudes are learned from our direct and observational experiences, and by what others have taught us. Because attitudes are learned behavior they can also be unlearned — that is, ATTITUDES CAN BE CHANGED.
What if …?
How do you know that you can change your attitude? How do you know that you can change someone else’s attitude? We know because we can ask ourselves the question, “What if —– ?” Because we can conceive of alternatives for our actions and responses, we can also conceive of what these might mean to us and others.
All to often we fail to ask ourselves the question. Instead we simply act or react emotionally to a situation. And once we react to the situation and experience the response, we begin to form an attitude toward the response. The next time we face a similar situation, that attitude will become the attitude that we will take into the situation.
Attitudes, formed in this way, can make our life so much simpler. We “know” what to expect and what is expected of us. We will seek out good situations. We will try to avoid bad situations. And we will try to ignore the unfamiliar or ambiguous situations. In time our attitudes become habits and our habits, left unquestioned, lock us into the attitudes we have about the world and everything in it.
As a child I had a bad experience with a raw onion. To this day, I don’t like onions. I will eat onions when I have no reason to suspect that they are there, such as in a sauce or a flavoring. But, I will not eat fresh raw onion such as in a salad or as a garnish. This is a habit I have. I hate onions.
I really don’t remember exactly what my negative onion experience was. Whatever it was, it has had a lasting impact.
Was these important the scheme of things? No, I don’t believe so! I have, over the years, learned to like the onion flavor. But I have not unlearned my reaction to raw onion. My attitude towards them is unchanged. I’ve never really asked myself the question “What if I eat this red onion in my salad?” Instead I just remove the onion and proceed to eat the rest on my salad.
The “What if …? question is a choice question. It is a question that can be asked before we chose to do something. When we ask it, we are saying to ourselves, “Maybe there is another way to do this,” or, “another way of looking at my choices.” The “What if …? gives us the option of controlling our immediate future before we act.
If only…?
The “If only …?” question is the question we ask when things go wrong. The Spanish Soccer players in the 2010 World Cup are not really concerned with the “If only…?”. They won the World Cup, they had a positive experience in the game and positive attitude about their play. The Dutch players on the other hand are probably still asking themselves “If only…?” questions about their lose.
When we ask the “If only…?” question, we are engaging in an evaluative process and a judgmental process. The evaluative process is where we try to look at the outcome from a critical and objective point of view. “If only I had zigged instead of zagged, I would have avoided the hole in the road.” This is a useful question and suggests an alternative course of action for you to consider the next time you encounter that hole in the road. It is something you can control, your car. And if you can control your car, you can change what happens to it.
The judgmental process, on the other hand, is where we place blame or responsibility for an outcome. Often this results in creating a negative attitude toward the perceived cause of the outcome. “If only the public works department would fix the road, then I would not need to avoid these holes.” This is an interesting, but useless, piece of information about how to avoid driving into a hole in the road. You don’t control the public works department.
But you do control your feelings and thereby your attitude toward the situation, i.e. the hole. If you have a negative attitude, you are most likely to complain about the department and do nothing about the hole. But if you have a positive attitude toward the situation, you might report the hole to the public works department and follow up to see that the department fixes the hole. The negative attitude blames the hole on the department, while the positive attitude takes responsibility for the problem and seeks a solution to fix the holes.
Janus says
Our mental chatter frames our attitude
“What if —– ?” and “If only …?” are questions we ask ourselves all the time. They are an important part of that chatter talk that goes in our head. You know, that voice that is there when you lay in bed before going to sleep and when we first wake-up in the morning. These are the questions we consider whenever we are faced with a choice or decision or the consequences of a decision.
The “What if —-?” and “If only …?” questions help to separate us humans from other species. They helps us to examine our emotions and change our attitudes in a positive direction.
Tags: attitude, awareness, change, critical thinking, emotion, evaluation, focus, habits, If only, judgement, life lesson, mental chatter, Mind, perception, personal responsibility, What if