Positive Mental Attitude

Its been quite sometime since I've been around these parts. I would say I'm sorry, but honestly I'm not sorry and find myself apologizing for things that I'm not really sorry about. Sorry not sorry, you know? I'll just say that I hope to return to blogging more frequently. In the meantime I have been spending oodles of time with my little girl, who is now 6 months old! Crazy, I know. I'm still trying to strike a nice balance between work and home life, and while no one has it figured out yet, I would like to find more me time to...you know...blog, cook, wine taste, exercise, read, watch movies, etc...etc...etc. I've enjoyed weekly-monthly hikes with my family and hanging out in bed on weekends mornings with them.

So what actually brought me here today, or at least motivated me enough to take the time to write this post is something I've been thinking about lately, Positive Mental Attitude. Will and I have conversed on this philosophy a lot and it is something we are striving for. He's been working on it longer than I, but more recently I have wanted to live my life in this way. If you're not familiar, Positive Mental Attitude is a philosophy introduced by Napoleon Hill. It essentially practices that having an optimistic attitude in every situation attracts positive change and successful outcomes.

For me, this way of living is truly a challenge because I am often a cynic and negative -characteristics I'm not proud of. However, I don't want to continue living this way or set this example for my daughter, Colette. There are common misconceptions about PMA (you can read them here), mainly that positive things just happen to you simply because you think positively, or that situations end up successful purely from positive thought. This myth is simply not true. The way that I like to think of it is that positive mental attitude enacts change, free-thinking and motivation. Instead of stressing or dwelling on a problem, PMA motivates one to create solutions and take action, sort of what brought me to write this post!

I found this to be some great advice for creating PMA. Instead of focusing on my flaws I have started to think about my attributes that I can capitalize on and changing the things about myself I don't like. Even this step has already lead me to be more successful at my job. Next I plan on applying this to my home life as well.

I believe that Positive Mental Attitude helped me cope through birth labor and create the experience I wanted to have. Keeping a positive and motivated attitude helped me push through the pain and focus on the end result of seeing my daughter. Will tells me how moving it was for him to watch me give birth to our little girl and how I kept saying that "I can't wait to meet her," "I'm going to meet her," in between painful pushes. My doula remarked that this is actually pain with purpose so in a way it is not "pain." This statement in itself is PMA and helped me get through labor as I kept thinking, I have a purpose. I can get through this. I will get to meet my daughter.

I challenge you to start having a Positive Mental Attitude. You will find it quite empowering and freeing. Remember that you can be the change in your life and in the world around you.