The Secret of Attitude

Yesterday I was on a flight from Los Angeles to the Midwest.  Actually I was on the plane, parked at the LA airport for over an hour before they rounded up enough crew to take off. This was after I was one of the chosen few in the security line that was asked to step aside for a more thorough inspection.  Between returning my leased car and finally getting on the plane and having my private search for weapons or whatever, it took as long as the flight home once it took off.

Why do I tell this boring tale that is familiar to everyone who travels? Because I’ve finally learned how to keep my blood pressure down and not let things I can’t control give me a pain in the stomach.  Now don’t get me wrong, the experience was neither fun nor funny. However I finally have absorbed the wisdom of that simple phrase, “it isn’t so much what happens to you, it’s how you deal with it”.
Now my challenge is to remember this when the next challenge comes along.

In the hundreds of interviews related to the aging process that I’ve collected for my books and public radio broadcasts, one theme has emerged. “If your attitude is affirmative, open, and flexible, you can make your life work differently.”  Yes, of course there are far greater challenges to attitude than delayed travel.  Here’s one story where attitude affected outcome. Jacob was fifty-nine when he was faced with the necessity of open heart surgery that wasn’t entirely successful. He had a quadruple bypass of the four main arteries and was quite ill for a long time. Here’s his story in his own words.

          “It took me almost a year to get back on my feet. Being sick made me feel useless and out of touch with the workplace that I so much enjoyed. Taking advantage of my many years of education, I decided to become a partime consultant. After three years I was waiting for a new challenge to come along. Then, at our family holiday dinner, my daughter talked of her classes in Law School. I remember whining about wishing I could do that and she challenged me asking, “Why can’t you”. I took her challenge seriously and to my surprise, I did very well on the exam and was accepted into law school. 

          I learned that lesson I now teach, that the first step, even a small one, often mobilizes a reservoir of energy that sets us on a course with the potential for changing our lives completely. My excuses melted away and I realized that nothing does it like doing it! My proudest moment came during the commencement exercise that my wife, brother, sister, children and grandchildren attended. When my name was called, the whole audience got up and clapped.

       There was a story about me in the local newspaper and I was immediately offered a job with one of the city’s biggest legal advocacy organization to handle cases involving older people... For many years I worked twenty-five hours a week, I gave legal advice to social workers and others who have direct contact with poor disabled, and in need of guidance to get the services they were entitled to receive. Instead of acting like a victim, I now was a victim’s advocate. I think most people in my original situation might expect to turn up their toes and prepare to die but I proved to myself that risk taking, determination, and hard work, could accomplished for me what I truly wanted. Attitude does affect outcome and the responsibility of making a choice is always yours.”
         

Things like losing your driver’s license of having to give up salt may not seem to be of the same magnitude as recovering from open-heart surgery or taking radiation therapy treatments.Yet when any challenge enters your life, a barrier that seems small to others can seem to threaten you independence and control. And each such hurdle challenges us to make life–affirming choices.

The aging process is not a contest to prove that you’re who you used to be. We must all understand and respect the reality of our individual circumstances and what we must adjust to and what changes can in reality be made. And finally we must always remember what is within our power, and what is not within our ability to modify and change. Jacob’s story had a fairy tale ending (although he’s now left his part time job and takes on clients in a consultant capacity) but each of us face our own small and large challenges every day.

I can only repeat what I’ve heard so many tell me, We must be honest with ourselves and respect and accept the no one over fifty-five can realistically aim at being on a professional basket ball team or aim to train for space shuttle pilot. Our bodies change as we get older, and age inevitably begins to have an impact on our choices, not to mention our spirit and emotions. As far a New Year’s resolutions or words I’ll strive to remember and live by each day of 2006, this one sentence is at the top of the list.

How I respond to major events and changes in my life, as well as the smaller irritations that occur daily, is far more important than what the events actually are.  Attitude does affect outcome.