Choosing Your Attitude (14)

Posted under: Life, Thoughts

Yes, I’m long overdue for a new post and the delay has been mostly due to my being mildly busy over the last few weeks. Comments will be replied to and returned as soon as I can get to them. I’m neglecting a few things actually. Bad me.

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I’m a big believer on self-determination. What I mean by that, and for the purpose of this post, is that you choose your actions, especially, your attitudes. You’d think that with this mindset, I’d always try to be happy, right? Well, a few weeks ago (and possibly including a day of last week), I was really depressed. However, I did little (except some retail therapy) to help alleviate my mood. In fact, I probably worsened or encouraged my bad mood by listening to sad songs.

For me, I listen to music for two reasons: 1) because I enjoy it and 2) because there are certain songs that can express how I feel in a much more beautiful manner. Due to the latter reason, I ended up listening to songs that didn’t give me motivation or hope, but allowed me to wallow in my despair for just a little longer.

These actions got me to thinking though. I could have chosen to listen to Yellowcard’s “Believe” (not an official video) or something of that manner, but I didn’t. I purposefully chose songs that I knew were sad, that I knew were depressing. I didn’t try to go out and find friends to have a good time with, but instead, stayed inside my apartment and wallowed.

So I wonder, why would someone what to do that? Why would someone like me want to put myself through such an emotional hell? In such a dark space? It doesn’t make sense, does it, but unfortunately, it happens and people do it too often.

This all reminds me of a post I came across that had a video about a paraplegic man who had a really good attitude when everything else in his life was grim. During the clip, he talks about how he could have taken the traditional reaction and made everything seem so bad, but he didn’t. He chose to have a positive attitude and that changed everything for him.

When you’re in a bad mood, do you allow yourself to sulk and stew or do you try to do something more productive and positive? Sure, the latter sounds very ideal, but really, how often do you do it?

Tags: attitudes, Bill Cawley, depression, emotional hell, emotions, Yellowcard