The attitude you bring to an experience absolutely affects it.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.  Thomas Jefferson.  Imagine this, if you will. Day before Christmas and a guy gets on the bus. He starts complaining about how he had to wait almost 10 minutes for a bus (during the busiest time of day and after a snow storm dropped a few inches on the roads...read potentially hazardous driving.) I welcome him and others onto the bus. I give the general info that everyone needs to hear and he continues to complain as if he was severely inconvenienced and suffered because of the delay despite the conditions. I explain the larger situation and thank him for his feedback, but also thank him for his understanding and patience given the conditions and time of day. He harrumphed it off and continues to complain to his partner. After he and his party got off the bus, a woman approached me and touched my arm sweetly. All she said was “Merry Christmas and have a good day.” There is something about the attitude you bring to a situation, especially a challenging one that directly frames the experience not only for you, but others who are affected by the same situation. Why is this? An environment is affected in some way by every entity or action with in it. Think a summer rain on a parched, deserted field. A forest fire. A flood. Everything is affected by the event in one way or another. 

However, as humans we have a way to choosing our attitude as a reaction to a situation that will further enhance it for better or worse. The fishthrowers of the Seattle water front famously described this management technique in the late 90s. We have an ability to manage our reaction in a way that can, and many times will, affect how we approach subsequent situations. Do we have an obligation to deny or ignore negative or dark attitudes? Perhaps we can learn from them, but do we then have an obligation to control our attitude for the sake of another's experience? Publicly or socially we do have an obligation to check our attitude. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy breaks this down as the classic example of a moral responsibility. Yet why does the squeaky wheel get the grease? Why do people who complain get the most attention? Because we allow it. It becomes a communication of negative behavior feedback. Complain you get a response that serves your purpose. There needs to be an element of perspective in checking the negative attitude so that it does not infect the social experience. Many people will have the inner strength and perspective to put a Negative Nancy in their proper place, but there also has to be a social line were the complaining needs to be stopped. 

How does this happen? Humor, acknowledgment, and perspective. Laughter is the best medicine isn’t just some cliché phrase, it really works. It minimizes stress, boosts the immune system, and can relax the heart. (PBS) Acknowledging that there is a problem not only helps to solve it but reduces the difficult feelings associated with not being heard. This is true in many situations, addiction, domestic abuse, and anxiety. Perspective. There is an old team building activity where you put a water bottle with lots of stickers in the middle of a group. Have participants describe the water bottle. Everyone’s perspective is going to be different because the surface stickers change as you go around the circle. Yet no one really knows the full understanding of the water bottle until everyone has shared their perspective. Furthermore no one will truly understand the contents of the water bottle until someone opens it and inspects the inside. We must be open to different perspectives in order to fully understand the reality of a situation. The more we listen and explore; the more we understand.

Once we gain perspective, acknowledge the details of a situation, and honestly take stock in our emotional reactions, then we can move forward with adjustment of attitude. It is not easy. There is a practice called karma chores where you begin doing chores around the house. Choose something that is unpleasant and watch what emotional reactions you have to the act of that chore. Whatever emotion comes up is a flag for you to begin dealing with that emotion. Why does it come up? what conditions does it remind you of? What purpose does the emotion serve? Cleaning the toilet for example is not one of my favorite things to do, but once it is done I get a better sense that the bathroom is clean. So I tolerate the process…music helps. In any case choose your attitude, own your emotional reactions, and embrace the process not only to improve your experience, but to enhance other’s.  

Romaine Rolland put it poetically this way: We are created to carry and to defend its light, to rally around it all men who are lost. Our role, our duty is to maintain a fixed point, to show the pole star amidst the storm of passions in the darkness. Among these passions of pride and mutual destructions, we do not single out any one, we reject them all. We commit ourselves never to serve anything but the free Truth that has no frontiers and no limits and is without prejudice against races or castes. Of course, we do not dissociate ourselves from Humanity. We toil for it — but for all humanity. We do not recognize peoples — we acknowledge the People — unique and universal — the People who suffer, who struggle, who fall and rise again, and who always advance along the rugged road that is drenched with their sweat and their blood. We recognize the People among all men who are all equally our brothers. 

Albert Camus calls on us to fight the heaviness of thought in order to develop character. "If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it. But where are the conquering virtues of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit. For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,” classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of the wise. More than ever, these virtues are necessary today, and each of us can choose the one that suits him best. Before the vastness of the undertaking, let no one forget strength of character. I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political platforms, complete with frowns and threatening gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in from the sea. Such is the strength of character that in the winter of the world will prepare the fruit. "

Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life.  Joni Eareckson Tada