“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.” — Kahlil Gibran

So, I must always remember that what life brings to me is influenced greatly by the attitude I bring to it. What I see often becomes what I experience. My beliefs influence my thoughts, which influence my attitudes, which influence my experiences, which eventually shape my identity. Would it be fair to say that much of our reality is filtered through our perceptions? I don’t just think this is true. I know it is true. It’s why different people can be having the exact same experience and yet walking away with entirely different interpretations of it.

Let’s dig a little deeper, because I don’t just accept things as true. I want to understand the why and the how behind them. What if an attitude is really a repeated state of thought and emotion that eventually becomes a state of being? The statement, “That’s just the way I am,” is often the result of this conditioning.

Remember the Reticular Activating System? If you don’t know what it is, it’s the part of the brain that filters information and determines what deserves our attention based on what we repeatedly feed it through thought, belief, and emotion. In other words, if we have a fearful attitude, we are more likely to notice danger all around us. If we have a hopeful attitude, we are more likely to notice opportunities.

Life itself may not have changed at all — but our nervous system literally changes what we perceive. And then, of course, our repeated attitudes begin to form neural pathways. Hebb’s Law explains this well: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Eventually, these repeated patterns become our state of being.

This also influences our health because thought and emotion affect body chemistry. Over long periods of time, chronic stress, fear, resentment, or hopelessness can contribute to illness, while peace, joy, gratitude, and connection support greater well-being. In many ways, we become chemically conditioned to familiar emotional states and unconsciously seek experiences that reinforce them. Thus, the statement: “Wherever you are, there you are.” We cannot truly change our outer experiences until we begin changing our inner state of being. Much of human behavior is unconscious habit. That is why becoming conscious is so important.

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life.” It is neurological. Biochemical. Perceptual. Energetic. Behavioral.

“Change your thinking, change your life.” Or, as science might say: “Change your neural patterns, emotional conditioning, and perceptual filters, and your experience of life changes with them.”

The good news is that you are not just a brain. You are consciousness using a brain. You are an eternal stream of awareness participating in an unlimited field of energy — whether you call it Quantum Intelligence, God, Spirit, or the Universe.

Move into Consciousness. Get behind the automatic programming of the mind and begin to realize that you are at the helm of your ship of life. Possibility expands when awareness expands. Your attitude matters — and you have the power to cultivate it.

Love and Aloha,
Rev. Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren