I don’t know about you, but sometimes I really need to adjust my attitude. You know that attitude when you don’t want to do something but you “know’ you should and said you would do it.

Here is the situation that led me to sharing this great revelation (not really a revelation but just doing what is right and with a good attitude). Hubby has a part time job of being an umpire for fastpitch softball. He loves the game and has been involved in the sport since before I met him (many, many years ago). He has played, coached, and now is an umpire. It is something he enjoys and I want him to be happy, but this commitment takes him away from home a few nights a week and sometime on the weekends which works out well; I spend that time doing school work and other things.

This week my attitude was tested. It has rained a lot here in Minnesota and getting the lawn mowed (normally hubby’s responsibility) was going to be a challenge. I said “I can do it.” Well the more I thought about it, I started to have a bit of an attitude about doing it. I start to think: this isn’t my job, I don’t have time for this, I have so many other things to get done, and on and on. My attitude got progressively worse. The worse part of it was as hubby was leaving, I tell him I don’t want to do it (great timing, right?) and deep down I am hoping he will say “well maybe it can wait till tomorrow and I can do it”—NOPE. He shouldn’t have said it either because I said I would do it. So it was time to keep my word and get out there and mow the lawn.

Once I started to mow, I started to think about how this could be a positive. Here is how I changed my attitude by changing my thoughts:

I have been trying to figure out how to get more walking in during my already busy schedule because we are going to be doing a lot of hiking on vacation this fall. One of the places we are going is Zion National Park and I want to hike The Narrows which is about a 9-hour hike round trip through the river. This mowing would be over an hour of walking. Score!

The second positive is something more of a revelation. Hubby and I are a bit of type A personalities so when you mow, you mow in a straight line! Crooked lines are just not appealing! Life is this way too. We set goals for ourselves (one for me is hiking The Narrows) and we have to keep our path straight to meet those goals. In order to mow a straight line, you have to start with a straight line or else every line after that won’t be straight. There are trees, roots, fire pit, and whatever else in the yard you need to go around. Even though obstacles in the yard (and life) may bend things out of shape, things can still get back on track. When you are going around the obstacle, you have to look forward and focus on a point ahead of you to keep the line going straight. This is true for your life goals also. There will be a lot of obstacles on the way to meeting goals, bumps and turns, but we need to get back on “our” line and follow our goals. So I kept my thoughts on Utah and how mowing the yard was helping me on my path to being able to do the hike I have planned. As my focus changed, my attitude changed. I thought about how awesome it will be to do this hike and all the wonderful things I will see. This hike is something that I have put on my bucket list and I am planning on crossing it off that list this fall.

I finished the lawn and felt good about it. As you can see in the picture, my lines are not perfect but I tried to keep them straight and adjust each line if it I got off course. I also learned to keep my attitude right and it makes the job easier to complete. I am sure I will have to adjust my attitude again and again in the future, but every time I see the lines on a lawn, it will be a reminder to me to keep my attitude right!!

Courtesy of flickr.com

What areas in your life have you had to adjust your attitude?